Representation

Why do we represent things?

(Lascaux cave murals)

Altamira

Why do we represent things/others?

• To gain power over them (cave paintings)

• For fun (enjoying the perfection or artistry of representation)

• We represent what is invisible (thoughts, feelings)

• We represent what is absent: the past, the dead

E. Daege:

The origin of painting

(The Girl from Corinth)

Dibutades

Three senses of representation:

(1) to re-present, to portray (photograph) ~ icon

(2) to speak on behalf of (parliament) ~ index

(3) to stand for (flag – country) ~ symbol

Three ‘laws’ of representation

• (1) representation is never the thing itself

• (2) representations construct their object

• (3) representations construct their subject

Factors of representation

Factors of representations

Object – Maker – representation – receiver/audience

Mediation: mediatedness of the world

media (language, image)technologies institutional frameworksconventions (e.g. genres) circumstances and interests

1. a representation is never the thing itself“In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained

such Perfection that the map of a single province covered the space of an entire City, and the map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these extensive maps were found wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. … In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar” (Jorge Luis Borges)

2. representations are always constructed

• Chinese encyclopaedia of animals: “In its remote pages it is written that animals are divided into a, belonging to the emperor b, embalmed c, trained d, sucking pigs e, sirens f, fabulous g, unleashed dogs h, included in this classification i, which jump about like lunatics j, innumerable k, drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l, etcetera m, which have just broken the pitcher n, which look from a distance like flies.” (J. L. Borges)

Representation as construction

• Commercials: construct the product

• History

• TV news

• ‘reality shows’

editing; framing, selection, ordering

Visual representation

• Aristotle: ‘we can only think in terms of images’

• „Man can understand nothing without images” (St. Thomas Aquinas)

IDOLATRY - ICONOCLASM

“Thou shalt not make any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth” (Deuteronomy 5.8)

• Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon of Muhammad

What is wrong with images?

(1) philosophical argument - Plato: images are copies of copies

(Ideas or Forms)(2) theological argument: worshipping

objects instead of the real thing Christianity: started out as iconoclasticChanged strategy in C7Protestantism: new turn (the host and the

wine)

“Images are dangerous. Images, no matter how discreetly chosen, come loaded with conscious and unconscious memories; no matter how limited their proposed use, they burn lasting outlines into the mind. Often images overwhelm the idea they are supposed to be carrying.” (Thomas Mathews)

Emotional charge of concrete images – language requires abstraction

(anti-smoking campaign)

Different representations of death

• philosophical • religious • artistic

• scientific (biological, medical) • anatomia = ‘cutting up’ (paradox: looking for the secret of life by

cutting up dead bodies)

• Vesalius: Fabrica

(1543)

Rembrandt: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr.Tulp (1631)

Tulp’s Anatomy (detail)

Tulp’s Anatomy (detail)

Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson

• Celebration of modern science

• Ritual punishment of the thief

• ‘the two bodies’:

• Anatomical atlas: mechanistic view of the body (whose body?)

• The body as a feeling, suffering, lived body (the wrong hand)

Medium and technology

• Photography and painting

• „take” a photo vs „make” a painting

• forged painting vs. forged photograph

• painting: follows artistic, generic conventions

• photograph: ‘this really was there’

• art vs reality

Leonardo da Vinci’s guidelines for war paintings:

• “The conquered and the defeated must be pale, wearing a frown, their foreheads wrinkled with pain, their mouths open, like people who are wailing … The dead must be fully or partly covered in dust; the blood trickling from the corpse into the dust must be marked by its colour. Others, in their agony, are snarling their teeth, their eyes rolling, their clenched hands close to their bodies, their legs all distorted.”

US

Civil

War

photo

Robert Capa: Death of a Militiaman (1936)

National

Geographic

February 1982

Verbal and visual representation

• ‘Ut pictura poesis’ (?)

• Laocoon and his sons

• Priest in Troy

• Punished by Pallas Athene

Laocoon

group

(2nd

cent.

B.C)

dug up in 1506

Laocoon

• The serpents / Went straight for Laocoön. First, each snake knotted itselfRound the body of one of Laocoön’s small sons, hugging him tightIn its coils, and cropped the piteous flesh with its fangs. Next thing, / They fastened upon Laocoön, as he hurried, weapon in hand,To help the boys, and lashed him up in their giant whorls.With a double grip round his waist and his neck, the scaly creatures Embrace him, their heads and throats powerfully poised above him.All the while his hands are struggling to break their knots, / His priestly headband is spattered with blood and pitchy venom;All the while, his appalling cries go up to heaven -A bellowing, such as you hear when a wounded bull escapes fromThe altar, after it’s shrugged off an ill-aimed blow at its neck. (Virgil: Aeneid)

“Eközben a hüllők Láokoónra, azaz két kicsi gyerekére vetődnek,

Nyílegyenest, és átfonván testük gyűrűikkel,Szánandó, csöpp tagjaikat tépdesve lemarják; Majd az atyát, ki rohan fegyverrel védeni őketFojtják rémséges hurkokba: a pikkelyes izmok Törzse körül kétszer, kétszer tekerednek a tarkón,Ámde nyakuk s a fejük fent még így is kimagaslik. Gennytől és mocskos méregtől szennyes a papnak Szentelt szallaga, marka pedig tépné a csomókat,Ám rémült ordítással csak bőg az egekre:Mint sebesült bika bőg, mely rosszul kapta a taglót S oltárától elszabadulva kirázza nyakából”

Visual – verbal representation

Different genres, conventions• A single moment ----- movement Composition• Triangular structure ----- narrativeDifferent rules of representation • Nakedness ----- clothes • Face: spirit ----- scream of pain • Only beauty ----- ugliness is ok

Third rule of representation

• Representations construct their viewers/readers

Diego

Velázquez

Las

meninas

(1656)

Las meninas (detail)

Las meninas – the mirror

Las Meninas

• The spectator as the focus of attention

(the model: the king/queen of the country)

The spectator ‘derealised’ by the painting

(ghosted)