What does James Monaco think the spectrum of the arts is.

Reading a film is subjective to everyone who watches it. Some may “read the film” differently to someone else and pinpoint areas of the film that other wouldn’t class as reading it. I believe reading a film is understanding and analysing what you see on screen, as well as acknowledging the films elements, themes and ideas presented that makes up the film’s language.

The writer of the book ‘how to read a film’, James Monaco, has a section in his book called the nature of the arts. In this section he mentions an idea called the spectrum of the arts. I believe the spectrum of the arts is the shape, form, colour, texture, and space. An example of shape is when Monaco explains that you can use shape and geometry to trigger emotions. The brain can give abstract meaning to different shapes such as in the field of animation, villainous and evil characters are shown frequently with sharp, rigid and pointy features like noses, fingernails etc as it brings out a sense of fear and intimidation in the brain.

Form is what a viewer perceives in a film. This includes its elements that bring the film to life such as its colour and camerawork and music. The various film techniques used add form to the film as an art piece. For example, Colours are used to identify prominent settings in the film, such as in iconic 1939 film, The wizard of Oz. In the film the location of Kansas was in black and white but when they arrived in Oz the film exploded with colour and became a very bright movie.

Texture is the quality and nature of shots and is the most important factor of the spectrum of the arts. I believe this as without texture your shots will feel like a dull group of geometric shapes. Lighting and colour can be manipulated using digital effects; however, texture cannot be manipulated and is unique because of that. This is because texture shows the personality of the location. Showing factors like age and condition.

I believe James Monaco came to his conclusion that the spectrum of the arts is a combination of all the important film techniques that make the film unique and an art form. Texture doesn’t work at its best without lighting and colour and vice versa. Without this combination of art, the film would be left empty and lifeless.

By Josh Wright.

Monaco describes a ‘spectrum of the arts’ to mean a differentiation between different art forms and effect it has on the viewer. The spectrum includes performance arts (which happen in real time), representational arts (to convey information to the observer) and recording arts (which provide a more direct path between subject and observer). 

An example of performing arts is theatre, Monaco seperated this type of art from into the ‘pictorial-dramatic-narrative’ section of the spectrum, this is because theatre creates a ‘real time’ image in order to convey a story and experience to the viewer. Monaco also describe art to be a human endeavour that is more of an attitude than activity.  

An example of representational art is literature, Monaco depicts how representational art establishes the conventions of language, this is important in understanding how representational art, such as novels and poetry falls between the ‘dramatic-narrative’ subsection of the spectrum. 

The last type of art form Monaco explores in the recording arts, an example of this could be music. Music has an emotional and narrative effect on the listener as much as it does any other type of art form. To thoroughly understand Music as a type of recording arts, Monaco depicts music to be in the musical section of the spectrum of arts. 

By ‘the spectrum of the arts’, Monaco is referring to the everchanging definition of what ‘art’ is – in the constant cycle of new ideas, methods, and styles being considered art, widening the spectrum, and then being factored away as part of something else and no longer considered an art, honing the definition of ‘art’ back down once more. These cores were originally history, comedy, tragedy, poetry, dance, astronomy, and music.

For example: over time, poetry branched off into lyric, dramatic and epic poetry, forming the subgroup ‘literary arts’ along with history, comedy, and tragedy. From here grew the need of structure, rules for these arts; grammar, logic, and rhetoric, all made so that it became simpler to categorize. As mathematics became more and more important, geometry replaced dance.

Further along in time, the lines between ‘art’ and ‘method’ slowly blurred, and the two melted together, to mean ‘skill’. If you were especially good at something, you had mastered the ‘art’ of it. But then, the definition started to head back to its original size– painting and creation, the ‘fine arts’ became closely linked to and eventually synonymous with ‘art’ itself, whilst the more structured, logic driven ‘arts’ like sciences and mathematics were slowly being removed. Art was no longer skill, it was creation.

This is just one example of the cycle of what is considered part of the spectrum of art, fluctuating as humanity develops, viewpoints change, and new technologies and means of expression are invented. Art is a ‘spectrum’ because it can’t and never will be defined – this is because art is relative to humanity, and we cannot be wholly confined to a definition either.