Reflections on Chapter 2

Six weeks on from receiving Feedback from Assignment 1, I have just completed Assignment 2. I had a break for a week or so when walking and completing blog thereafter, but last 3-4 weeks have been intensive. The course manual sets aside just 5 hours for Chapter 2; I spent around 20 hours on the assignment alone. What you forget is how much time is required to research and read articles that don't add anything to the subject in hand and are never included in the Learning log or Reading. Referencing too is very time-consuming to do properly.

I knew a little about Berger and Benjamin, but the rest of the reading was all new. The assignment was challenging as had never heard of appropriation art, and only two of the artists that wrote about. But feel reasonably confident that beginning to understand (if not always agree with) what UVC is about and how it enriches my learning and understanding as relevant to photography in particular.

Two themes have started to become apparent to me while working through this chapter. Some points are relevant specifically to this chapter, others are more fundamental and will be revisited as progress through course.

1) Contemporary relevance

Some of what I have read in this Chapter was relevant when the articles were written but I would argue that they have lost much of their relevance now. Debord for example was a leader of the Marxist and anti establishment Situationist International movement. That period has had its day. Much the same applies to Hebdige's article. It is difficult not to be moved by his raw intervention on behalf of the academic black and white periodical Ten-8 as opposed to The Face, perceived by Hebdige as an icon of paganism and postmodernism. But Hebdige too was a creature of his period: a Marxist writing at the peak of Thatcherism, not long after she had inflicted a heavy defeat on Michael Foot, one of the last Messiahs of strongly left leaning politics, in the 1983 election. I read his article and thought at the end that he lacks empathy with the young, with the aspirational, with frivolity, with fun. Like Debord, Hebdige lives in a serious world, where people think a lot about their relationships with one another and with the wider world, where they worry about inequality and social injustice. Those who do not are being manipulated in subtle and iniquitous ways by the media powerhouses around them, the contemporary proxies for the capitalist landlords and industrialists of earlier times.

I simplify and exaggerate, but, I guess, it is slightly up to those who believe that these writers and their theories have relevance today to make the case and, so far, I have not seen much of that. They have more relevance as academic discourse than as insight into the way we view our world today. To be brutally frank, the writings simply achieved nothing tangibly long lasting.

But there is another way of looking at this: that actually the authors had a point, indeed their arguments were so persuasive that their conclusions are just accepted as a given nowadays. Take the idea that visual media manipulates the viewer as set out and analysed by Berger in respect of what may be termed high art, and many others in respect of advertising and related media. Extend this to include Bourdieu and his openly class based 'social definition of photography', a pursuit he observes is essentially for the working classes and is therefore classed only as 'legitimizable', a second class citizen in his hierarchy of cultural legitimacy.

It seems a very natural response to say: " Well, of course the way we view a painting is affected by whether we view it as an image in a contemporary living room on a screen or whether we see it in a gallery alongside similar works of art"; and it is a given that photography is a pursuit of the masses. We all do it and many of us do it in the hope of being published, of having our work viewed and purchased on stock libraries (the largest has 30,000 images submitted every day, of which 50% are accepted. That is equivalent to nearly 5.5m image additions every year for just one relatively 'serious' photographic site, a tiny fraction, one guesses, of the total added on social media).

In a sense, then, events have shown that Berger and Bourdieu had it right. Whether this means they have relevance or were pointing out what is now accepted as uncontroversial truth is a moot point.

2) Isolationism

These articles and arguments are set out in isolation of one another. Debord's 'spectacles', Bourdieu's 'spheres' etc., set our arguments about the way we see things, and/or the ways we are manipulated by the visual media, but they all have their own terminology, their own isolationist arguments, and there is little space set aside within their cases to see how their views link and overlap with those of others. One can argue that it is the role of those who review, comment on, and synthesize afterwards, to do that; these writers are the original thinkers, and the rest of us read, digest, analyze and classify the original works. Moreover, none of these works claims to be a cosmologist style 'entire theory of visual culture', they theorize about what they see, how they perceive the visual world and our place in it.

They are writing at a point in time and surely therefore we should expect them to offer views of the visual world that are relevant to the world in which they live. Papers are not written with the deliberate aim of being relevant in 10, 20, 100, 1000 years time. Their authors observe and theorize about the world as it is not as it might be in the future. The logical consequence of this is that the theories and observations can be relevant only insofar as the world is now as it was when they were writing.

Some of the writing in this section (Berger, for example) and some of the artwork (Fischli and Weiss, Brown, Lucas, and perhaps Sturtevant, for example) is directly or indirectly anti high culture, sometimes subtle, sometimes confrontational. This is in tune with much of social science Zeitgeist in the period: a need to break free of perceived reactionary constraints, a need to empathise with the wider world that manifests itself almost in a guilt complex that the ordinary man or woman cannot engage in arts because the institutional norms of high culture raise barriers to engagement. But perhaps the world has moved on. There is a realisation that a) most people actually don't care that they cannot indulge in high culture, and b) if they do, it is actually a lot more accessible than it used to be by virtue of modern media - the aura has been removed (note 1).

I shall return to these during this course. Some of the arguments are not properly or fully enunciated and I am aware that I have not read widely or deeply - there is a risk of drawing conclusions too readily; a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. What is most important is to revisit and refine the arguments in the light of further reading and research and to retain an open mind.

Have looked ahead to Chapter 3 and very enthusiastic about what is to come. Have read fair bit on Barthes already and think his ideas remain very relevant, particularly to advertising. Have a good idea of advert for Assignment 3 already.

Note 1: The riposte to this is that I am simply accepting the fate of the repressed - falling into Marx’s trap of false consciousness, becoming habitualised. Or perhaps Barthes would say I am perpetuating a myth. But one could counter that by saying that merely accepting these writings without criticism is itself 'false consciousness' . This is too big a debate to take on now, will return in due course.

Bottom Line on Planet One by Dick Hebdige

This project is to read The Bottom Line on Planet One, an essay written in 1985 by Dick Hebdidge, make notes and answer several questions that arise from the essay.

My usual policy is to make notes as read through an article, or to skim first to get the gist and then make more detailed notes. Within a few paragraphs, I sensed this was not appropriate for this article: it had to be read and understood more holisitically because, above all, it is an essay from the heart; the project invites us to analyze certain attributes and arguments and I shall come to that, but first and foremost one senses a degree of emotion in Hebdidge's thesis stemming from the contrast he perceives between Ten-8, a serious and penetrating journal on independent photography and The Face, a magazine originally founded by Nick Logan. 

Logan earned his journalistic spurs on NME, one of the two pre eminent contemporary music papers of 70s; understandably therefore The Face was originally based on popular music but later widened its reach to include fashion and culture. Here are a couple of covers:

The magazine ceased production in 2004 but an internet search reveals many entries; copies of the magazine can be bought for around £5 on ebay. It has been added to the the permanent collection of the Design Museum (Wikipedia).

Ten-8 by contrast was a more highbrow publication.  It has no Wiki page, an internet search for "ten-8" provides us with ten fire equipment, a family of convertor modules (whatever they are) and a software solutions company. Narrowing the field slightly gets us to a blog by Alicia Melanie (Melanie, 2013) who is enchanted to find some copies of the magazine in a library. The black and white layout and somewhat less than dynamic cover suggests it was not intended to be a widely circulated journal:

Melanie continues:

Perhaps the appeal derives from the fact that I’m quite an old soul or my attraction to photography, or maybe both.

No more needs to be said than that Ten-8 ceased production in 1992. 

I spend some time introducing the journals as I believe it is critical to understanding Hebdidge's essay . He seems genuinely puzzled why in 1985 his students, when asked, said they preferred The Face to Ten-8. Hebdidge admits they are not alone: the then circulation of Ten-8 was 1,500-2,000, that of The Face 52,000 - 90,000 (p100). He asks why this is rhetorically, and concludes there is no simple answer:

"The chasm that divides them remains as absolute and inaccessible to concise description as the gulf that separates one element from another."

This is a curious metaphor as most elements are much more closely related to some elements within the periodic table than to others, but we get the gist. He turns the dialectic between the two literally into a War of the Worlds. In the First World, written and spoken language have precedence over the 'mere imagery' of the second in which the hierarchical ranking between the two has been abolished. Interpretation of an image by professionals is not required in the Second World, inhabited as it is by a 'motley gang'  of bricoleurs et al. He continues the dialectic with zeal, referring also to a 'round' world and a 'flat one', synonymous with First World vs. Second World. Bizarrely the flat world inhabited by The Face and the like arises because the 'vertical axis has collapsed' so perhaps the metaphor might more accurately read one dimensional as opposed to two.  

He launches into vitriol against The Face, concluding:

"To stare into flat Face is to look into a world where your actual presence is unnecessary, where nothing adds up to much anything any more (sic), where you live to be alive. Because flatness is the friend of death and death is the great leveller. That's the bottom line on Planet Two."

One is tempted to say that it is only a magazine....
  
Hebdidge continues by distinguishing between First World critics like John Berger and Second World ones, or the People of the Post (post structuralism, post modernism) as he calls them. The People of the Post (or simply Posts) seek to undermine any discussion of meaning or representation by pointing out the partiality and impermanence of any distinction made. Baudrillard, in particular, takes this to extreme, saying that reality is no more than sum of all apprearances, and is not therefore static or knowable. Hebdidge sets out a metaphor of life according to the Posts as being an anti system: one in which "our lives get played out for us, played out in us, but, never, ever by us". Hebdidge terms this scenario "Living in the wake of the withering signified".

Hebdidge parodies the Second World as vacuous, a world without distinction and hierarchy, where the consumer replaces the citizen; a world anathema to his Marxist leanings. He sees The Face as fitting within the Second World; scornfully he asks why should anyone think deeply when they are not paid to think deeply.

The essay continues with more analysis of The Face, including scornful critiques of Levi and Swatch advertisments. The Face, Hebdidge claims at one point is less of an 'organ of opinion' than a 'wardrobe full of clothes'. He evokes the image of the reader casually turning pages, taking in images, flitting over the words (earlier in the essay he claims that The Face is intended to be 'cruised' . He was prescient in this respect; within ten years we were 'surfing the net'). 

Hebdidge's essay is strongly worded and deeply personal, almost beyond academic discourse in places and ends with a powerful personal statement that he will go on believing that 'the earth is round not flat, that there will never be an end to judgment,.......' This, he believes, is the 'bottom line on Planet One', a gloomy conclusion. Indeed, the whole article accentuates the negative and eradicates the positive. Hebdidge writes many pages on the iniquitous The Face, yet Ten-8  is mentioned only as the positive comparator - the good guy in the argument - without explicitly setting out why.

The questions are as follows:

Does Hebdidge make a clear distinction between 'high' and 'popular' culture?

Hebdidge does not use this dialectic. His distinction between First World vs Second Worlds, and round vs flat is essentially between thinking; challenging; use of words as opposed to vacuous; accepting; scanning images, it is an academic dialectic. One associates the distinction between high and popular culture to be more akin to Bourdieu's distinction between the Sphere of Legitimacy (music, sculpture, theatre) and Sphere of the Legitimizable (cinema, jazz, photography). Perhaps Hebdidge even thinks of The Face as belonging in Bourdieu's Sphere of the Arbitrary along with cookery, clothes and decoration. And possibly his Marxist philosophy led him to avoid making the distinction between 'high' and 'popular' culture, realizing that unwittingly that would suggest he leans more towards Glyndebourne than to Duran Duran.

....what are his main arguments against the 'People of the Post?' 

Hebdidge is scornful of the Posts because he believes they seek to divorce the viewer from the message. Their position is that any distinction between, say, good and bad, legitimate or illegitimate, is to be challenged because the distinguisher has his or her own prejudices. The aim of discourse is to identify and analyze the different articulations, the sociology of the sociologists in simple terms. Hebdidge evidently finds this frustrating because it effectively absolves anyone from making value judgments. He is particularly critical of Baudrillard who he views as at the extreme end of this school of thought. Hebdidge uses the metaphor of people as heads of a video recorder, merely passing and translating visual and audio signals but never owning, storing or 'seeing' the processed material. It is a view that conjures up Orwellian images of faceless people being done to but never being done by. 

This is anathema to Hebdidge, because he  is a thinker, an academic, a polemicist, one who wishes that the world would listen to the power of the pen.

Explain what you see as the difference between high and popular culture today.

I set out earlier the distinction between Bourdieu's  Sphere of Legitimacy and Sphere of the Legitimizable, and this would be my difference; high culture is that which is inaccessible by the barriers put round it by those inside. The barriers may be economic (why bother to view paintings if you cannot afford to buy one for the living room?; do you really want to spend £80 per seat to watch someone belting out words you don't understand in a language you don't speak?)  or academic (are you prepared to read, digest, and comment on 14 pages of turgid, unintelligible and pompous commentary to 'understand' this painting?). Either way, 'high' culture is intended for the elite, and you have to earn your passport to be included in that renowned club. 

Popular culture, on the other hand, is accessible, both because people can afford it (as in Bourdieu's thesis on photography as Middlebrow culture) and can understand it readily. I have not (yet) come across Zipf's Principle of Least Effort in UVC but it is relevant here. The principle is simple -  people will tend to take the path of least resistance- but applicable in many fields. Popular culture can be seen as exactly that: to paraphrase Hebdidge,why would anyone wish to indulge in high culture when popular culture will do.

In the light of developments in the media and other branches of the arts and culture, which is in ascendance today, The First World or the Second World? Is it flat or round?

Culture is cheaper and more accessible than it ever has been. Works of art can be viewed for nothing, and, perhaps as important, on demand. Music can be downloaded, You Tube videos can be watched, photographs can be post processed, all for nothing, instantaneously and in high quality with  the fast broadband speeds most homes can now access. The computer and the internet have changed the way we view culture more in 20 years than in history. In doing so, they themselves have generated culture. Stanford University has just hosted a code poetry slam, for example. Space Invaders was the precursor of video gaming and is itself now a cultural masterpiece, the music alone defining the development of gaming music to the point where Nobuo Uematsu's music from the Final Fantasy series of video games was placed at no. 3 in the ClassicFM Hall of Fame 2013, while Jeremy Soule's soundtrack to The Elder Scrolls was 5th. To ClassicFM's credit, they did not seek to exclude the soundtracks from the voting as 'not proper classical music' despite some apparent disgruntlement from some listeners who have more traditional tastes. Smartphone and tablet games are an integral part of contemporary culture, even the Prime Minister being a fan of Angry Birds. (Daily Telegraph, 2010).

In Hebdidge's world, this is all signs of Second World dominance - if reading The Face is a flat earth activity what must he think of downloading media content for instant gratification or online gaming? The point is surely that we must embrace these technologies, these extensions to our culture, for they won't go away, they cannot be uninvented. Pining for the past or frustration that others do not see the cultural world as we do does little good - Zipf probably has it right. And one wonders further whether is actually matters. How much does analyzing whether playing Angry Birds or writing poetry in computer code are flat or round earth activities add to the sum of human knowledge and understanding of the world? One wonders in the end whether Hebdidge's essay is rather like Debord's spectacles, interesting as a view of cultural activity at a point in time but of marginal relevance today.

Find four or five examples of contemporary popular culture, high round-world culture, and high referencing culture.

 I have already provided examples of contemporary popular culture, high round cultural activities are much as they always were: classical music (notwithstanding the democratizing effect of ClassicFM and others); fine art, literature. 

I am unconvinced that obsessively classifying types of culture is helpful.  RE teacher Andrew Jones (2013) sets out an argument for how he integrates high and popular culture in his RE lessons, for example using Tom and Jerry alongside Dante's Divine Comedy to demonstrate the distinction between heaven and hell, and the game Supermarket Sweep to investigate altruism (Jones, 2013). He uses what works. The key factor to me goes back once again to Zipf and the path of least resistance. We should accept the inevitability that much culture may be viewed as low brow but we all need relaxation, some easy watching or listening or playing. I read Marx, Althusser and Debord for this course on a Friday and go to see Brighton v Wigan the next day (watching sport is not even on the cultural radar screen; it is not culturally dead, it has never been alive). 

But we do need to cling on to the higher cultures in order to challenge ourselves and to respect the needs of future generations, for what is lost will not be recreated. Zipf rules for most of the people most of the time, but let's at least provide the opportunity to take a path of higher resistance.

References:

Daily Telegraph (2010) David Cameron is Angry Birds fan Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8075705/David-Cameron-is-Angry-Birds-fan.html. Accessed on 5 March 2014

Jones (2013) High culture versus pop culture: which is best for engaging students?
Available from http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/feb/20/pop-culture-teaching-learning-engaging-students Accessed on 5 March 2014

Melanie (2013) Attraction:Ten-8 Photographic Journal Available from http://thevisuallife.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/attractionten-8-photographic-journal/. Accessed 4 March 2014.

Wikipedia The Face Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Face_%28magazine%29. Accessed on 4 March 2014

The society of the spectacle

Guy Debord Separation Perfected

This short chapter in the reader is no more than series of definitions and characteristics of "the spectacle", probably best summarised by some highlights with my comments in italics. "The spectacle" encompasses several things, and can be contradictory (Kaplan, undated)   In purple I consider the specific points referred to in the course notes.

• In societies with modern production, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles;
• The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among people,  mediated by images. This demonstrates the Marxian backdrop to Debord's thesis;
• The spectacle is a Weltanschauung that has become materially translated. Weltanschauung is a fundamental concept within German philosophy and translates literally as "world view". In English this suggests an approach based in how the world seems, a method to understand what actually exists on a global scale rather than a comprehensive philosophy;
•  The spectacle is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. I think Debord is here emphasising that spectacle is not just a philosophical notion but a view of how we are;
• The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. Debord is surely trying to have it all ways here - firstly he is suggesting that the concept has a mind of its own, it can "present itself", secondly the three characteristics he mentions seem contradictory - not sure how something can be positive and inaccessible;
•  The spectacle subjugates living men to itself to the extent that the economy has totally subjugated them. This is meaningless.
• The spectacle naturally finds vision to be the "privileged human sense" rather than sense of touch as in previous epochs. This is a crude assertion for which Debord elicits no evidence.
•  The spectacle is the material reconstruction of  the religious illusion.  

What does Debord mean by the spectacle?

I do not pretend to know what Debord means by the spectacle; indeed I think Debord does not entirely know what he means by the spectacle. It is difficult not to present his views as the random jottings of a troubled mind, or alternatively as self evident. His central thesis that everywhere reality is replaced by images which in turn themselves become reality is, when one thinks about it, not as profound as it seems. Magazines, comic strips, advertising, soap operas to mention a few are all examples of visual media that extract elements of our societal existence and present them in a different way, and in so doing themselves become part of the very societal existence. Consider as one example Private Eye, the fortnightly satirical magazine that deliberately seeks to uncover the darker, funny, ironic, and contradictory sides of public life yet in so doing becomes itself part of the establishment. Hussey (2001) claims that Debord realized that his concept became less of a revolutionary concept than a common place aphorism:

It depressed him in his later years that [his] insight had long since ceased to be a revolutionary call to arms but the most accurate, if banal, description of modern life. The term "society of the spectacle" had itself become a cliché, entering the post-modern lexicon to describe any contemporary process....(Hussey, 2001)

Has the passage of time confirmed his view? 

I think the above suggests it has but not in the revolutionary way he would have wished. His view is mainstream now, the frustration for his followers would be that his concept changed nothing.

Does the view that we "see the world by means of various specialized mediations" mean that we are having our world controlled or that we don't know what is propaganda...?

At face value, it means the former - our view of the world is filtered by institutions whether as "objective" as the BBC likes to think it is or as unashamedly partisan as a Daily Mail headline.  We can absorb, consider, analyze and judge only so much information so rely on these filters to do some or all of these functions for us. Some consider this manipulative; a more relaxed view consider it inevitable, indeed useful, in an information loaded society. We should not merely accept that the media is iniquitous and controlling. That is a neo Marxist view that scarcely does justice to people's independence of thought and deed. In this respect, perhaps Debord is only stating a fact: we do see the world by these means; what is less sure is the effect this has on us.

Is the spectacle viewing the real as abstract or an extreme reification?

To be honest, I am not sure - the excerpts above suggest it could be neither, either or both of these. The last bullet point suggests the spectacle as reification.

References:

Hussey (2001) Situation abnormal Available from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jul/28/biography.artsandhumanities Accessed on 2 March 2014


Kaplan (undated) Between mass  society and revolutionary praxis: The  contradictions   of GuyDebord’s Society of theSpectacle. Available from http://www.academia.edu/2235717/The_Contradictions_of_Guy_Debords_Society_of_the_Spectacle. Accessed on 2 March 2014
 

Barbarous Taste

For this project, we consider Bourdieu's statement that:

"In conferring upon photography a guarantee of realism, society is merely confirming itself in the the tautological certainty that an image of the real which is true to its representation of objectivity is really objective."

We are asked to explain what we think it means, and whether we agree with it; if not why not.

The notes on Bourdieu's essay (Bourdieu, 1990) are included in my post: The Social Definition of Photography in which some of the concepts below are explained in more detail.

There are three background factors to analyzing and understanding this statement:

• The statement and essay are extracted from Bourdieu's book Photography: a Middlebrow Art (1990) which sets out to understand the role of photography in a wider sociological context; why do people indulge in the medium, and why, specifically, does it appear that photography is a pursuit of the working classes;
• The section in which the quote appears is entitled 'art which imitates art'. This is an important clue as Bourdieu's thesis that photography is 'different'; it, along with cinema and jazz as other examples are pursuits that are within the 'sphere of the legitimizable, they are not 'consecrated arts' like sculpture or literature;
• The quote itself is at the end of a paragraph that is tortuously long-winded but in essence argues that there is a social conformity to the place of photography within society 

Although there is no emphasis on Bourdieu's original, I think the important words in the phrase are guarantee of realism (indeed there is a slightly different slant one can take by making heavy emphasis on "guarantee"). His argument is that if society believes in the objectivity of photography because it is (and can be no more than) a reproduction of reality, then of course a photographic image is objective - it has to be because society defines that it can offer no more than that simple aim; artistic norms decree that photography does not belong in the higher echelons of consecrated art.

It is a seductive argument, and, ironically, itself almost a tautological necessity of Bourdieu's broader argument about the place of photography within the cultural arena. If you believe photography is a second class artistic pursuit - it imitates rather than is art - then you are led to it being no more than a reproduction of reality, and consequently it must be objective; to think otherwise is to accept that photography can indeed 'rise above' the mundane reproduction of reality and be more than an imitator (as Bourdieu himself believes).

There is resonance here with the arguments of Scruton (1984) that photography is not true art, discussed in a previous blog entry:

"If one finds a photograph beautiful, it is because one finds something beautiful in its subject. A painting, on the other had, may be beautiful, even when it represents an ugly thing".

By implying that photography for all its lack of credentials as art can demonstrate a beautiful subject, Scruton does accept the objectivity of the medium as the default. But, as argued in my previous blog, photography is more than reproduction, because the author chooses his or her position, time of day, lighting, exposure, aperture value, perspective, framing, and many other subjective decisions.

In conclusion, I agree with Bourdieu's assertion within the confines of his own argument but think that we have moved on from thinking that photography does "guarantee realism", thus rendering the quote somewhat devoid of contemporary relevance.

References:

Bourdieu (1990) Photography: a Middlebrow Art (Polity Press) pp73-98

Scruton (1984) The Aesthetic Understanding (London, Methuen) cited in Howells and Negreiros (2012) Visual Culture. Revised 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press

Situationists International

The course notes suggest reviewing some articles on Situationism, a movement of the 1960s.

In Situationists - an introduction it is pointed out that ideology should not be static but make reference to real life. The roots are Marxist but move on from savage repression of the working classes to recognize that dominance may be demonstrated by elements of consumerism - buying this good or service will make you more like the celebrities around us - social alienation as opposed to natural alienation (Marshall, 1992) . We call it 'celeb culture' nowadays but the concept is the same.

The artistic roots are unsurprisingly in Dada

Guy Debord was perhaps the most well known of its proponents - committed suicide in 1994. His book (Debord, 1967) developed the notion of the spectacle, that capitalism had turned relationships into transactions, that the individual accumulates alienated products.

The solution was Utopian: people need to assess their situation (hence the movement's name) and take control: release their own potential and seek their own pleasure. Here it is easy to see how this movement was related to flower power and hippy thinkingin 1960s. 

It is useful to know this movement existed and some ideas of the spectacle but I am not sure it adds much to our intellectual thinking of Visual Culture. The so called plight of the classes wedded to the TV or slavishly buying the latest fashion gadgets was doubtless overstated in the 1960s by Debord and others in order to justify their own prejudices and leaning. Nowadays it is accepted as  way we are; contemporary society is more open minded to accept that there may actually be an element of choice as to whether we fiollow the materialist fashions or not, and greater affluence leads to greater tolerance of a range of lifestyles.

References:

Debord (1967) The Society of the Spectacle

Marshall (1992) Guy Debord and the Situationists Available from http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Obituary/debord.html. Accessed on 2 March 2024

The social definition of photography by Pierre Bourdieu

This essay from Bourdieu's book (Bourdieu, 1990) is not easy reading - the quotation we are asked to comment on as a project is a good example of Bourdieu's sometimes contorted writing, not helped by a tendency to repeat words in the same sentence, as in this example:

 "How, under these conditions, could the representation of society be anything other than the representation of a represented society." (Bourdieu's emphasis).

Bourdieu readily switches from anecdote to philosophy to semiotics and back to anecdote; there is a lack of precision. His writing, intentionally or otherwise, is class based and clumsily patronising in places:

"Without a doubt, photography (and colour photography especially) entirely fulfils the aesthetic expectations of the working classes." (Why colour photography especially - is Bourdieu suggesting that it provides a differentiator or that somehow colour image more closely resembles high art that the working classes can only aspire to understanding?)

"...the taking of photographs always provokes a certain unease, especially among peasants, who are most often condemned to internalize the pejorative image that the members of other groups have of them...."

It is important in this context to understand that Bourdieu was writing about the practice of photography as a sociological study. He noted and tried to rationalise that photography was a pursuit of the masses. Perhaps the clue is in the title of the book from which this chapter is taken: Photography: a Middlebrow Art".  In other writings beyond the reach of this analysis he set out how classes distinguish themselves from one another, often by having interests that are difficult for others to imitate (note 1).

Bourdieu discusses photographic portraiture at length, particularly that there is an aesthetic, a series of norms in the practice. This is more useful analysis, as it does help distinguish the amateur photograph that at best might be seen as art almost be accident, from a more specific attempt to use the medium as an artistic pursuit. He acknowledges that photography is not just a means of capturing reality, but is "only ever the result of an arbitrary selection." He has to acknowledge that there is no genuine objectivity in the medium else his premise that there are class differences in the way photography is used and viewed can have no basis.

Bourdieu tackles the issue of how practitioners and viewers of the "Middlebrow Art" consider the dialectic between photography as merely reproducing interesting and beautiful objects or scenes, and as an art form. The former is what he terms the 'barbarous taste': that which "bases appreciation on informative, tangible or moral interest" in images and rejects any kind of symbolism or appreciation of the how. Interestingly, this is a very similar argument to that of Fry discussed in the chapter on Form in Howells and Negreiros, albeit he considered that it was traditional art as viewed by the upper classes that aimed for ever higher levels of realism, whereas the democratisation of art would  lead to viewers considering works of art as an expression of imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life (Howells and Negreiros, 2012).

The heirarchy of legitimacies

Bourdieu continues in his condescending tones towards the working classes:

"...deprived by definition of the norms of good taste, the working classes always seek objective principles which are the only things capable, in their eyes, of forming the basis of an adequate judgement, and which can only be acquired by a specific or broad education."

Photography is in Bourdieu's view more favourable to the working classes because the 'popular aesthetic' can be grasped more easily and viewers are less likely to demonstrate ignorance of "consecrated norms and obligatory opinions."

Bourdieu argues that different cultural meanings have non equivalence in dignity and value; there is a gradation of what he calls "cultural legitimacy". At one end of the spectrum are the consumer pursuits (Bourdieu quotes jazz, cinema and photography as examples; at the other are works of more scholarly nature: sculpture, painting, theatre are examples. The latter are in a "sphere of legitimacy", the former in a "sphere of the legitimizable". (There is a tacit implication in Bourdieu's thesis here that photography and the like could become fully consecrated arts). He identifies also the "sphere of the arbitrary" including cookery, decoration, sporting occasions. 

Despite the patronising overtones of Bourdieu's thesis, he does have a point that there are cultural differences between the pursuits of different sections of society. We tend to talk less theses days of different classes as there is more fluidity within society but it is true that the middle classes are not seen often at Bingo or Wrestling or greyhound meets; the working classes tend not to frequent theatre or opera or art galleries. We just tend to take these things for granted; perhaps it is too difficult or not politically correct to consider them. 

Bourdieu tackles too the uneasy relationship photography has with the "consecrated arts". He argues that attempts to  legitimatize art are bound to fail because they cannot counteract what he calls the 'social key to photography', i.e. it is not viewed by the interested parties as a legitimate artistic pursuit, ergo it is not. What he fails to point out is that this may change: fashions change among the cognoscenti of the art world, and society changes too such that cultural pursuits that were once the preserve of certain sections of society take on a wider appeal. Football is a good example as it is now de rigeur for anyone to claim support for a team, even 20 years ago it was viewed as more of a lower class sport to follow.
 

Note 1: This argument has resonance also with academic studies of media and related subjects. I mention above how intense and unintelligible parts of this text are, and set out similar thoughts in Part 1 about the writings of Althusser. There is, one feels, an academic insecurity that somehow leads to the use of obfuscatory language to explain a relatively simple concept in order to give the impression that the concept itself is more profound and important than perhaps it is.

References:

Bourdieu (1990) Photography: a Middlebrow Art (Polity Press) pp73-98

Howells and Negreiros (2012) Visual Culture. Revised 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press

 

The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction by Walter Benjamin

As part of the first project of Part Two to the course, we are asked to read this seminal 1936 essay by Walter Benjamin and address certain points.

Benjamin starts by pointing out that reproduction of art took a leap forward firstly with the invention of lithography and was then surpassed by photography. He notes in particular that pictorial reproduction could keep pace with speech. 

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." This includes changes in its physical condition. 

Benjamin argues that the quality of art's presence is depreciated by mechanical reproduction. He contrasts a landscape, which is unaffected by being reproduced, with a work of art, which Benjamin says has its 'authenticity' removed. It is devoid of time and place and loses its history. This is what he calls the 'aura' of the work of art. Reproduction "detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition." 

The uniqueness of a work of art is related to the fabric of tradition. The Greeks made the Statue of Venus an object of veneration; Middle Age clerics viewed it as an "ominous idol", but both accepted its uniqueness, its aura. 

The aura of a work of art - its uniqueness -  has its basis in ritual but mechanical reproduction (MR) "emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual". The function of art is reversed, being based on politics rather then ritual.

Benjamin argues that works of art are valued on different planes: the cult value and the exhibition value. Ancient cave paintings represented the first to the societies in which they were produced, only later being recognized as a work of art. Photography and film concentrate on the exhibition value as they cannot be tied to time and place - they cannot be authentic. 

Looking at the specific questions raised in the course notes:

• How does Benjamin state his case for the removal of art's elite nature?
• What do you make of his ideas of the 'aura' of the work

The answer is that MR in his view removes the aura - the authenticity - of the work of art in time and place. He does make the point explicitly, but what in effect Benjamin says is that the work of art loses its being as an object, being replaced by its importance of its representational quality. 

I think this argument is powerful and relevant. Jeff Koons sells a work of art that is unique for $58m, the highest price ever achieved for the work of a living artist. (Waxman, 2013). It is concrete. Compare this to the highest price achieved for a photograph of  $4.3m, Andreas Gursky's Rhine II (Waters, 2011) . The factor of 13 in the difference in price achieved cannot be unrelated to the known uniqueness of the sculpture as opposed to the image.

Benjamin's argument is similar to that of Fry, discussed in Howells and Negreiros (2012, pp 37-39). Fry distinguished between the actual and the imaginative life. Seeing something leads to reaction in the imagination. Fry's arguments take a different course here as he leads towards the endeavour of understanding how art communicates rather than what it communicates but the strands of his thoughts and those of Benjamin lead to a common conclusion: the politicisation and democratisation  of art; the removal of the sense of aura. 

• Does the improvement in the methods of reproduction, colour printing, digital imaging and television, strengthen or weaken his case?

Benjamin claims that MR is inherent in the very technique of film production. It enforces mass distribution because films are so expensive that no one can buy one. That might have been true in 1936, but the improvements mentioned above render the argument false now. I found Berger's Ways of Seeing on You Tube for nothing in 2 minutes. I think the answer is now the reverse: anyone can create art, whether it be digital photography or an online video or a Facebook entry for example, so the aura is removed by the simplicity of production as opposed to the reproduction.

• Does the failure of the Soviet experiment alter the validity of his case?

The Soviet experiment manifested itself in early days with Anti Art movements and the rise in photography, which was seen as a medium that demystified and democratised art through the work of Rodchenko and others. I am not sure its failure is strongly relevant to Benjamin's case. Anti elitism arises in many guises at different times, witness Berger's argument for example. The far more powerful influence has been that of technological change and the way that has been adopted in art, as set out in Assignment 1.

References:

Waters (2011)Why is Andreas Gursky's Rhine II the most expensive photograph? Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8884829/Why-is-Andreas-Gurskys-Rhine-II-the-most-expensive-photograph.html. Accessed on 26 February 2014.

Waxman (2013) An Orange Balloon Dog Sold for $58m Available from  http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/14/an-orange-balloon-dog-sold-for-58-4-million-so-here-are-10-cool-jeff-koons-balloon-pieces/. Accessed on 26 February 2014.

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

So much more of the meaning of Berger's treatise can be understood by actually watching his series. Here is episode one as presented on You Tube. My notes follow

Photography meant that paintings were no longer unique to the place where they were hung but copies can now be placed in familiar surroundings.

Painting was often an integral part of the building. Icons are no longer specific to a location but can be transported to home. When you later see an original you see it as the original of the reproduction and therefore its "first meaning is no longer to be found in what is says but what it is." (p21 of book)

"It is the image of the painting which travels now - the meaning is transmittable.

"The National Gallery catalogue is for art experts" Da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks has 14 pages of closely researched text to prove it is the original, for example. Art needs to be stripped of false mystery and false religiosity.

Paintings are silent and still so can be manipulated by movement - zoom in to the detail and some of the overall meaning of the image is lost. You can add sound too and change your view of a painting as a result (he evidences with a painting by Caravaggio). The painting is no longer a constant but the meaning can change by what is around it. 

Berger is scornful of the 'mystification' that surrounds artistic commentary, evidenced by repeating some words of a recent (as in 1972) analysis of Hals' Regents of the Old Men's Alms House and Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House. He then compares this approach to that of children before they become 'mystified'. He shows a group of children a painting by Carvaggio. What is particularly noticeable is that the children are more direct - to them the gender of the central character is of key interest, the girls favouring a woman, the boys a man. Berger points out that Caravaggio was homosexual but the children did not need to know that to realise there is ambiguity.

valuation 

This is a classic and has been acknowledged as such for a long time. It is just the first of four episodes and I feel the need to see the rest, if not now then over the period of doing the course.

Berger has been criticised a lot since the programme (see my notes on Howells and Negreiros - Ideology) but some of that, notably by H&N themselves, lose the central core of Berger's argument: that the way we look at art is influenced by the fact of its replicability, and that replicability means that one's view of a painting can/will be manipulated by what is juxtaposed with it, whether other visual stimuli, or audio. That is surely nowadays viewed as mainstream and not at all contentious. That Berger may have gone too far in some respects does not invalidate everything he said. I particularly like his view of the mystification of art commentary, as I believe that there is a conspiracy of complication in the world of academic art - there is a perceived need to use pompous and pretentious language as a method of self promotion without adding (indeed detracting from) the message. Clarity is to be avoided at all costs. Succinctness sucks.   

Having seen episode one, I consider it important to see all four episodes and will make further notes.