COP3 Dissertation: Composition with Rembrandt, and contemporary theorists MacCabe and Baudry

The Renaissance era was a revolution for the art discipline, especially the painting aspects and pioneering techniques that followed.  Within the Renaissance era, Rembrandt was a key figure with his expressive and innovative approach to paintings and other processes. The composition in his pieces leads the spectator’s eye through the painting to the main subject within the art.  This form of manipulation towards the eye’s perception can be depicted through the Mise-en-Scène of the composition. Mise-en-Scene is normally used within film, a term portraying how a shot is composed, however the same composition values can apply to other disciplines; it is all about how the scene is woven. Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633) [fig.1] depicts a sail boat ravaged by bursts of waves, the crew clinging onto the sails and boat to avoid going overboard. The blinding wisps of the waves draw the attention of the viewer to gaze at the crew almost being swept away by the sheer power of the water. From this perception we see what Rembrandt wants the viewer to see.  He wants the spectator to see how ferocious nature is, how cruel the waves can be. As the spectator glances towards the darker part of the ship, the rest of the crew appear to be less affected by this crash of the wave and we can see one crew member looking towards the audience. This use of Off Screen Space feeds the spectator information relating to something outside of the painted range of the composition. It can even be interpreted that this figure is aware of the spectator and the painter.  Off Screen Space is a creative way to convey information to the spectator and this awareness connects strongly to Baudry’s Screen Mirror theory, where the image provides a representation of reality rather than reality itself. With this representation the image creates real conditions of reality within an imaginary portrayal. This interpretation of perception can suggest that the composition that Rembrandt has created is a story he has twisted into his own version of reality. The actual components within the painting conclude that the painter was not present when this moment in time occurred. Logically it would be psychically impossible for Rembrandt to have painted this scene, unless it was a scene that he painted from a story.

“The unquestioned nature of the narrative discourse entails that the only problem that reality poses is to go and look and see what things are. The relationship between the reading subject and the real is placed as one of pure specularity. The real is not articulated- it is.” (Rushton, R & Bettinson, G (2010) P.57)

MacCabe argues that reality is what you perceive; the audience form the truth through the contents of the image. The spectator can only piece together the truth from the information given to them. Therefore MacCabe interprets this to be the reality whereas Baudry argues that the information given is a mere representation of what is reality. Both Theorist are contemporary theorist’s whom dwell within Film Theory however the analysis of the scene, the image with in the shot applies to other disciplines as well; paintings are but one image, they are motionless but could just as easily be transferred to motion.

[Fig 1] The Storm of Galilee