| Summary: | This is a master thesis dealing with reception-theoretical aspects of the 96 meter long photomontage called That day and that grief, created by the Swedish photographer and artist Larseric Vänerlöf. The artwork is situated in the Karlaplan metro-station in Stockholm. The text is an extension of the master thesis that I wrote in 2017-2018, entitled The Cinematic eye. This new essay aims to deepen the understanding of how the photomontage reveals it´s meaning and how it is received by the viewer in the metro context at Karlaplan. Main questions: 1/ What is it in this big photomontage, that makes the viewing travellers, wanting to stay and watch it, even though they are in a hurry towards another place, in another matter? 2/ How does this artwork speak to me and how does it want me to watch it? 3/ What does the photomontage want to tell me? 4/ What does the work represents? Since my study focuses on the imagery and communication-act of the artwork, I find semiotics and reception-theory as the obvious theoretical tools. Part of the interpretation of the image relates to the semiotics of Roland Barthes and his statement that all images are polysemic and ambiguous and that they are culturally and historically conditioned. In my conclusion I discuss and to some extent challenge the mechanism and interaction between literal, denoting information and symbolic connotation in the viewer’s reception. The reception analysis is based on Wofgang Kemps conceptual apparatus formulated in The work of Art and its Beholder (1998), and Peter Gillgrens concept of interartial references. Hans Georg Gadamers view of art as a performative game complements the essays theoretical construction. I use a deductive and systematic interpretive working method. Based on the chosen semiotic and reception theoretical formation and through my questions, I have studied the phenomenology of the photomontage, i.e. as an artistic and linguistic phenomenon. Empathy in site/location, beholder and zeitgeist form the basis of the methodological work.The conclusions of the thesis are radically different from that of my former text from 2017-18. Imagery and symbolic ambiguities and focalics that refuse to reveal the "meaning" and content of the photomontage, activate the viewer in a performative way and creates a highly communicative work, which involves the viewer in the theatrical course. Through a deeper study of the “zeitgeist”, I have also concluded that the collective and political symbols from the 1970s in the work, have lost power and content at the time of the dismantling in 1982. The character that I previously perceived as "Art as weapon" has in this essay been transformed to "Art as visuality". The art of photography appears as the real subject matter for the photomontage at Karlaplan subwaystation.
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