The ubiquity of the image

Rapidly -and because of insomnia…- a brief comment in relation to Radu’s contribution, as always both elegant and cultured. He is absolutely right to stress the extent to which our relationship to the image has for centuries been based on the way that organized religion has alternately made use of it (promotion) or forbidden it (another, ‘anti’ form of promotion). I’m afraid to say that if I had lived in the 17th century, I would have been an iconoclast. And that would have made sense. Or it would, at least, have been adopting a position.

Today, I can only be an iconoclast if I decide to become a hermit, to go and live me in an ashram in some part of Tibet not controlled by the Chinese, to cut myself off completely from everything that happens in the contemporary world. To be an iconoclast today involves, quite simply, withdrawing from the world. I well remember my stupefaction, a few years ago, on arriving in a remote village in Laos and seeing, in the one and only shop in the valley -grocery, tobacconist, restaurant, guest house, guide service, pharmacist and many other things on request- plastic bags that were obviously being sold as a rare commodity printed with the face of Leonardo di Caprio!

How can one be an iconoclast, without becoming a terrorist, when the image has become a constituent and essential element, the driving force of our society at the start of the 21st century. Malraux -of whom almost the only good thing I have to say is that he invented, in France, the now virtually moribund idea of a Ministry of Culture- claimed that the 21st century would be religious or it would not be. Andy Warhol said that everyone would have their quarter of an hour of fame -which in the age of You Tube would be equivalent to their quarter of an hour (but that’s too long…) of image. Clearly they were both right: they anticipated a world that they helped shape. And here we are, impotent in the face of the parade of images that no longer have a meaning, that are both merchandise and a summons to consume.

How can one be an iconoclast today????