Lecture: The History Of The Image (OUAN401)

Boy, this is a difficult lecture to summarise. Firstly, it was really fascinating to learn about everything from the world's first documented images on the walls of the Lascaux caves in France twenty thousand years ago to the mystical paintings by the aboriginal artists of Australia to political Obama posters by Shepard Fairey and about a billion things in between.

What interested me most was probably the way that, despite tens of thousands of years passing, mankind still worships the image today the way they did back in aboriginal times. It was mentioned in the lecture that visual communication is like a religion. We all flock to see films and exhibitions and analyse them and argue about them and tell stories about them in the same way that protohumans did in the days of old. 

The Altamira caves in Spain, the first cave art ever discovered.

Old dead people watching Casablanca or something. The guy at the front is a bloody poor sport.

The way that we revere the stories that images tell hasn't changed a bit, because telling stories is one of the main things that humans can do better than any other species. We can't run faster than a puma or grow back limbs like a lizard. We tell dozens of stories every day, though, so visual communication as a means of doing that unites us better than anything else.

I really like the thought that every image tells a story, either by itself or in the historical context in which it was produced.


Another interesting thing that came up in the lecture was the question "what is art?". There's that age old debate about whether some modern art is really "art" or just pretentious. Does art require a certain degree of technical ability or can anybody do it? etc. Also, is something good art because it's universally accepted as being good art or is it genuinely good art from a technical perspective? The best example of this is the Mona Lisa.

A few years ago, it was very contrarian of people to dislike the Mona Lisa

But now everyone says it's overrated. It's only a cool opinion until other people start having it is what I think. I enjoy the Mona Lisa, but when people start liking the Mona Lisa again I'll go back to saying it's overrated garbage. The key to staying cool is to always say the opposite to what the majority of people are saying.

But my defence of modern art is that we, the public, are paying not for the technical skill of the work, but the thought behind it and the story it tells. In a sense, a piece of art like that is MORE of a true artwork than a technically nice looking piece of, say, war propaganda.

This is exaggerated propaganda. The story it tells has been tweaked to emphasise the positive aspects of Britain. Low art? (It still tells a story though, when looked at in its historical context)

While this Tracy Emin piece may look like anyone could have made it, it tells a true, intimate and personal story. High art?

The lecture made me think that the merit of a piece of visual communication can be judged on the story it tells, which is relevant in anything that has ever been drawn or filmed or painted.