Critical approaches to the arts II - Module II (Art and politics)

RECAP:

The Quran does not offer a straight forward indication about whether and how images should be made and used. The arts appear to be a topic initially of secondary importance, this might be explained with reference to early Islamic traditions.

Archaeological evidence from early Islam (Umayyad) make limited use of figurative images and representations of living beings. However, they do occasionally appear, though subservient to what the Christian tradition identifies as "decorative" patterns (Great Mosque in Damascus).

Hadith do explicitly oppose to images, but they are composed slightly later (8th-9th century). There is no clear cut solution to the problem of images offered by the Quran, but Islamic art as it takes shape in the 9th century, appears to make very limited usage of figurative imagery, privileging instead decorative elements or vegetable, animal, and rarely human figures.

The real ending point here is the history of image making and attitudes towards the

Image in Islam is as rich and complex as that takes place within Christian society. So there isn't a single answer to the problem of the image in Islam, each dynasty, culture and politics that developed within Islam had slightly different attitudes towards image making and made different uses of images, in the same way that it would be extremely simplistic to speak about a general attitude of Christianity towards the image that doesn't take into account the history of Christianity as a whole, or distinctions between orthodoxy and Latin Christianity from the Byzantine iconoclasm.

When you talk about the Islamic iconoclast attitude you have to really think critically about the complexity of Islamic culture and its layered stratified history, which is one of self-definition as well as of interactions with other religious, ethnic and cultural communities across the Mediterranean.

CONCLUSIONS: What acts of image destructions inevitably do, and image preservation by the same token, is they

Tell us that we attribute images power. Whether we decide to destroy or to publicly exhibit an image, what we're saying is we testify we bear witness to the fact that the image holds power over its public. At that level image love and images fear are not too opposite entities, but they are the opposite sides of the same metal, so the fact that we attribute images power, and in order to explain where that power comes from, we have to go back to the origins of iconoclasm and iconophilia, which begin with, theological and philosophical problems. So episodes of iconoclasm and iconoclash and image contestation, they illustrate the very deep and profound interconnections between the cultural and the political and the ability of images and artefacts to act and interrogate the political sphere, not just at the surface, but at the very roots of the fabric, of the communities that reform.

LESSON 3: REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS

Our seminar today focuses on a question, that on the surface might seem

removed from the political arena, the relationship of images and suffering, and more specifically, images of war. The depiction of pain and suffering is as old as art itself and it is also one of its most common subjects. The question that we're going to deal with today is: what does it mean precisely to depict suffering? And from the perspective of a viewer, what does it mean to look on the depiction of suffering? Let's start with a very sort of fundamental statement: the depiction of pain is inevitably the depiction of someone else's pain. The pain of the figure that is depicted, sculpted, taped, videoed, photographed, and this is true even when the subject of the pain that is depicted is ourselves. So even as we take photographs of ourselves in suffering, the moment that that becomes an image, that suffering has undergone a process of othering, we're witnessing it from outside, and so is everyone else. So one of the key problems that we're going to deal with is this very

The fundamental problem in depicting suffering is that it deals with something other than ourselves. When we witness an image of suffering, we are not experiencing it in that moment. The figure in the artwork, therefore, becomes a double, another entity in relation to the viewer. This remains true even when the subject depicted is the viewer themselves.

However, if we consider suffering from a different perspective, we realize that it is an experience known to all human beings to some extent. While we may not be familiar with the specific kind of suffering being represented, there is still a level of empathy that allows us to understand what pain is like, albeit in a different form. The ability to depict pain relies on this level of sympathy between the artist, the viewer, and the subject of the artwork.

Both the artist who creates the artwork and the viewer who observes it bring their own experiences to the interpretation of suffering.

image relies on our capacity to bond to sympathise, to feel to an extent, but the pain of others isn't our own, but can be our own.

This last statement they made is a slightly dangerous thing to say, because it runs the danger of immediately slipping into a form of patronising, when we look at anything to somebody suffering and our response is "Oh poor them" that sort of generic blanket, cover it all sympathy that we feel for those less fortunate. The problem is that that attitude fails to rise to the challenge of engaging with any depictions of suffering, because no matter how idealised any depiction of suffering might be, suffering is always specific. It is always unique, it is always unrepeatable.

"There aren't millions of deaths everyday, it just happens everyday, but death happens a million of times." This encapsulates the problem, we tend or one defensive response might be to look on images of suffering as generic. That sort of attitude by which we

Protect ourselves by refusing or by downplaying the fact that every time we are presented with an image of someone suffering, that pain is unique, just as unique are the subjects that experience it themselves.

How does the image represent suffering? How is our response to this image? What do you think causes that emotional or intellectual response in the visual image?

This photo is particularly eloquent of some of the problems that we will deal with today. This photograph was taken during the war in Syria a few years ago (around 2016) and it was published on the BBC website, on a mass media platform.

The idea about this image being simultaneously a very contemporary image but at the same time, it is an image that visually conjures a whole tradition of representations of suffering. I'm not saying that the photographer necessarily took this shot with those images in mind, or that he staged the image. What I'm saying is that inevitably, in this image, there's a visual palimpsest that lives on.

and that acts.Just to give you a sense andcompare, on the left there isa 15th century terracottaimage of one of theattendants to Christdeposition that is nowBologna and the image onthe right is Pietà diMichelangelo. There is adistinct similarity betweenthe image of the limp bodyof the girl in the photograph who is senseless and unable to moveand the body of Christ on the right in the Pietà. The photographof the screaming man is not dissimilar from the representation ofsuffering and pain of the attendant in the terracotta Compianto.I am not arguing that these images were necessarily crafted to be in a conversation with each other, soI'm not saying the photograph was taken with those specific images in mind to make a point, what I amsaying is that there is a visual conversation, so representing pain is an exit and and representingsuffering, both the suffering of the subject and of the witness to someone else's pain, it has a longtradition, which also invites us

To think about the non-neutral and non-transparent nature of photographs or videos. So one of the crucial issues that we're going to think about and unpack today is how are we supposed to respond to snapshots of someone suffering? Because the immediate instinct that we have is to take photographs or videos at face value, and sometimes the less proficient they are, the more documentary value attached to them. We live in a situation where if someone walks onto the scene of a crime and takes a snapshot with a mobile phone, we think that is reality as it happened. Actually, it never is, it never is for a number of reasons, the most important of which is an image is always manufactured, every time you represent you literally re-present and re-stage. Whenever a photograph is taken, no matter how documentary the purpose might be, there is a specific point of view from which that image is taken. That photograph has a frame that is delimited. So whatever shot we see and whatever snapshot we access,

is inevitably made and it inevitably therefore has a point of view. I'm not saying that it is necessarily manipulated in intention, I'm speaking about the inevitable nature of photographs made objects. This is deceptive, because in common parlance we normally see that a painting or sculpture is made, but a photograph is taken, and this terminological distinction lies a very important assumption, which is that a painting or a sculpture is made by the artist, and so the level of manufacturing and crafting and staging is infinitely higher than that in the photograph, which is nearly taken with the means of mechanical reproduction and their faithful, that is unfortunately not true, they are made in different ways but they're both man made, having a point of view and a specific standpoint. This is crucial to understanding how photography or what role photography has played in the depiction of suffering in general, but also in the depiction more specifically.

Silence or sound: we are