Session 7: Frames and Fistulas
Session 7: Frames and Fistulas
Chair: Donna Foley
Between Word and Image: Benjamin’s Dialectical Image as Species of Space
Iva Jevtic
Department of Translation, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
This presentation further examines one of the key concepts of Walter Benjamin’s work, the dialectical image. Benjamin’s use of dialectical image has been subject to a wide spectrum of interpretations, ranging from purely metaphorical understanding to comparisons with the more radical contemporary visual practices of the avant-garde, such as, for instance, montage, but also to readings of the dialectical image in the sense of Wittgenstein’s conception of the image, i.e. as a mental model of reality.
The aim of this presentation is to try and reconcile these various approaches, first of all through a closer examination of Benjamin’s attitude towards the use of metaphor, especially as laid out in his essay on surrealism, and the distinction he makes between »true images« and »bourgeois metaphor«. Closer inspection reveals that »true images« can be explained to surpass the use of »mere metaphor«, as understood in Benjamin, through a new reading of metaphor in what appears to be visual manner: indeed, Richard Moran specifically speaks of the »framing effect« of metaphor in terms of its capacity to contain meaning very much like a picture does.
The potentially visual structure of the dialectical image shall be further examined in relation to the work of the artist Paul Klee, whose sketch Angelus Novus was the basis for one of Benjamin’s most quoted passages, the »Angel of History«, part of Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. Whereas Klee used linguistic elements in his paintings to create, as Foucault notes, »new space«, Benjamin seems to have gone the other way round: his specific use of image proves to be very close to the structure of the chiasmus, a linguistic figure which, according to Nänny, is experienced »verbally in time« but at the same produces »a quasi-spatial«, visual pattern. In other words, the dialectical image proves to function both as word and image, both microstructure (figure of writing) and macrostructure (model of reality).
The Picture Within and Beyond the Frame: Limits and Limitless in Visual Representation
Marek Zasempa
Wy?sza Szko?a Lingwistyczna, Cz?stochowa, Poland
My paper discusses the concept of the frame as a physical but also a purely conceptual boundary of a painting. The argument descends from the very question of the existence or the obliteration of the frame. On the one hand, framing physically delimits and consequently reduces the perception of a work of art; on the other hand, it is also possible to consider painterly representation with an approach that neglects the existence of the frame: the conceptual lack of the frame, or at least its “perforation,” opens an equally resourceful research field. Therefore, my argument, jocularly departing from Chesterton’s sarcastic statement: “Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame,” oscillates around theories focusing on any kind of visual perception that reaches “beyond the frame,” or else, treats frames as arbitrary/conventional devices, which approach corresponds to Derrida’s paradoxical assertion: “There is a frame, but the frame does not exist.”
The analysis of the frame presented in the paper inscribes itself into the context of the relationships between the verbal and the visual arts – a more extensive research project in which I am involved. Therefore, the frame is also viewed here as, for example, a “narrative tool/gesture” and a device enabling the existence of “embedded narratives” in visual representation. Apart from that, the frame is analysed in the paper as an apparatus facilitating visual self-reflexivity and as a more general issue in the analysis of the act of looking.
The theoretical background of my argument includes the work of Jacques Derrida (e.g. his reflection on concept of parergon), Michel Foucault (e.g. his famous analysis of Velazques’s Las Meninas) and selected hypotheses of Russian semioticians (such as Uspienski and Lotman). The illustration of the theoretical issues is an analysis of a selection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, including, for instance, Hunt’s Il Dolce far Niente, Rossetti’s Lucrezia Borgia and Brown‘s The Hayfield.
Download Draft Conference Paper – 
GEICO Cavemen: A Contemporary Tale of Mediated Other and Political Correctness
Chi-Ying Yu
Art and Art Education, Columbia University, USA
Since 2004, the insurance company GEICO has presented an advertising campaign centered on the idea of cavemen living in the twenty-first century. The commercials, along with the slogan, “GEICO: so easy a caveman could do it,” constructed a fictional minority in American society, who are shown as both self-consciously irritated by the advertisements and as struggling against the discrimination they represent.
The long-running commercials, the sustained discussions on the Internet, and the cavemen’s presence in a variety of media attests to the iconic status the minority has achieved. The popularity of this fictional minority race suggests that scrutiny of its function in American society?where discourses regarding race relationships are controversial?is likely to prove a worthwhile endeavor. Identifying the cavemen phenomenon not merely as a valuable subject within the study of media literacy but also a site of critical pedagogy, this paper aims to understand the socio-cultural meanings driving and produced by the cavemen phenomenon and the pedagogical implications revealed in the public’s interpretations. By analyzing the audio-visual presentations and the corresponding discussions, mostly from online sources, the paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the socio-cultural psyches behind the need to create an obvious other in society? What kind of commentary on political correctness is embodied by the phenomenon?
My preliminary analysis finds that the making of the other is not a process engaged in by an individual or even multiple authors; rather, the authorship of the other belongs to all who are exposed to the work, in this case, the advertisements and spinoffs. Readings are, therefore, diverse: where some see a racist creation, others see a satire of race relations. In addition, my paper argues that viewed as a campaign of anti-political-correctness or a critique of a hypocritical society, the GEICO cavemen reflect cultural anxiety; they are perhaps the embodiment of societal fears in regard to the other and fetishism of one’s own culture.
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