Chinese Poetic Paintings and Gothic Art Homework Help

The works that were assigned for this part of the class dealt with Gothic art and architecture and Chinese poetic paintings. Both books were effective in presenting the information in a manner that I found interesting and convincing. Both authors were united in their presentation; they both wanted their audience to see the works of art they discussed from the point of view of the people who experienced it first hand. We as readers are encouraged to view theses works not just for their intellectual, historical and visual value, but also for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment that one can feel from such works. We as students sometimes lose track of the importance of such matters, partly because we seem to always understand these works from an academic standpoint.
According to Michael Camille, author of Gothic Art Glorious Visions, “Gothic art is best understood, not through the abstract eye of the engineer or the text-bound gaze of the iconographer, but rather through the eye as the medievals understood it—a powerful sense-organ perception, knowledge and pleasure.” The sensory experience obtained by people who lived in medieval times were a form of virtual reality (according to Camille). “Medieval cathedrals, like computers, were constructed to contain all the information in the world for those who knew the codes. Medieval people loved to project themselves into their images just as we can enter into our video and computer screens.” Take for example this particular work, The angel shows St. John the Heavenly Jerusalem, from an English Apocalypse, c. 1250. The elite of the society of the time were able to project themselves into this painting, identifying with John the evangelist who has the capability to see spiritual visions from God. The Gothic art era, just like other art movements, went through an evolution of sorts. This evolution however did not affect the original objective of providing visual images that