1. Representation

2. Dan Sperber: mental representations (ideas, memories, dreams, fantasies) public representations (stories, images, maps etc) Renaissance Man as representation

3. Representation is natural to human beings from childhood
Representation is natural to human beings from childhood. They differ from the other animals in this: man tends most towards representation and learns his first lessons through representation. Also, everyone delights in representations. An indication of this is what happens in fact: we delight in looking at the most detailed images of things which in themselves we see with pain. (Aristotle)

4. Why do we represent things?
(Lascaux cave murals)

5. Altamira

6. Why do we represent things/others?
To gain power over them (cave paintings)
For fun (enjoying the perfection or artistry of representation)
We represent what is invisible (thoughts, feelings)
We represent what is absent: the past, the dead

7. E. Daege:
The origin of painting
(The Girl from Corinth)
Dibutades

8. Three senses of representation:
to re-present, to portray (photograph)
~ icon
to speak on behalf of (parliament)
~ index
to stand for (flag – country)
~ symbol

9. Three ‘laws’ of representation
(1) representation is never the thing itself
(2) representations construct their object
(3) representations construct their subject

10. Factors of representation
object
maker
receiver
representation

11. Factors of representations
Mediation: mediatedness of the world media (language, image) technologies institutional frameworks conventions (e.g. genres) circumstances and interests

12. 1. a representation is never the thing itself
“In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single province covered the space of an entire City, and the map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these extensive maps were found wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. … In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar” (Jorge Luis Borges)

13. 2. representations are always constructed
Chinese encyclopaedia of animals: “In its remote pages it is written that animals are divided into a, belonging to the emperor b, embalmed c, trained d, sucking pigs e, sirens f, fabulous g, unleashed dogs h, included in this classification i, which jump about like lunatics j, innumerable k, drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l, etcetera m, which have just broken the pitcher n, which look from a distance like flies.” (J. L. Borges)

14. Representation as construction
Commercials: construct the product
History books
TV news
‘reality shows’: editing; framing, selection, ordering

15. Visual representation
Aristotle: ‘we can only think in terms of images’
„Man can understand nothing without images” (St. Thomas Aquinas)

16. IDOLATRY - ICONOCLASM
“Thou shalt not make any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth” (Deuteronomy 5.8)

17. Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon of Muhammad

18. What is ‘wrong’ with images?
(1) philosophical argument - Plato: images are copies of copies (Ideas or Forms) (2) theological argument: worshipping objects instead of the real thing Christianity: started out as iconoclastic Changed strategy in 7th century Protestantism: new turn (the host and the wine)

19. “Images are dangerous. Images, no matter how discreetly chosen, come loaded with conscious and unconscious memories; no matter how limited their proposed use, they burn lasting outlines into the mind. Often images overwhelm the idea they are supposed to be carrying.” (Thomas Mathews) Emotional charge of concrete images – language requires abstraction (anti-smoking campaign)

20. Representations of death
Death is unknown; resists representation; the very limit of representation
Death as an ‘event’
Death as a condition

21. death as a place - Arnold Böcklin: The Island of the Dead

22. death as a figure - The Grim Reaper

23. David:
The Death of Marat
(1793)

24. Nicolas Poussin:
Descent from the Cross

25. Death of Marat accurate, realistic in its details
yet: the death becomes allegorical
lighting and background
perspective/point of view
face and body
visual quotation (‘descent from the cross’)

26. David: Death of Socrates (1787)

27. Death of Socrates forced to drink hemlock
dying: the last act of his life
(Plato: philosophy = learning to die)
Sacrificing a cock to Asclepius