Arthur writes:
Our films show how much more reflection can be prompted through visual media rather than words. Words close – pictures open! (http://twitter.com/hyperscoped/status/4414697665)
Yes, I’d broadly agree although with the caveat that it depends on the picture and depends on the words. Polysemy – words or signs having multiple meanings – is not a property exclusive to the image.
Take this Banky image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyeee/2307554918/
It’s hard not to read it as a snappy take on consumerism and the homogenisation of the UK High street and our out-of-town shopping centres. One nation under a non-biodegradable shopping bag – an interpretation anchored by the titles Banksy fans have given the work (Tesco Generation, In Tesco We Trust). Banksy’s use of Tesco is obvious (it’s the UK’s very own Walmart in terms of its brutal business practices and market influence) and the shopping bag an icon of ecologically irresponsible shopaholism. It’s a witty visual one-liner but it looks pretty closed to me in terms of the meanings that I – or others – might make of it.
Take another image, Paula Rego’s The Policeman’s Daughter:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/rego_paula_policemans_daughter.htm
I’ve no idea how to read this picture. Is it an image of a daughter’s complicity with the violence of her father? I imagine him to be one of Salazar’s state thugs and she’s cleaning off protesters’ blood after he’s given them a good kicking at a demo. The dutiful daughter serving her beloved papa? Or is there a suggestion of sexual violence in the family home (Rego recently commented that the “she’s fist fucking the boot”) – her gesture expressing violent revenge and an inversion of the power relationship between them?
So, some pictures open and others close.
Boot made me think of Plath’s “Daddy”
http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=356
There’s some kind of hint of bestiality going on there too, I think, in the way the cat’s posture gestures towards the bipedal and the human. Is the cat the father, a kind of warped and somehow wrong symbol of domesticity? It also looks like it’s hiding, peering out on the mob? Is the whole painting a creepy reinterpretation of Puss in Boots?
Anyway, a point well made!
[...] 2 began with one of my early reflections on visuality with a blog post on the polysemous nature of the visual image. I enjoyed writing it – and name checking artists I enjoy – and the comments of Sian [...]