Study Task 4 : Images and theory

Last year we used the following points to analyse images: 

Context, subject/content/composition, audience, purpose, method of production

These are all still essential, however, we can also analyse images through a number of different theories. In this seminar we were put into pairs and had to research two given theories with relation to images. 

COMMODITY FETISHISM

• Theorists: Marx 'Das Kapital', Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord 'The society of the spectacle' 
• 'the process of ascribing magic 'phantom-like' qualities to an object, whereby the human labour required to make that object is associated with a monetary value for exchange' 
• We could relate this theory to illustration, in that for our work we are often paid for the finished product - the object of our art - rather than being paid by hour - for the labour. 
• This theory is intrinsically linked to mass production of commodities e.g. iphones.

REPRODUCTION

• Theorists: John Berger 'Ways of seeing' 
• The invention of the camera allowed images to be reproduced at a faster rate than ever before. This led to art movements moving away from realism, such as impressionism.
• The reproduction of an image shapes and changes its meaning - fragments into lots of different meanings, as its placed into new contexts. 
• A 'bogus religiosity' has developed surrounding original artworks - as the importance of the physical object, rather than the image itself, is increased through reproduction.
• "One might argue that all reproductions more or less distort, and that therefore the original painting is still in a sense unique"

LINK : Through reproducing images you lose the sense of the labour put behind the work, the human hand, and see it purely as an object/image, hence insuring commodity fetishism. 

THEORIES THAT MAY RELATE TO MY TOPIC:

• Pastiche
• Parody
• Intertexuality
• Signification
• Bricolage
• Metacommunication