The Honesty of Images

“We do not,” asserts W.J.T. Mitchell, “live in a uniquely visual era.” The author of a book titled “What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images” (University of Chicago Press, 380 pages, $35) has every reason – and all the evidence – to assert the opposite. But Mr. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry, is not afraid of the proliferation of images in today’s media. Rather, he proposes that now is the time to reverse the ancient notion that pictures are somehow untrustworthy, cheap, and bad.Plato, in the allegory of the cave, defined images as the shadows flickering on subterranean walls, locating truth outside, in the sunshine. Closer to our time, in the late 18th century, G.E. Lessing warned in his great essay “Laocoon” that visual images were degrading contemporary literature. Wittgenstein lamented that “a picture held us captive,” meaning the pictorial metaphor that dominated Western philosophy for too long. Even Freudians felt images were mere symptoms, that their latent content must be decoded and put into words.Contrary to these prejudices, Mr. Mitchell believes that “pictures want equal rights with language, not to be turned into language.” The suggestion in his book’s title, that pictures have “lives and loves,” is only a suggestion, a tool for thinking, but he does note that pictures are attributed agency by people in all walks of life. Many art historians – for whom Mr. Mitchell’s brand of visual studies might be threatening – will at least ask: What does this picture do? Advertisers talk about pictures that “have legs.”Mr. Mitchell repeatedly refers to the biblical story of the golden calf, in which Aaron, in the King James version, explains to Moses that “I cast [the gold] into the fire, and there came out this calf,” as if the shaping process had a mind of its own. Then again, Aaron is an extremely exculpatory mood in this speech.Mr. Mitchell can easily argue that our own age has iconoclastic tendencies every bit as strong as those embodied in the second commandment, the prohibition against graven images. “The idea that images have a kind of social or psychological power of their own is, in fact, the reigning cliche of contemporary visual culture,” he writes, citing both the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist idols and the attacks on the Twin Towers, symbols of global capitalism.“The best evidence for the life of images is the passion with which we seek to destroy or kill them,” Mr. Mitchell writes. He would demonstrate the power of images by asking students to mutilate photographs of their mother, knowing they would do no such thing. But not all images are so charged. All these examples are important for their non-pictorial associations, and Mr. Mitchell leans too heavily on them. If pictures can truly compete with words, it would have been interesting to read about instances of purely visual communication – logos, fonts, and pedestrian symbols.More successful – yet stranger – is Mr. Mitchell’s extrapolation of the morals of “iconology.” He believes that images require careful attention, not value judgment. He is comforted by Leo Steinberg’s admonition “to feel along with [the artwork] as with a thing that is like no other.” Art, a somewhat animistic thing that may be sympathized with, requires patience. Mr. Mitchell goes further: He compares images to animals – the original subjects of art, which must be befriended, slowly, or appreciated as they are.Surprisingly, there is a great deal of discussion about dinosaurs in the middle parts of the book – fossils as the first “things” to be historicized, “Jurassic Park” models as the ultimate animistic images – and discussions of cloning open and close the book. It does seem we live in a time when images, if not newly rampant, are important in new ways. Mr. Mitchell proposes that Walter Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction has been replaced by an age of “biocybernetic reproduction.” His book succeeds in communicating a sense of urgency – pictures are stranger than we reckon and getting stranger.“The epithet for our times,” he writes, “is not the modernist saying, ‘things fall apart,’ but an even more ominous slogan: ‘things come alive.'” Mr. Mitchell’s survey is far too broad-ranging and too academic – too wordy – to really offer a plan for dealing with the kudzu-like iconology of the near future. If this is not a uniquely visual era, it is one that requires visual savvy. What do pictures want? A hug. And to be Photoshopped.

The Honesty of Images

The Honesty of Images

More from the New York Sun

Southern Poverty Law Center’s Ex-Intel Chief Indicted Over Alleged Secret Payments to White Supremacists

Democrats Step Back From the Brink — for Now

Pollsters Defend Methodology After Wisconsin Gubernatorial Race Upset

A ‘Dangerous Political Experiment’

South America Turns Right — And Pro-Zionist

Hollywood Meets Wall Street as Josh Kushner, Bob Iger Buy Lakers in Record-Setting Deal

Babylon Bee Sues New Mexico Over Law Requiring Disclosures on AI-Generated Satire

Pirro Convenes Rare ‘Special Grand Jury,’ Raising Prospect of Major Prosecution — Possibly Against Jack Smith

More from the New York Sun

Southern Poverty Law Center’s Ex-Intel Chief Indicted Over Alleged Secret Payments to White Supremacists

Democrats Step Back From the Brink — for Now

Pollsters Defend Methodology After Wisconsin Gubernatorial Race Upset

A ‘Dangerous Political Experiment’

South America Turns Right — And Pro-Zionist

Hollywood Meets Wall Street as Josh Kushner, Bob Iger Buy Lakers in Record-Setting Deal

Babylon Bee Sues New Mexico Over Law Requiring Disclosures on AI-Generated Satire

Pirro Convenes Rare ‘Special Grand Jury,’ Raising Prospect of Major Prosecution — Possibly Against Jack Smith