David Hockney on the power of images
Painter David Hockney-- who has in the last few years made some very interesting speculations about the history of art-- has a piece on the Guardian about "Pictures and Power:"
Michael Curtis, one of the founders of Hollywood and director of Casablanca and many swashbuckling Erroll Flynn movies, tells a story about seeing his first bit of cinema in about 1908, in the Cafe New York in Budapest. He recalls what fascinated him: it wasn't the film itself but the fact that everybody watched it. He realised not everyone goes to the theatre, not everyone goes to the opera, but the cinema will attract the masses. By 1920 he was in Hollywood - which was the sticks then, compared with Budapest - but California had the money, the light, and the technology. He was right.
Now let's go back 350 years, to Neopolitan scholar Giambattista Della Porta, who published a book, Natural Magick, about optical projections of nature. He was a renaissance man: scientist, playwright and showman. He put on shows using optical projections (simple to do) and was hauled before the Inquisition by the church.
The church at that time was the sole purveyor of pictures. It knew the power of images, and Della Porta would have noticed, like Michael Curtis, how people were attracted to that optical projection. They still are.
The church had social control. Whoever controlled the images had power. And they still do. Social control followed the lens and mirror for most of the 20th century. What's now known as the media exert social control, not the church, but we are moving into a new era, because the making and distribution of images is changing. Anyone can make and distribute images on a mobile phone. The equipment is everywhere.
As a number of commenters have pointed out, the church didn't quite have "control" over images: Renaissance states could be substantial patrons of the arts, and popular iconography-- particularly after the invention of the printing press-- both served as counterbalances to ecclesiastical power. On the other hand, you can make the argument that for familiarity and drama, the church's was hard to beat. It wasn't just the ability to produce rival images that earned Della Porta an appointment with the Inquisition: it was his ability to do novel, dramatic things.
I'm not exactly sure how this connects with the end of cyberspace, except through cellphones... but I'm sure I'll find some link.
[To the tune of Perpetual Groove, "Naive Melody," from the album "Live at the Georgia Theatre, 31 December 2005".]
Recent Comments