History of the image Lecture

The second lecture of the series was an exploration of the history of the image, jumping back and forth in time. The aims of the lecture were:

• To quickly introduce you to a broad range of visual communication from different cultures, contexts, and epochs. 
• To demonstrate how creative and tangential connections and continuities can be traced between these diverse examples. 
• To provide you with a visual resource which will hopefully help you solve briefs creatively. 
• To introduce some of the philosophical and theoretical approaches to visual communication that we will develop over the next two years. 
• To demonstrate the power of visual communication.

There is a primal raw spiritual feel about image making.  No one really understands what the primal drawings in the cave mean, there are animals, strange patterns, speculation about what they mean, recordings from the date? Best reading is that they are attempts to commune with some sort of higher power, images of magic. In many ways we still do this now. Lascaux Caves, France.

The same thing, there is some more energetic and spiritual about the painting, it shows emotion and power.

Controversial exhibition Pompidou Paris, aboriginal sand painting, the aim is to try and prove the point that there is something kind of similar to what aborigionist have always done to what modern artists do now. Point being that there is continuity between past and present. There is something in the core of us and how we work that unites us all as people. Controversial culture imperialism.

Rothko, killed himself, when you look at a painting its supposed to be like looking into abis, revolutionary, but also depressive, you should feel the tragedy when you look at his work. Commissioned for the four seasons in NY, but he was a radical so felt guilt. He made gloomy paintings so the people in the restaurants felt sick. People stare at the paintings in a gallery and they often cry.

You have to travel to see art in galleries and museums; they sort of have authority over us. There are parallels between art in churches and in galleries. Religious experience, queue up then worship the mona lisa, get our digital proof and then leave having paid. The mona lisa - Enigmatic smile, meaningful because of its characteristics? Or because people queue up to see it and its behind bullet proof glass – if it is because of this, institutions have complete power.

Exit through the gift shop, byproducts of capitalism. Products make the mona lisa more relevant and powerful across the world. The digital age make it so possible to take pictures of everything, scan and reproduce, the art is no longer private property.

Banksy art is created for free public viewing, then the art world decide they are commodities and are to be sold to galleries.

Jackson Pollock, carefully designed, more like a drawing with slaps of paint it isn’t just randomly distributed. He listens to jazz music and his body goes with it, he is involved in the painting he moves with the space. Supposed to be the soul just vomiting onto the canvas. 

Cia were funding Pollock to create free abstract expressionism work to contrast with the Soviet Union, it was a cultural weapon.

Guerrilla Girls – fed up with the fact that woman artists aren’t shown in the galleries, 11^th edition of the story of art until there was a woman included. Women are more beautiful, the objects and men are subjects. Using art as a weapon against art.

Some things to think about and research further:

• The fact that places are branded; they sell themselves through image of representation not real life.
• There are images of glamour in advertising and instore, is this an insecurity to us because we see something that we don't have, should our lives be different?
• Constructivism
• Socialist realism
• Steve Bell
• Anarchist
• Communism - Capitalism
• Abstract expression