Lascaux caves, France.
Earliest know examples of vis com.
Philosopher thinks it's an attempt to communicate with the gods. Mystical images. Magic. Shaman Power.
Dots in caves are hallucinating, channelling the unconscious made physical. Pure expressive mark making.
Magiciens de la terre. Conceptual artist Richard long. Mud painted on wall. (Sun) ancient paintings on floor. Shows similarity between history of art and now. Cultural appropriation. The entirety of the worlds culture was developing towards western modern art.
Cult value of cave painting with the cultic experience of viewing art in a gallery. If you look at these paintings the experience is like falling into a void. (Like laying back and looking at the night sky) out of body mystical experience. Sit and stare and then start to cry out of being overwhelmed. The paintings are framed by the history of their settings an their description. False potency, false magic by the way they're presented & institutionalised. You feel the way you're told to feel. Cry because you're meant to cry.
Papal alter & frescoes, basilica of San francesco d'Assisi, Umbria, Italy.
Spiritual, dominant images. Express money and cultural power (Make you feel poorer, less spiritual).
Mona Lisa- no one knows why it's important. Why is it so popular? Has society made it important?
John Berger says what happens when people can reproduce these things themselves?
Mona Lisa becomes 'street chic, ironic' on a tshirt
'Kitsch' and garish in a plate.
Marcel Duchamp's painting of Mona l.h.o.o.q 'she's got a hot ass' in French. An attack on cultural authority made possible by technology.
Graffiti art is always about taking art outside of galleries (only visited by middle class white people) & putting it in the streets available for free. Taking it away from its elite setting. Challenges traditional art. Mona Lisa as mujahideen. Dig on the media which is almost as bad as art for imposing ideas on the world.
Banksy's art is re-appropriation. Death of graffiti. Pointless. Drilled off the walls to get put back in the galleries. Meaning becomes neutral.
Jackson pollock. Expressive art. Makes them seem more important and other worldly than they actually are.
Red painting. Pop art. Roy Lichtenstein. Bogus art made literally into a cartoon. Using pop culture to attack high culture and it's pretensions.
Andy Warhol weeing on paint. Attack on Jackson Pollock.
Following the revolution in Russia had the most developed visual communication. Banned avant guard culture in Russia. (Progressive, western decadence). Banned any such kind of art. Only thing that was allowed was old fashioned traditional realist posters. Cultural repression in communist practices. Opposite to free western mind.
Art in china is about creating icons, glorification of leader. Red flag because of the blood stained by martyred people.
Alberto Corda image of gorilla fighter Che Guevara. Image making. Immortalising people through art. Makes them more important.
Shepard fairy. 'Hope' street art. Barack Obama employed him to design the poster for his image campaign. False promise. He re-contextualised it by turning the face into the 'guy Fawkes' mask from the film V for Vendetta to represent the occupy movement (protesting against social and economic inequality around the world)
Steve bell: David Cameron poster.
Responsibility that comes with image making. Gives you power to manipulate.
Guerrilla girls. Billboard. History of art is dominated by men and the west (white race) power of vis com as a revolutionary weapon to change course of history.
Nick Ut famous photograph catalysed the downfall of the Vietnam wall. Draws on human emotion.
'The haywain' iconic English painting: depiction of England. Green and pleasant land. Fiction. Not the truth. Idyllic. Workers and peasants were rioting in the street at this time. (1821) visual lie has become the truth of 'Englishness'.
Gainsborough 'mr and mrs Andrews' commissioned to show wealth. Paintings are about power. Paintings are bought to show power and wealth. Displaying the power of the owner.
Advertising displays perfect life. Promises that you should have that perfect life. We are incomplete and insufficient without it. Dolce and Gabana 'family life'.
Dolce and Gabana ad. Trying to exploit a misogynist personality to sell things. Causing controversy and drawing attention to the campaign.
'united colours of Benetton' (clothing company) Controversial adverts. Bosnian Sniper in civil war blood stained clothes. 'Humanist message' we're all the same colour on the inside. Transcends the laws of advertising. Push visual communication beyond it's established limits, not 'evil corporate advertisers'. Really cynical exploitation of human death for own personal gain OR immortalising the tragedy of human death? Frailty of human existence. An image can last far longer than we are around.
Post morton photography. Cheated death through image making. They are always alive.
Opposing argument: Photography is always about death. You take something that is dynamic and you freeze it in time.
Photo of My lai massacre. Americans slaughtered loads of innocent people. Robert Haeberle. Recording this moment before they were shot. can be relayed forever as his form of activism. Sad but more powerful. Transcends time.
Relates back to the cave paintings standing the test of time.
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