The author concludes that pictures want nothing because they want to be seen as complex individuals occupying multiple subject positions and identities, so they don’t want to be interpreted, decoded, or worshipped. According to the author, Mitchell, not worshipped or demystified by their beholders represents picture’s inhuman or nonhuman characteristic. However, Mitchell also mentions that pictures want to break naïve notions of ‘resemblance of mimesis’, and they want equal rights with language which is regarded more important than images in current society. Isn’t it paradoxical that pictures which have nonhuman characteristic want rights and to be seen as complex individuals? If they really don’t want to be interpreted and become free of ‘gaze’, they have to be the ‘naïve resemblance of mimesis’ which is passé so can be ignored by beholders. On the contrary, they may become resemblance of mimesis to capture beholders in contemporary society. Today’s artworks are full of abstract images which is too popular. As ‘down-gear’ and reactionism are regarded as a trend nowadays, the desire of pictures to pretend not to be interested in beholders’ look but still want their attention may be obtained by going back to the past: mimesis.
It is stated that the “concept of image-as-organism is, of course, ‘only’ a metaphor, an analogy that must have some limits” (Mitchell 10). Thus, it is revealed especially early on in Mitchell’s work that naïve animism is quite pertinent to his discussion; however, his writing highlights his thoughts on imagery being “brought to life” more literally/the idea of naïve animism is taken a step further. In other words, Mitchell describes images moreso as a living organism with desires. What I found most interesting was the idea that in some respects, his image-as-a-living-organism idea is quite odd, yet in other respects, it seems reasonable. For instance, I believe that it is logical to say that an image that has been created by man as a result of painting, carving, or sculpture has hidden feelings and opinions. This is because the artist’s inner thoughts are expressed through their work, giving life to a project of theirs. In instances of images seen in nature (i.e. the sunset), it seems to me that it would be difficult for such images to really have desires. Then again, religious people may believe that such images are, in fact, created by another being- a supreme being such as a God (depending on the religion). I admit that Mitchell’s ideas sounded strange at first, but I cannot deny the fact that I had a hard time finding any image-natural or not- that could not be taken as life like from some perspective or another.
Mitchell's assertion that "terrorism is an invisible idol, a shape-shifting fantasy that may be instantiated in almost any form" (22) left me a little confused as to how he defines an idol, particularly considering his inclusion of paintings, buildings and even a sheep in the same category; it almost seems that he extends the definition of an idol to anything created by humans with intention, whether in a physical form or as an abstract concept. What is not an idol, then? Can't it be said that music and literature and dance all want something from us, because we have imposed our feelings on them so that they impose their desires on us in return?
I had a very hard time with the concept of the image as living organism at first. Mitchell begins the chapter “with the assumption that we are capable of suspending our disbelief,” a statement which both substantiates the concept of double-consciousness while at the same time contradicting it. If we are able to suspend our disbelief we create a situation in which we are in fact singly conscious analysts, absolute believers. If we have decided that human nature does not allow this simplicity, that “the subjectivized, animated object in some form or other is an incurable symptom” (Mitchel, 30), then I find it difficult to approach the question beyond the human interpretive realm of “what does the artist want,” “what does the viewer want.”
When Mitchell examines the question of want as an expression of lack rather than of desire, parallels to the living image become easier to me. In this sense what a picture wants is context. A painting, a photograph, a mental image, a physical object does not belong in a spatial or temporal sense in any one context, it depends on someone or something else to give it one. As Mitchel explains a frame can leave us with the sense that something is cut out of picture but any object is restricted by the frame of its environment. Objects want for a context in order to be understood just as do humans, but whereas humans desire to be viewed in a certain way and ask for it, objects by nature do not. They lack context but they do not demand or desire any specific one. This makes a picture an easy idol. We tend to revere those people who achieve an independence from societal norms and from self-consciousness and in the same spirit we worship pictures for their lack of desire to fit in to any one context.
The question of ‘what is an idol?’ is certainly central to this class, and one that we have touched on briefly in the other thread and in class. I think, building off of Ellen, that the most important aspect of an idol is control. The idol controls people through its embodiment of some intangible power, yet at the same time the purpose of the idol is to manifest that power in a solid, tangible form so that it can be controlled by humans. Perhaps the most robust characteristic of an idol, though, which has been discussed in class as well as Ellen’s and Mitchell’s text, is that an idol belongs to someone else. It seemed to me that Mitchell was not looking for an answer to the question ‘what do pictures want?’ but rather simply to ask the question in the first place. Based on the assumption that pictures want what they lack, perhaps what pictures really want is just to be asked what they want. Even if this is not the case – if pictures really do want something, or if they want nothing at all because they are, in fact, inanimate – the act of asking the question forces us to look at images in new ways. This allows us to understand our relationship with them in new ways, and ultimately to change our perception of an image. Today in Art Hum (sorry for bringing in the core, I know the vast majority of this class is not CC) I asked myself ‘what does the Parthenon want? I never answered this question, but by asking it I started looking at what the building lacks (and what it doesn’t lack), rather than the many things it possesses. By looking at the Parthenon in this way, it was easier for me to understand why it is put together the way it is, and why it has the effect on me that it does.
I admit that I also felt initially uncomfortable with the anthropomorphic and idolatrous implications of Mitchell’s question of images’ desire. However upon digesting the chapters I found that using this thinking as an analytical tool is quite thought provoking.
One part I still feel unsure of is his treatment of the second commandment when he interprets, “The second commandment, prohibiting the making of graven images, is not just a ban on idolatry but a ban on the making of images of any kind.” (16) The verse he is referring to is Ex 20:3-5: “You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…” I would argue that these three sentences are meant to be (and perhaps historically have been) read together as a prohibition against images created only specifically for idol worship. Mithcell’s interpretation might be based on a common misconception which uses this verse as argument that an early art did not exist for adherers to the biblical text due to a prohibition on all images. This is of course untrue (see Mettinger No Graven Image? or the corpus of early figurative Jewish art such as the wall paintings at Dura Europas). It seems to me that this verse was more likely included in the biblical cannon as a propagandistic tool used to promote monotheism than a statement about the power of the divine (i.e. that God has “exclusive rights to the production of images” (17)). What is more clear to me is Mitchell’s idea that the structure of superstitions about images is “not simply some psychological phobia about images, nor is it reducible to straightforward religious doctrines, laws, and prohibitions that people might follow or violate. It is, rather, a social structure grounded in the experience of otherness and especially in the collective representation of others as idolaters.” (19)
A last point that particularly interests me is the “second law of iconoclasm” or the law of “secondary belief” in which one group of iconoclasts creates a caricature of another as a fully believing idolater. The practice of depicting the Other as an animal reminded me of Nazi propaganda which rendered Jews as mice. What’s interesting is that it seems to me that Jews in turn have become the iconoclasts as Nazi propaganda has become so popularly infamous and is extensively used as an agent to create fear of anti-semitism among contemporary Jewish communities (fear of the other is of course a way to keep a community together). In other words the images which were originally intended to control the minds of Germans in order to “disfigure and destroy” the image of the Jew have ironically been adopted by the very people they were meant to ridicule and used to create a new image of the anti-Semite.
I am finding that I both believe and don't believe in the “double consciousness,” and it seems like a similar response is reflected in other people's comments so far. I wonder how much the double consciousness about images differs from any other form of simultaneous belief and doubt that people experience—like in the potential for world peace, the existence of a deity, evolution, etc.
Reading Mitchell's book, I kept noticing how often the two elements of this consciousness are construed as behavior and thought, with speech and writing as especially common examples of the behavior part. Mitchell does set up this contrast early in the first chapter: he concedes that he doesn't believe [which I'm taking as thinking/reasoning] that images can want, but points to speech and behavior that implies otherwise as the second consciousness involved with images (p11). In class and in Mitchell's book (eg p13), many of the examples to support modern naïve animism involve figures of speech and literary devices.
If this divide does lie primarily in thought versus speech, it suggests that speech is to some degree spontaneous and reflects a consciousness somehow more “secret” than what is overtly reasoned. It seems like in many examples the behaviors and speech that reveal the naïve animism within Western/modern/non “primitive” societies come out in moments of heightened emotion, recalling the issue of power—when people feel themselves losing control, they admit the control/power they actually attribute on some level to objects (ie, the “damn computer” moment). As Mitchell says, we “make exceptions [to our non-animistic beliefs] for special cases” (p31)--is what makes these cases special their emotional resonance? Similarly, look to the example about a person's unwillingness to cut out the eyes of her mother in a photograph—here it is not a built up frustration, but a sudden call to an emotional connection that brings this form of idolatry to light.
While reading it was important for me to keep reminding myself that Mitchell challenges us to reflect on our modern attitude towards objects and pictures, not to change or improve them. I took on his challenge and reflected on a strong response I recently had to an image. The first example that came to mind was the ad for Gossip Girl, the CW TV show. The ads are usually dimly lit scenes of teen boys and girls in passionate embraces and accompanied by phrases from some newspapers denouncing the show (ex. “very bad for you” –San Francisco Chronicle). The ads are a perfect illustration of Joo Hyun Lee's point on mimesis. I dislike the images because they project an ideal teenage experience into the brains of adolescents throughout the country, one that I believe to be shallow, hollow, and idiotic. This response is not, in my opinion, a puritanical denunciation of the writers and their morals, but instead a disappointment with television and art which offer contrived dialogue and one-dimensional plot-lines, when there are such real, rich stories to be told about the world. Whatever justification I gave for my response, I quickly realized my language was charged with the animism and fetishism which Mitchell describes in his essay. I attributed many active verbs to the image itself (projects, offers, etc.), and endowed it with the power to attract viewers, or really, “idolaters”, by my own definition of them. Still I persisted in my opinion, reasoning that I was using the image as a stand-in for the creators of the image; these people were the real targets of my irritation. In the chapter Vital Signs: Cloning Terror, Mitchell also mentions that humans across time have a habit of identifying the “idolaters” in order to incorporate what is strange, uncertain, or troubling into our worldview (19). I formed an opinion of the creators of this image based on what I believe they believe. The irony, as Mitchell points out, is that I neither know the people who created the ad nor their motivations for creating it. It was the image, not “they” that desired my response, and my response, albeit negative, was a demonstration of the image’s “mastery over me” (36). I tried to go beyond these “overt signs of positive desire” (37) of the ad and find what the picture lacks. Ultimately I found that the picture’s “desire” to shock and awe and cause interest was overshadowed by its inability to show the teens entire bodies in the dimly lit blurry scene, their lack of independence, and their inability, as adolescents, to impact the world. This approach truly disarmed the image for me. Now I saw it as a distressing recognition that teens lack significance and value in our society. But perhaps this is not what everyone sees when they address what the image “lacks”. At the end of his essay Mitchell says this process is more of a discussion of images than a methodological approach (48), so it seems pretty subjective. Are there any other thoughts on what the Gossip Girl image might be “lacking”?
It seems to me that overall Mitchell is implying that it is not so much that pictures want something inherently (whether because their creator, human or otherwise, made them in the hopes that they would appear to demand something from the viewer or because we are, as he says, suspending our disbelief that inanimate images don't have desires or feelings), but that we want pictures to want something from us so that we have the power to give or deny whatever it is that the pictures are asking.
I think, as an offshoot of the "double consciousness" idea that we know pictures only have as much meaning as we give them and yet often act as if they are sentient, we pretend that they have power over us because we want them to. Why this is I am not sure; possibly because it removes some responsibility from people's actions in "real life" to pretend/believe that inanimate objects can make us do or think things, or maybe because we feel powerful when we feel like we are specifically not reacting in a way that we think an image or its creator "wants" us to - like when you look at an optical illusion and feel proud or sort of powerful that you can see the hidden picture rather than the one that is immediately visible.
Mitchell notes that perhaps "we as critics may want pictures to be stronger than they actually are in order to give ourselves a sense of power in opposing, exposing, or praising them" (p. 34) and I think this is an important point to consider overall regarding the question of "what pictures want" -- it is asking, at the same time, what do we wish that pictures wanted from us, or what do we want to convince ourselves that they want from us?
I don't believe that Mitchell makes a clear enough distinction between what the pictures want and what the artist wants. He makes it clear that we must not confuse the two, but does not fully explain how to avoid this. I think it is especially difficult to comprehend the distinction when he writes of what the Uncle Sam poster wants. He writes that the "motive is to move and mobilize the beholder, to send him on to the 'nearest recruiting station' and ultimately overseas to fight and possibly die for his country." It does not seem possible that this is the desire of the picture itself. This must be the desire of the artist who created the picture, unless it is the desire of both in which case the line becomes even more blurred. A large problem for me in understanding how the pictures could want something separate from the artists is the task of suspending my disbelief of the question. A picture can certainly signify a want or induce a want in the beholder, but animating the picture so it can want something itself seems convoluted. It seems as though the pictures are intrinsically linked with both the artist and the viewer.
On pg 29, Mitchell points out the similarity of the question "What do pictures want?" to asking "What does the black man want?" or What do women want?" While he points to this because he is worried some people might find the association tasteless, I was more disturbed at his bringing it up at all. He addresses the fact that the question was posed to classes of people who had been victimized by prejudice, but it seemed to me that he was further associating groups of people who had for so long been denied a voice, to an image which quite literally does not have a voice.
This point seemed to be further addressed when Mitchell discusses The Wife of Bath's answer to what women most desire (35). Women want what they lack, which is power. Earlier in the paragraph, Mitchell points to "creating spectatorship" around "not images of woman, but images as women." Mitchell claims that this makes the question of what pictures want inseparable from what women want. Is the an example of a fetish, to have the image as a stand in for a woman, even though one tends to assume a fetish is rarer than this particular example?
What struck me most within the reading was Mitchell's short discussion on our treatment of buildings as living things. Though I agree with Mitchell's idea of "double consciousness" I also think that often times, especially in the case of buildings, we are compelled to realize our anthropomorphizing. The easiest example of this is with smart homes. As of now there are homes that are built and programed to behave as another resident of the house. They can talk, listen, understand, track, deduce, and advise and often times come with a face and human voice. We unconsciously believe houses are alive and, thus, make it consciously so. In the end, it seems to simultaneously reinforce and make convoluted the idea of double consciousness.
I feel that the idea of 'double consciousness' merits some discussion. The author points out that 'double consciousness' is the thought that we know it's not alive, but we act as if it is. He uses the examples of a child playing with dolls, some famous artwork, or a student refusing to deface his mother's photograph. Are we to assume that these people act as if these objects are alive? I do not know whether it's this line of thought or the idea of ownership. To what extent do we act as if the object's alive? We may hold objects in high regard, to the point of obsession, but would we die for them? A child may die for his/her dolls, but one also needs to question psychological factors in those events. She/he may act like it's alive in play, but I doubt the child would put herself in harm's way for 'the idol'. People are self-sacrificing in regards to living beings, as evident in times of war or random violence. These artifacts are precious to us, yes, but religious wars or rebellions are not started over these mundane objects. They are started over the death of human life. If the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, but no one was killed, would we still have a war? The statement of 'double consciousness' should then add the statement of 'to a certain point' to it; either that, or the word 'alive' must be omitted from the second part of the phrase.
This excerpt leaves me quite frustrated, frustrated because I have no background in Art History or, more specifically, the critique of images of the non-moving sort (my background rests primarily in film), but also because Mitchell seems not to either (his writing lacks great evidence of media theory in general, though, granted, this is a fairly new field). That aside, what what I end up thinking is that pictures “want” exactly what we project onto them. On their own they are flat, and though they have a creator with agency and purpose, meaning truly lies within the viewer. Arguing that there is an undeniable visceral response to, say, cutting the eyes out of a photo of one’s mother hardly makes the point to me that they are some being on their own, some personified creature. This is a fetishistic approach, a singular side of the double consciousness of things we’ve already touched upon with the Ellen piece. I do agree with his point on destroying is as much a creative process as the making of the image is itself, though this is hardly radical and already touched upon with our reading of Ellen
While reading this piece, I at first found it difficult to understand how an image might want something different from what the artist wants, unless maybe it was an image that ended up being something entirely distinct from what the artist initially intended it to be when they began producing it. Mitchell does not go into much detail as to how the image and the artist might want different things or how to distinguish between the desires of the two. I realized, however, that the image may have different wants because it may be perceived or understood or strike a viewer completely differently than the artist intended it to. Just as it can be said that idols are given power because we want them to have it, different images may be given power or wants because we want them to have it. Therefore, what the image wants depends largely on the viewers desires rather than on the artist’s intended meaning. If we want the image to mean something, if we want the image to interact with us, to have some power or desire, then it does. This, of course, goes back to the issue of double consciousness, which Mitchell addresses, that we both believe images have power and wants and that, at the same time, we know they are just images.
However, if this is true, that images have wants only because we want them to, then couldn’t the same be said for words or religious practices etc – that they have meaning and power only because we want them to?
I thought I would be able to handle Mitchell's question of what do pictures want after taking a few art history classes in my day. I was following along nicely in the first chapter when he was dissecting the images of Dolly and the twin towers, how they had several different meanings. I became confused, however, as we moved into the second chapter. His first few examples of Uncle Sam and Uncle Osama seemed easy enough, the pictures clearly want something, but when he ended the chapter exclaiming that sometimes pictures want nothing at all, I was a bit dumbfounded. Does he mean that they may not have a clear message, that all they want is for us to look at them? How CAN an image exist as "autonomous, self-sufficient, perfect beyond desire"? I think I need a few more rounds with Mitchell to wrap my head around that statement, thinking of images beyond artistic intent.
I am really happy that this is one of the first pieces we are encountering this semester- Mitchell is taking an extremely multidisciplinary approach to a question that is highly relevant in nearly every avenue of a global, image infested world. Maybe infested isn't the right word, I wouldn't want to offend an image by making it sound like some sort of parasite... Mitchell has developed a project that asks us to cease to objectify the image- to treat it as something with subjectivity in dependent of our imposed interpretations, much like the project of any 'other,' whether it be a black man or a woman. At first, I was skeptical, as this seems to be what Mitchell is doing, interpreting the desires of the image. I now think that he is simply opening minds and ears to hear the 'voice' of the image. Instead of attributing power to the image, we are recognizing the power/lack of power that the image has. One question that was raised for me came from his discussion of the the Byzantine miniature of Christ (chapter 2, p39). The image had been kissed so many times that it started to fade. However, this "defacement of the image is not a desecration but a sign of devotion, a recirculation of the painted body of the beholder.' I am interested in the physicality of the image. What is the difference between a physical image that is embodied- that consumes its own space and matter and an image that is disposable- say a picture in a magazine? How does this affect the power of an image? How important are the 'one-of-a-kind' characteristics of art and religious icons to the power of the image? Or are perhaps the invasive duplicity and capacity to be xeroxed a sort of power? I guess the key word is embodied- what does it mean for an image to be embodied?
In the first chapter of "What Do Pictures Want?", Mitchell re-states the concept of Iconocash, so central in our research, and asserts, and here I quote,:"I believe that magical attitudes toward images are just as powerful in the modern world as they were in the so-called ages of faith". Basically he reminds us that we also are bearers of this double consciousness, where the others are the idolaters, and we are the "normal" ones. In modern world, terrorism can be the counterpart of nationalism and viceversa, as much as cloning has been seen as an act against God's rules, as much as the casting of the golden calf, the quintessence of the ancestral fear of the unknown or of the rules'breaking. Having established the concept of images as "alive", Mitchell, in the second chapter of his book, ask himself and his readers, an emphiric question, a not so logic one as he says, that is not 'what pictures do?', but 'what do pictures want?'. He reassures us that, and here I quote, that: "There is no difficulty in demonstrating that the idea of personhood of pictures is just alive in the modern world as it was in traditonal societies.", but than he continues: "The difficulty is in knowning what to say next". A first response to the question'what do pictures want' seems to be 'mastery over the beholder', but Mitchell quickly shifts to the concept of desire as a lack of something ('the expression of a want signifies lack rather than the power to command or make demands'). Accordingly to M. Fried, the arise of modern art represents the negation or renunciation of direct signs of desire, and again Wilhelm Worringer in his 'Abstraction and Empathy, mentions modern abstraction as the best example of the desire of pictures to neglect the presence of the viewer. The quest for an answer continues with the analysis of Barbara Kruger's photo collage "Your gaze Hits the Side of My Face", where we can't tell if the statue represented wants to be seen or doesn't want to be seen, or it's indifferent to being seen, but that it wants to be heard, an impossible task clearly. Finally Mitchell clarifies that, while trying to understand what do pictures want, we should not confuse this concept with what do the artist want to communicate us or with the beholder's reception of message/s from the picture or even with the message/s transmitted dy the subject/s of the picture. he concludes, at last, that pictures might want "nothing". I think that this concept to prove that the actual final desire of the images is presumebly the absence of any desire, is a final act of iconoclash where we struggle so much in giving images the power of life and, ultimately, neglect it.
The biggest problem that I face with Mitchell, like Leah's comment earlier, is the fact he claims "...it's clear that the 'default' position of integers is feminine, 'constructing spectatorship' in art historian Norman Bryson's words, 'around an opposition between woman as image and man as the bearer of looks.' Not images of women, but images as women (35). I am having a hard time comprehending why it is even necessary to assign a sex to images, let alone default that sex as female. Mitchell goes on to say that then the question of what pictures want is inseparable to the question of what women want. Defaulting means higher spectrum of images to having the female gender, specifically in regards to power, seems a little too all encompassing and close-minded on behalf of Mitchell. If the issue of why images are defaulted female is power, I would think that claim would be null since men as a sex are clearly just as power hungry as women. Humans in general crave power, regardless of sex. Again, like some people have been mentioning, I think that Mitchell, despite making numerous important claims about images, leaves out the intentions of the creator. Perhaps he means us as the readers to assume that he means the two to go hand in hand, but he demonstrates through countless examples the ways in which images change and evolve from the creators original intent. I think that by referring to images as their own entity, Mitchell allows readers to forget that images are created by people for people in giving them anthropomorphic qualities causes us to lose sight of their origins.
From the outset of Mitchell's first two chapters, symbolically pregnant words like "double consciousness" and "creative destruction" attract and intrigue the reader towards his unique and allegedly revolutionary theory on "personhood" we as idol manufacturers and worshippers alike readily attribute to the allusive image. But then, like all of the great philosophical theorists with Big Language as their weaponry, he hits us with obscure polar opposites. For example: the picture not wanting to be a picture--wanting not to desire, which in effect is a desire in itself (p. 41-42, 46)--and the birth of an image simultaneously realizing its deadness (p. 55). These two paradigms frustrated me the most due to their completely abstract and asinine qualities. Sounds like a paradoxical mind-freak if you ask me. Considering the juxtaposed “birth” and “death” within the newly created image is mentioned only briefly at the end of the second chapter, I’d rather use this space to respond to the first paradox.
Is this “want” a longing to abandon that which the sentient world has bestowed upon such extraordinary inanimate objects (those which make the “idol” cut)? If so, it appears a “consciousness” existed before the viewer (the sentient being) ever reacted to the image as if it were alive and also cognizant--a “consciousness” that can react and autonomously deny the animation of itself from some outside source. If this interpretation is at all close to the text, it would seem these potential “idols” have some sort of “spirit” in them that the animate world can never really touch (sounds a little like Ellen’s classification of the anthropological fetish). I felt like Mitchell inadequately deals with this piece of his theory (or at least, he has ignored it for the time being; I can’t predict what’s yet to come).
Beyond this notion of desire (and representation that takes on a whole life of its own; the “signifier” becoming that which it had previously “signified”), how much “personhood” do and can these images really possess? I’m hoping Mitchell touches upon this subject, along with an attempt to explain why “we respond so powerfully to the images and pictures we see in everyday life” (to the point of near-worship). I might be more forgiving if this is the case.
While reading Mitchell’s ideas on how to view images, I realized how much of his observations resonate with the way in which most people subconsciously view images. Mitchell says, “double consciousness about images is a deep and abiding feature of human responses to representation,” and there is little denying that people are unable to suspend their irrational belief in certain images no matter how grounded in realistic thought they try to remain. Since the meaning of an image is open to the interpretation of the viewer, images can have the power to spark world debates. What comes to mind are political cartoons throughout history. I had never before tried to verbally explain the connections both I and the people around me create with objects and images, but these collections are clearly strong and apparent in everyday life. People become attached to all sorts of images, and I see this everyday in the form of the many advertisements that saturate the city. Also, in the modern world, with our abilities to make multitudes of exact copies of images, the power of images as idols become magnified because the scope of an image’s influence is greatly widened as it is circulated via modern technology. I bring up the proliferation images and their copies because Mitchell talks about cloning and “the question of our own origins as creatures made ‘in the image’ of an invisible, inscrutable creative force.” People are fascinated by twins, as Mitchell points out with his example of the Twin Towers. Not only people, but also animals are fascinated with reflections of themselves, and there is something simultaneously wonderful and sinister about the reflected images seen on the surface of calm water, a glass window, or a mirror. Mitchell also calls images “living organisms” and he says that “living organisms are best described as things that have desires…drives…” However, at the end of chapter II Mitchell says “the desire to show desire is, as Lacan reminds us, still a form of desire. The whole anti-theatrical tradition reminds one again of the default feminization of the picture, which is treated as something that must awaken desire in the beholder while not disclosing any signs of desire or even awareness that it is being beheld, as if the beholder were a voyeur at a keyhole.” By the end of chapter II Mitchell seems to portray the need of something as a negative weakness in living organisms(and so images as well). But returning to his opening argument of “image-as-organism” there would be no art, civilization, or indeed living organisms if nature had not instilled in living things the need to desire the elements essential to life, and then this desire is naturally transferred to the need of other objects not as essential to life that eventually become close to essential because organisms are programmed to desire and then to create in order to fill their desires. Coming from this argument, then, images are ultimately a creation of nature, essential to fulfill the need of people to create objects to fill certain voids in their lives. The worship of idols seems inevitable, especially if we take Mitchell’s very broad definition of ‘idol’ as any image, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional. However, I think that the definition of an idol and of idol worship need to be further explored and defined. -Hannah Kligman
Some of Mitchell's ideas really remind me of the class Philosophy of Art. This class looked at the aim of the philosophical study of art was to figure out its truest "meaning" of self. Once this aim is reached some people may say that art will die then ; like a human being art is alive and well as it tries to figure itself out exploring new territory and grappling with past ideas of itself until it has no more "growing" to do and simply exists as memories or recreations of its former self. I find this idea to fall into Mitchell's as we bring the idea of images or icons beyond the normal works of art and religious idolatry. Looking at Dolly the sheep or the Twin Towers definitely puts a new spin on the idea of the living aspect or the "double consciousness." I get a slight feeling that Mitchell is trying too hard to pigeonhole the different voices speaking about the vitality of images at the same time as he acknowledges the regretful propensity towards doing this among all the different voices. For me however this "double consciousness" is an innate part of the idea of images, idols, and art. As all living things, the ideas surrounding the "double consciousness," are complex and some images may be more "alive" than others etc. The very fact that this is still an evolving discussion, growing new "arms" has certain lifelike aspects to it. The arms being images like those of Dolly and the two towers which challenge pre-existing "rational" ideas that see no possibility of life in an icon or image. Imagery is certainly so complex that for me it is part of its beauty; the fact that it is created by one person who was in essence created by many people ,interpreted by many and yet can still cause individual reactions in its viewers separate from all the other views.
It seems odd to read an attempt to understand the needs and desires of what society generally considers “inanimate” objects. I certainly understood Mitchell’s earlier arguments, concerning photography and the ideas on Iconoclasm. I even agreed with it. From his arguments, it seems that icons can never truly be eliminated. Destruction creates a new icon, but that icon’s power is still rooted in the former, untarnished version. In some cases, “destroying” an icon simply expands the power of the original icon. In the example of the attacks of September 11th, the destruction of the twin towers gave the towers new power and meaning. This sort of meaning partly comes from nostalgia, but the attacks themselves legitimated the power of the icon. Before the attacks, the towers were a tourist attraction and office space. People only thought of them with wonder or monotony. Now, the towers have taken on a greater scope of importance. Had the events of September 11th never occurred, no one would think twice about the twin towers. I think that this idea of willful remembering, and the clouding effects of nostalgia play a critical role in icons and iconoclasm. I wish that Mitchell had perhaps discussed these topics.
Mitchell also seems to blur the lines between icons, and their photographic or pictorial counterparts. He doesn’t distinguish between, for example, a picture of the towers just as they were attacked and ground zero. The two are extremely different. Also, his arguments on artwork confuse me, or maybe I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to follow. I don’t understand how a painting that is not a masterpiece can be of any consequence. He claims that masterpieces of art want and need nothing, and that is why they are masterpieces. However, these masterpieces elicit emotion and remembrance from humans. They are icons, and yet, he disregards what these particular pictures want.
First, let me comment that Mitchell has some of the most contemporary and pop-cultural anecdotes (Dolly, Chicago Tribune cartoons, “Uncle Osama”) in an article that I’ve seen. This makes his work a refreshing read, especially since I’ve been cramming nothing but fundamental anthro theory for a while.
One thing that really got me thinking in “Vital Signs | Cloning Terror” is Mitchell’s proposed question: If the phenomenon of the living image or animated icon is an anthropological universal… how does it change over time, and from one culture to another? And why does it impress itself so forcibly on our attention at this specific historical moment? If the living image has always been the subject of a double consciousness, of simultaneous belief and disavowal, what conditions are making the disavowal more difficult to maintain today? (11)
Those of you who have taken Posthumanism might see this: I feel that a thread connects icons’ rising visibility in modern times to rises in technology and the notion of what constitutes the “self”. It seems like new mediums are popping up everywhere and reworking what constitutes parts of “me” – say, for instance, a Facebook profile page; or an online blog. Being connected through the web has in many ways shifted the way that we generate relationships with others, and it definitely dissolves a lot of the cultural shifting problem which Mitchell discusses.
Mitchell makes certain that he emphasizes the role of "double consciousness" in iconoclash, and in experiencing images and idols altogether. His explanation of double consciousness is the best that I have ever seen. It helped me to really understand the issue: "We need, in other words, to grasp both sides of the paradox of an image: that is alive - but also dead; powerful - but also weak; meaningful - but also meaningless." I especially like that he challenged the modern view that we experience the image truthfully, but that some "Other" was responsible for conflating the image and the living.
Apparently my original comment didn't post. A quick summary of it before class:
I don't feel that Mitchell adequately addressed the subjectivity of images. I think "double-consciousness" hints at this, but there are a million motors running in our heads every time we look at an image, and our individual experience can radically change our perception of an image. Case in point: Mitchell, despite his knowledge of the history behind the Uncle Sam poster is clearly unable to "get" why the poster was an effective recruiting tool. To him, the image is an invitation to death, and nothing more. In a similar vein, I did not connect with Mitchell's description of the sailors from the Medusa. To me, the scene seemed too classically composed and smoothly painted to really convey a sense of struggle.
I also had issue with analysis based on what a picture "lacks". Isn't this just an invitation to project what we want on the picture? Mitchell addresses his examples as if they were definitive, but it strikes me that this way of analysis is supremely subjective. Isn't his real question therefore "What do we want in pictures?"
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The author concludes that pictures want nothing because they want to be seen as complex individuals occupying multiple subject positions and identities, so they don’t want to be interpreted, decoded, or worshipped. According to the author, Mitchell, not worshipped or demystified by their beholders represents picture’s inhuman or nonhuman characteristic.
However, Mitchell also mentions that pictures want to break naïve notions of ‘resemblance of mimesis’, and they want equal rights with language which is regarded more important than images in current society. Isn’t it paradoxical that pictures which have nonhuman characteristic want rights and to be seen as complex individuals?
If they really don’t want to be interpreted and become free of ‘gaze’, they have to be the ‘naïve resemblance of mimesis’ which is passé so can be ignored by beholders. On the contrary, they may become resemblance of mimesis to capture beholders in contemporary society. Today’s artworks are full of abstract images which is too popular. As ‘down-gear’ and reactionism are regarded as a trend nowadays, the desire of pictures to pretend not to be interested in beholders’ look but still want their attention may be obtained by going back to the past: mimesis.
It is stated that the “concept of image-as-organism is, of course, ‘only’ a metaphor, an analogy that must have some limits” (Mitchell 10). Thus, it is revealed especially early on in Mitchell’s work that naïve animism is quite pertinent to his discussion; however, his writing highlights his thoughts on imagery being “brought to life” more literally/the idea of naïve animism is taken a step further. In other words, Mitchell describes images moreso as a living organism with desires. What I found most interesting was the idea that in some respects, his image-as-a-living-organism idea is quite odd, yet in other respects, it seems reasonable. For instance, I believe that it is logical to say that an image that has been created by man as a result of painting, carving, or sculpture has hidden feelings and opinions. This is because the artist’s inner thoughts are expressed through their work, giving life to a project of theirs. In instances of images seen in nature (i.e. the sunset), it seems to me that it would be difficult for such images to really have desires. Then again, religious people may believe that such images are, in fact, created by another being- a supreme being such as a God (depending on the religion). I admit that Mitchell’s ideas sounded strange at first, but I cannot deny the fact that I had a hard time finding any image-natural or not- that could not be taken as life like from some perspective or another.
Mitchell's assertion that "terrorism is an invisible idol, a shape-shifting fantasy that may be instantiated in almost any form" (22) left me a little confused as to how he defines an idol, particularly considering his inclusion of paintings, buildings and even a sheep in the same category; it almost seems that he extends the definition of an idol to anything created by humans with intention, whether in a physical form or as an abstract concept. What is not an idol, then? Can't it be said that music and literature and dance all want something from us, because we have imposed our feelings on them so that they impose their desires on us in return?
I had a very hard time with the concept of the image as living organism at first. Mitchell begins the chapter “with the assumption that we are capable of suspending our disbelief,” a statement which both substantiates the concept of double-consciousness while at the same time contradicting it. If we are able to suspend our disbelief we create a situation in which we are in fact singly conscious analysts, absolute believers. If we have decided that human nature does not allow this simplicity, that “the subjectivized, animated object in some form or other is an incurable symptom” (Mitchel, 30), then I find it difficult to approach the question beyond the human interpretive realm of “what does the artist want,” “what does the viewer want.”
When Mitchell examines the question of want as an expression of lack rather than of desire, parallels to the living image become easier to me. In this sense what a picture wants is context. A painting, a photograph, a mental image, a physical object does not belong in a spatial or temporal sense in any one context, it depends on someone or something else to give it one. As Mitchel explains a frame can leave us with the sense that something is cut out of picture but any object is restricted by the frame of its environment. Objects want for a context in order to be understood just as do humans, but whereas humans desire to be viewed in a certain way and ask for it, objects by nature do not. They lack context but they do not demand or desire any specific one.
This makes a picture an easy idol. We tend to revere those people who achieve an independence from societal norms and from self-consciousness and in the same spirit we worship pictures for their lack of desire to fit in to any one context.
The question of ‘what is an idol?’ is certainly central to this class, and one that we have touched on briefly in the other thread and in class. I think, building off of Ellen, that the most important aspect of an idol is control. The idol controls people through its embodiment of some intangible power, yet at the same time the purpose of the idol is to manifest that power in a solid, tangible form so that it can be controlled by humans. Perhaps the most robust characteristic of an idol, though, which has been discussed in class as well as Ellen’s and Mitchell’s text, is that an idol belongs to someone else.
It seemed to me that Mitchell was not looking for an answer to the question ‘what do pictures want?’ but rather simply to ask the question in the first place. Based on the assumption that pictures want what they lack, perhaps what pictures really want is just to be asked what they want. Even if this is not the case – if pictures really do want something, or if they want nothing at all because they are, in fact, inanimate – the act of asking the question forces us to look at images in new ways. This allows us to understand our relationship with them in new ways, and ultimately to change our perception of an image. Today in Art Hum (sorry for bringing in the core, I know the vast majority of this class is not CC) I asked myself ‘what does the Parthenon want? I never answered this question, but by asking it I started looking at what the building lacks (and what it doesn’t lack), rather than the many things it possesses. By looking at the Parthenon in this way, it was easier for me to understand why it is put together the way it is, and why it has the effect on me that it does.
I admit that I also felt initially uncomfortable with the anthropomorphic and idolatrous implications of Mitchell’s question of images’ desire. However upon digesting the chapters I found that using this thinking as an analytical tool is quite thought provoking.
One part I still feel unsure of is his treatment of the second commandment when he interprets, “The second commandment, prohibiting the making of graven images, is not just a ban on idolatry but a ban on the making of images of any kind.” (16) The verse he is referring to is Ex 20:3-5: “You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…” I would argue that these three sentences are meant to be (and perhaps historically have been) read together as a prohibition against images created only specifically for idol worship. Mithcell’s interpretation might be based on a common misconception which uses this verse as argument that an early art did not exist for adherers to the biblical text due to a prohibition on all images. This is of course untrue (see Mettinger No Graven Image? or the corpus of early figurative Jewish art such as the wall paintings at Dura Europas). It seems to me that this verse was more likely included in the biblical cannon as a propagandistic tool used to promote monotheism than a statement about the power of the divine (i.e. that God has “exclusive rights to the production of images” (17)).
What is more clear to me is Mitchell’s idea that the structure of superstitions about images is “not simply some psychological phobia about images, nor is it reducible to straightforward religious doctrines, laws, and prohibitions that people might follow or violate. It is, rather, a social structure grounded in the experience of otherness and especially in the collective representation of others as idolaters.” (19)
A last point that particularly interests me is the “second law of iconoclasm” or the law of “secondary belief” in which one group of iconoclasts creates a caricature of another as a fully believing idolater. The practice of depicting the Other as an animal reminded me of Nazi propaganda which rendered Jews as mice. What’s interesting is that it seems to me that Jews in turn have become the iconoclasts as Nazi propaganda has become so popularly infamous and is extensively used as an agent to create fear of anti-semitism among contemporary Jewish communities (fear of the other is of course a way to keep a community together). In other words the images which were originally intended to control the minds of Germans in order to “disfigure and destroy” the image of the Jew have ironically been adopted by the very people they were meant to ridicule and used to create a new image of the anti-Semite.
I am finding that I both believe and don't believe in the “double consciousness,” and it seems like a similar response is reflected in other people's comments so far. I wonder how much the double consciousness about images differs from any other form of simultaneous belief and doubt that people experience—like in the potential for world peace, the existence of a deity, evolution, etc.
Reading Mitchell's book, I kept noticing how often the two elements of this consciousness are construed as behavior and thought, with speech and writing as especially common examples of the behavior part. Mitchell does set up this contrast early in the first chapter: he concedes that he doesn't believe [which I'm taking as thinking/reasoning] that images can want, but points to speech and behavior that implies otherwise as the second consciousness involved with images (p11). In class and in Mitchell's book (eg p13), many of the examples to support modern naïve animism involve figures of speech and literary devices.
If this divide does lie primarily in thought versus speech, it suggests that speech is to some degree spontaneous and reflects a consciousness somehow more “secret” than what is overtly reasoned. It seems like in many examples the behaviors and speech that reveal the naïve animism within Western/modern/non “primitive” societies come out in moments of heightened emotion, recalling the issue of power—when people feel themselves losing control, they admit the control/power they actually attribute on some level to objects (ie, the “damn computer” moment). As Mitchell says, we “make exceptions [to our non-animistic beliefs] for special cases” (p31)--is what makes these cases special their emotional resonance? Similarly, look to the example about a person's unwillingness to cut out the eyes of her mother in a photograph—here it is not a built up frustration, but a sudden call to an emotional connection that brings this form of idolatry to light.
While reading it was important for me to keep reminding myself that Mitchell challenges us to reflect on our modern attitude towards objects and pictures, not to change or improve them. I took on his challenge and reflected on a strong response I recently had to an image. The first example that came to mind was the ad for Gossip Girl, the CW TV show. The ads are usually dimly lit scenes of teen boys and girls in passionate embraces and accompanied by phrases from some newspapers denouncing the show (ex. “very bad for you” –San Francisco Chronicle). The ads are a perfect illustration of Joo Hyun Lee's point on mimesis.
I dislike the images because they project an ideal teenage experience into the brains of adolescents throughout the country, one that I believe to be shallow, hollow, and idiotic. This response is not, in my opinion, a puritanical denunciation of the writers and their morals, but instead a disappointment with television and art which offer contrived dialogue and one-dimensional plot-lines, when there are such real, rich stories to be told about the world.
Whatever justification I gave for my response, I quickly realized my language was charged with the animism and fetishism which Mitchell describes in his essay. I attributed many active verbs to the image itself (projects, offers, etc.), and endowed it with the power to attract viewers, or really, “idolaters”, by my own definition of them.
Still I persisted in my opinion, reasoning that I was using the image as a stand-in for the creators of the image; these people were the real targets of my irritation. In the chapter Vital Signs: Cloning Terror, Mitchell also mentions that humans across time have a habit of identifying the “idolaters” in order to incorporate what is strange, uncertain, or troubling into our worldview (19). I formed an opinion of the creators of this image based on what I believe they believe. The irony, as Mitchell points out, is that I neither know the people who created the ad nor their motivations for creating it. It was the image, not “they” that desired my response, and my response, albeit negative, was a demonstration of the image’s “mastery over me” (36).
I tried to go beyond these “overt signs of positive desire” (37) of the ad and find what the picture lacks. Ultimately I found that the picture’s “desire” to shock and awe and cause interest was overshadowed by its inability to show the teens entire bodies in the dimly lit blurry scene, their lack of independence, and their inability, as adolescents, to impact the world. This approach truly disarmed the image for me. Now I saw it as a distressing recognition that teens lack significance and value in our society. But perhaps this is not what everyone sees when they address what the image “lacks”. At the end of his essay Mitchell says this process is more of a discussion of images than a methodological approach (48), so it seems pretty subjective. Are there any other thoughts on what the Gossip Girl image might be “lacking”?
http://gawker.com/5026817/new-ad-campaign-flaunts-gossip-girls-bad-self
It seems to me that overall Mitchell is implying that it is not so much that pictures want something inherently (whether because their creator, human or otherwise, made them in the hopes that they would appear to demand something from the viewer or because we are, as he says, suspending our disbelief that inanimate images don't have desires or feelings), but that we want pictures to want something from us so that we have the power to give or deny whatever it is that the pictures are asking.
I think, as an offshoot of the "double consciousness" idea that we know pictures only have as much meaning as we give them and yet often act as if they are sentient, we pretend that they have power over us because we want them to. Why this is I am not sure; possibly because it removes some responsibility from people's actions in "real life" to pretend/believe that inanimate objects can make us do or think things, or maybe because we feel powerful when we feel like we are specifically not reacting in a way that we think an image or its creator "wants" us to - like when you look at an optical illusion and feel proud or sort of powerful that you can see the hidden picture rather than the one that is immediately visible.
Mitchell notes that perhaps "we as critics may want pictures to be stronger than they actually are in order to give ourselves a sense of power in opposing, exposing, or praising them" (p. 34) and I think this is an important point to consider overall regarding the question of "what pictures want" -- it is asking, at the same time, what do we wish that pictures wanted from us, or what do we want to convince ourselves that they want from us?
I don't believe that Mitchell makes a clear enough distinction between what the pictures want and what the artist wants. He makes it clear that we must not confuse the two, but does not fully explain how to avoid this. I think it is especially difficult to comprehend the distinction when he writes of what the Uncle Sam poster wants. He writes that the "motive is to move and mobilize the beholder, to send him on to the 'nearest recruiting station' and ultimately overseas to fight and possibly die for his country." It does not seem possible that this is the desire of the picture itself. This must be the desire of the artist who created the picture, unless it is the desire of both in which case the line becomes even more blurred.
A large problem for me in understanding how the pictures could want something separate from the artists is the task of suspending my disbelief of the question. A picture can certainly signify a want or induce a want in the beholder, but animating the picture so it can want something itself seems convoluted. It seems as though the pictures are intrinsically linked with both the artist and the viewer.
On pg 29, Mitchell points out the similarity of the question "What do pictures want?" to asking "What does the black man want?" or What do women want?" While he points to this because he is worried some people might find the association tasteless, I was more disturbed at his bringing it up at all. He addresses the fact that the question was posed to classes of people who had been victimized by prejudice, but it seemed to me that he was further associating groups of people who had for so long been denied a voice, to an image which quite literally does not have a voice.
This point seemed to be further addressed when Mitchell discusses The Wife of Bath's answer to what women most desire (35). Women want what they lack, which is power. Earlier in the paragraph, Mitchell points to "creating spectatorship" around "not images of woman, but images as women." Mitchell claims that this makes the question of what pictures want inseparable from what women want. Is the an example of a fetish, to have the image as a stand in for a woman, even though one tends to assume a fetish is rarer than this particular example?
What struck me most within the reading was Mitchell's short discussion on our treatment of buildings as living things. Though I agree with Mitchell's idea of "double consciousness" I also think that often times, especially in the case of buildings, we are compelled to realize our anthropomorphizing. The easiest example of this is with smart homes. As of now there are homes that are built and programed to behave as another resident of the house. They can talk, listen, understand, track, deduce, and advise and often times come with a face and human voice. We unconsciously believe houses are alive and, thus, make it consciously so. In the end, it seems to simultaneously reinforce and make convoluted the idea of double consciousness.
I feel that the idea of 'double consciousness' merits some discussion. The author points out that 'double consciousness' is the thought that we know it's not alive, but we act as if it is. He uses the examples of a child playing with dolls, some famous artwork, or a student refusing to deface his mother's photograph. Are we to assume that these people act as if these objects are alive? I do not know whether it's this line of thought or the idea of ownership. To what extent do we act as if the object's alive? We may hold objects in high regard, to the point of obsession, but would we die for them? A child may die for his/her dolls, but one also needs to question psychological factors in those events. She/he may act like it's alive in play, but I doubt the child would put herself in harm's way for 'the idol'. People are self-sacrificing in regards to living beings, as evident in times of war or random violence. These artifacts are precious to us, yes, but religious wars or rebellions are not started over these mundane objects. They are started over the death of human life. If the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, but no one was killed, would we still have a war? The statement of 'double consciousness' should then add the statement of 'to a certain point' to it; either that, or the word 'alive' must be omitted from the second part of the phrase.
This excerpt leaves me quite frustrated, frustrated because I have no background in Art History or, more specifically, the critique of images of the non-moving sort (my background rests primarily in film), but also because Mitchell seems not to either (his writing lacks great evidence of media theory in general, though, granted, this is a fairly new field). That aside, what what I end up thinking is that pictures “want” exactly what we project onto them. On their own they are flat, and though they have a creator with agency and purpose, meaning truly lies within the viewer. Arguing that there is an undeniable visceral response to, say, cutting the eyes out of a photo of one’s mother hardly makes the point to me that they are some being on their own, some personified creature. This is a fetishistic approach, a singular side of the double consciousness of things we’ve already touched upon with the Ellen piece.
I do agree with his point on destroying is as much a creative process as the making of the image is itself, though this is hardly radical and already touched upon with our reading of Ellen
While reading this piece, I at first found it difficult to understand how an image might want something different from what the artist wants, unless maybe it was an image that ended up being something entirely distinct from what the artist initially intended it to be when they began producing it. Mitchell does not go into much detail as to how the image and the artist might want different things or how to distinguish between the desires of the two. I realized, however, that the image may have different wants because it may be perceived or understood or strike a viewer completely differently than the artist intended it to. Just as it can be said that idols are given power because we want them to have it, different images may be given power or wants because we want them to have it. Therefore, what the image wants depends largely on the viewers desires rather than on the artist’s intended meaning. If we want the image to mean something, if we want the image to interact with us, to have some power or desire, then it does. This, of course, goes back to the issue of double consciousness, which Mitchell addresses, that we both believe images have power and wants and that, at the same time, we know they are just images.
However, if this is true, that images have wants only because we want them to, then couldn’t the same be said for words or religious practices etc – that they have meaning and power only because we want them to?
I thought I would be able to handle Mitchell's question of what do pictures want after
taking a few art history classes in my day. I was following along nicely in the first
chapter when he was dissecting the images of Dolly and the twin towers, how they had
several different meanings. I became confused, however, as we moved into the second
chapter. His first few examples of Uncle Sam and Uncle Osama seemed easy enough, the
pictures clearly want something, but when he ended the chapter exclaiming that sometimes
pictures want nothing at all, I was a bit dumbfounded. Does he mean that they may not
have a clear message, that all they want is for us to look at them? How CAN an image
exist as "autonomous, self-sufficient, perfect beyond desire"? I think I need a few more
rounds with Mitchell to wrap my head around that statement, thinking of images beyond
artistic intent.
I am really happy that this is one of the first pieces we are encountering this semester- Mitchell is taking an extremely multidisciplinary approach to a question that is highly relevant in nearly every avenue of a global, image infested world. Maybe infested isn't the right word, I wouldn't want to offend an image by making it sound like some sort of parasite...
Mitchell has developed a project that asks us to cease to objectify the image- to treat it as something with subjectivity in dependent of our imposed interpretations, much like the project of any 'other,' whether it be a black man or a woman. At first, I was skeptical, as this seems to be what Mitchell is doing, interpreting the desires of the image. I now think that he is simply opening minds and ears to hear the 'voice' of the image. Instead of attributing power to the image, we are recognizing the power/lack of power that the image has.
One question that was raised for me came from his discussion of the the Byzantine miniature of Christ (chapter 2, p39). The image had been kissed so many times that it started to fade. However, this "defacement of the image is not a desecration but a sign of devotion, a recirculation of the painted body of the beholder.' I am interested in the physicality of the image. What is the difference between a physical image that is embodied- that consumes its own space and matter and an image that is disposable- say a picture in a magazine? How does this affect the power of an image? How important are the 'one-of-a-kind' characteristics of art and religious icons to the power of the image? Or are perhaps the invasive duplicity and capacity to be xeroxed a sort of power? I guess the key word is embodied- what does it mean for an image to be embodied?
In the first chapter of "What Do Pictures Want?", Mitchell re-states the concept of Iconocash, so central in our research, and asserts, and here I quote,:"I believe that magical attitudes toward images are just as powerful in the modern world as they were in the so-called ages of faith". Basically he reminds us that we also are bearers of this double consciousness, where the others are the idolaters, and we are the "normal" ones. In modern world, terrorism can be the counterpart of nationalism and viceversa, as much as cloning has been seen as an act against God's rules, as much as the casting of the golden calf, the quintessence of the ancestral fear of the unknown or of the rules'breaking.
Having established the concept of images as "alive", Mitchell, in the second chapter of his book, ask himself and his readers, an emphiric question, a not so logic one as he says, that is not 'what pictures do?', but 'what do pictures want?'. He reassures us that, and here I quote, that: "There is no difficulty in demonstrating that the idea of personhood of pictures is just alive in the modern world as it was in traditonal societies.", but than he continues: "The difficulty is in knowning what to say next". A first response to the question'what do pictures want' seems to be 'mastery over the beholder', but Mitchell quickly shifts to the concept of desire as a lack of something ('the expression of a want signifies lack rather than the power to command or make demands'). Accordingly to M. Fried, the arise of modern art represents the negation or renunciation of direct signs of desire, and again Wilhelm Worringer in his 'Abstraction and Empathy, mentions modern abstraction as the best example of the desire of pictures to neglect the presence of the viewer. The quest for an answer continues with the analysis of Barbara Kruger's photo collage "Your gaze Hits the Side of My Face", where we can't tell if the statue represented wants to be seen or doesn't want to be seen, or it's indifferent to being seen, but that it wants to be heard, an impossible task clearly. Finally Mitchell clarifies that, while trying to understand what do pictures want, we should not confuse this concept with what do the artist want to communicate us or with the beholder's reception of message/s from the picture or even with the message/s transmitted dy the subject/s of the picture. he concludes, at last, that pictures might want "nothing". I think that this concept to prove that the actual final desire of the images is presumebly the absence of any desire, is a final act of iconoclash where we struggle so much in giving images the power of life and, ultimately, neglect it.
The biggest problem that I face with Mitchell, like Leah's comment earlier, is the fact he claims "...it's clear that the 'default' position of integers is feminine, 'constructing spectatorship' in art historian Norman Bryson's words, 'around an opposition between woman as image and man as the bearer of looks.' Not images of women, but images as women (35). I am having a hard time comprehending why it is even necessary to assign a sex to images, let alone default that sex as female. Mitchell goes on to say that then the question of what pictures want is inseparable to the question of what women want. Defaulting means higher spectrum of images to having the female gender, specifically in regards to power, seems a little too all encompassing and close-minded on behalf of Mitchell. If the issue of why images are defaulted female is power, I would think that claim would be null since men as a sex are clearly just as power hungry as women. Humans in general crave power, regardless of sex.
Again, like some people have been mentioning, I think that Mitchell, despite making numerous important claims about images, leaves out the intentions of the creator. Perhaps he means us as the readers to assume that he means the two to go hand in hand, but he demonstrates through countless examples the ways in which images change and evolve from the creators original intent. I think that by referring to images as their own entity, Mitchell allows readers to forget that images are created by people for people in giving them anthropomorphic qualities causes us to lose sight of their origins.
From the outset of Mitchell's first two chapters, symbolically pregnant words like "double consciousness" and "creative destruction" attract and intrigue the reader towards his unique and allegedly revolutionary theory on "personhood" we as idol manufacturers and worshippers alike readily attribute to the allusive image. But then, like all of the great philosophical theorists with Big Language as their weaponry, he hits us with obscure polar opposites. For example: the picture not wanting to be a picture--wanting not to desire, which in effect is a desire in itself (p. 41-42, 46)--and the birth of an image simultaneously realizing its deadness (p. 55). These two paradigms frustrated me the most due to their completely abstract and asinine qualities. Sounds like a paradoxical mind-freak if you ask me. Considering the juxtaposed “birth” and “death” within the newly created image is mentioned only briefly at the end of the second chapter, I’d rather use this space to respond to the first paradox.
Is this “want” a longing to abandon that which the sentient world has bestowed upon such extraordinary inanimate objects (those which make the “idol” cut)? If so, it appears a “consciousness” existed before the viewer (the sentient being) ever reacted to the image as if it were alive and also cognizant--a “consciousness” that can react and autonomously deny the animation of itself from some outside source. If this interpretation is at all close to the text, it would seem these potential “idols” have some sort of “spirit” in them that the animate world can never really touch (sounds a little like Ellen’s classification of the anthropological fetish). I felt like Mitchell inadequately deals with this piece of his theory (or at least, he has ignored it for the time being; I can’t predict what’s yet to come).
Beyond this notion of desire (and representation that takes on a whole life of its own; the “signifier” becoming that which it had previously “signified”), how much “personhood” do and can these images really possess? I’m hoping Mitchell touches upon this subject, along with an attempt to explain why “we respond so powerfully to the images and pictures we see in everyday life” (to the point of near-worship). I might be more forgiving if this is the case.
While reading Mitchell’s ideas on how to view images, I realized how much of his observations resonate with the way in which most people subconsciously view images. Mitchell says, “double consciousness about images is a deep and abiding feature of human responses to representation,” and there is little denying that people are unable to suspend their irrational belief in certain images no matter how grounded in realistic thought they try to remain. Since the meaning of an image is open to the interpretation of the viewer, images can have the power to spark world debates. What comes to mind are political cartoons throughout history. I had never before tried to verbally explain the connections both I and the people around me create with objects and images, but these collections are clearly strong and apparent in everyday life. People become attached to all sorts of images, and I see this everyday in the form of the many advertisements that saturate the city. Also, in the modern world, with our abilities to make multitudes of exact copies of images, the power of images as idols become magnified because the scope of an image’s influence is greatly widened as it is circulated via modern technology. I bring up the proliferation images and their copies because Mitchell talks about cloning and “the question of our own origins as creatures made ‘in the image’ of an invisible, inscrutable creative force.” People are fascinated by twins, as Mitchell points out with his example of the Twin Towers. Not only people, but also animals are fascinated with reflections of themselves, and there is something simultaneously wonderful and sinister about the reflected images seen on the surface of calm water, a glass window, or a mirror.
Mitchell also calls images “living organisms” and he says that “living organisms are best described as things that have desires…drives…” However, at the end of chapter II Mitchell says “the desire to show desire is, as Lacan reminds us, still a form of desire. The whole anti-theatrical tradition reminds one again of the default feminization of the picture, which is treated as something that must awaken desire in the beholder while not disclosing any signs of desire or even awareness that it is being beheld, as if the beholder were a voyeur at a keyhole.” By the end of chapter II Mitchell seems to portray the need of something as a negative weakness in living organisms(and so images as well). But returning to his opening argument of “image-as-organism” there would be no art, civilization, or indeed living organisms if nature had not instilled in living things the need to desire the elements essential to life, and then this desire is naturally transferred to the need of other objects not as essential to life that eventually become close to essential because organisms are programmed to desire and then to create in order to fill their desires. Coming from this argument, then, images are ultimately a creation of nature, essential to fulfill the need of people to create objects to fill certain voids in their lives. The worship of idols seems inevitable, especially if we take Mitchell’s very broad definition of ‘idol’ as any image, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional. However, I think that the definition of an idol and of idol worship need to be further explored and defined.
-Hannah Kligman
Some of Mitchell's ideas really remind me of the class Philosophy of Art. This class looked at the aim of the philosophical study of art was to figure out its truest "meaning" of self. Once this aim is reached some people may say that art will die then ; like a human being art is alive and well as it tries to figure itself out exploring new territory and grappling with past ideas of itself until it has no more "growing" to do and simply exists as memories or recreations of its former self. I find this idea to fall into Mitchell's as we bring the idea of images or icons beyond the normal works of art and religious idolatry. Looking at Dolly the sheep or the Twin Towers definitely puts a new spin on the idea of the living aspect or the "double consciousness." I get a slight feeling that Mitchell is trying too hard to pigeonhole the different voices speaking about the vitality of images at the same time as he acknowledges the regretful propensity towards doing this among all the different voices. For me however this "double consciousness" is an innate part of the idea of images, idols, and art. As all living things, the ideas surrounding the "double consciousness," are complex and some images may be more "alive" than others etc. The very fact that this is still an evolving discussion, growing new "arms" has certain lifelike aspects to it. The arms being images like those of Dolly and the two towers which challenge pre-existing "rational" ideas that see no possibility of life in an icon or image. Imagery is certainly so complex that for me it is part of its beauty; the fact that it is created by one person who was in essence created by many people ,interpreted by many and yet can still cause individual reactions in its viewers separate from all the other views.
It seems odd to read an attempt to understand the needs and desires of what society generally considers “inanimate” objects. I certainly understood Mitchell’s earlier arguments, concerning photography and the ideas on Iconoclasm. I even agreed with it. From his arguments, it seems that icons can never truly be eliminated. Destruction creates a new icon, but that icon’s power is still rooted in the former, untarnished version. In some cases, “destroying” an icon simply expands the power of the original icon. In the example of the attacks of September 11th, the destruction of the twin towers gave the towers new power and meaning. This sort of meaning partly comes from nostalgia, but the attacks themselves legitimated the power of the icon. Before the attacks, the towers were a tourist attraction and office space. People only thought of them with wonder or monotony. Now, the towers have taken on a greater scope of importance. Had the events of September 11th never occurred, no one would think twice about the twin towers. I think that this idea of willful remembering, and the clouding effects of nostalgia play a critical role in icons and iconoclasm. I wish that Mitchell had perhaps discussed these topics.
Mitchell also seems to blur the lines between icons, and their photographic or pictorial counterparts. He doesn’t distinguish between, for example, a picture of the towers just as they were attacked and ground zero. The two are extremely different. Also, his arguments on artwork confuse me, or maybe I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to follow. I don’t understand how a painting that is not a masterpiece can be of any consequence. He claims that masterpieces of art want and need nothing, and that is why they are masterpieces. However, these masterpieces elicit emotion and remembrance from humans. They are icons, and yet, he disregards what these particular pictures want.
agh, I'm so late.
First, let me comment that Mitchell has some of the most contemporary and pop-cultural anecdotes (Dolly, Chicago Tribune cartoons, “Uncle Osama”) in an article that I’ve seen. This makes his work a refreshing read, especially since I’ve been cramming nothing but fundamental anthro theory for a while.
One thing that really got me thinking in “Vital Signs | Cloning Terror” is Mitchell’s proposed question: If the phenomenon of the living image or animated icon is an anthropological universal… how does it change over time, and from one culture to another? And why does it impress itself so forcibly on our attention at this specific historical moment? If the living image has always been the subject of a double consciousness, of simultaneous belief and disavowal, what conditions are making the disavowal more difficult to maintain today? (11)
Those of you who have taken Posthumanism might see this: I feel that a thread connects icons’ rising visibility in modern times to rises in technology and the notion of what constitutes the “self”. It seems like new mediums are popping up everywhere and reworking what constitutes parts of “me” – say, for instance, a Facebook profile page; or an online blog. Being connected through the web has in many ways shifted the way that we generate relationships with others, and it definitely dissolves a lot of the cultural shifting problem which Mitchell discusses.
Mitchell makes certain that he emphasizes the role of "double consciousness" in iconoclash, and in experiencing images and idols altogether. His explanation of double consciousness is the best that I have ever seen. It helped me to really understand the issue: "We need, in other words, to grasp both sides of the paradox of an image: that is alive - but also dead; powerful - but also weak; meaningful - but also meaningless." I especially like that he challenged the modern view that we experience the image truthfully, but that some "Other" was responsible for conflating the image and the living.
Apparently my original comment didn't post. A quick summary of it before class:
I don't feel that Mitchell adequately addressed the subjectivity of images. I think "double-consciousness" hints at this, but there are a million motors running in our heads every time we look at an image, and our individual experience can radically change our perception of an image. Case in point: Mitchell, despite his knowledge of the history behind the Uncle Sam poster is clearly unable to "get" why the poster was an effective recruiting tool. To him, the image is an invitation to death, and nothing more. In a similar vein, I did not connect with Mitchell's description of the sailors from the Medusa. To me, the scene seemed too classically composed and smoothly painted to really convey a sense of struggle.
I also had issue with analysis based on what a picture "lacks". Isn't this just an invitation to project what we want on the picture? Mitchell addresses his examples as if they were definitive, but it strikes me that this way of analysis is supremely subjective. Isn't his real question therefore "What do we want in pictures?"
Todd
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