INTRODUCTION
In a painting, three-dimensional objects are transformed into
two-dimensional configurations of paint, and, in a sculpture, a body of
flesh and blood is transformed into marble. That induces many an artists
to think that changing the form, color,
material, scale, or orientation of an object suffices to transform it
into an image. In fact, merely new
variants or transformations of real objects are thereby produced. Let us therefore
investigate in what respect images differ from duplicates, variations or
transformations - and thereby disentangle a conundrum, that, from Plato onward, continues to haunt the philosophy of the image.
DUPLICATES, VARIANTS, AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Many objects come in identical or more or less different versions.
When they are identical, we call them duplicates.
When they differ we call them variants when we are dealing with differences between distinct objects - thinks
of cars on different colors - and transformations when an
object is transformed into another - as when a red chair is painted
blue, or when a car is compressed.
Variants and transformations can differ in form, orientation, color, material, scale,
and when they are moving, also in tempo and hence duration. Let us give a survey of the diverse possibilities.
Variants of form are the many leaves of a tree, the many croissants of
the baker, the yearly renewed models of a car, or Buren's columns in
'Les Deux Plateaux' (1986).
Transformations of form can be obtained through stretching, melting, smashing, or compressing - think of Arman's 'compression voiture'.
Variants of orientation are similar (parts of) objects in different positions (Robert Morris' 3LS, 1965, or Carl André's Uncarved blocks, 1976). They are popular in polyphonic music: inverse, retrograde, and retrograde of the inversion.
Transformations of orientation are Duchamp's urinal or bicycle wheel.
Variants
of color are legion in mass-production: cars, clothes,
mobiles in different colors.
Transformations of color are Yves Klein's 'Globe bleu 1957 or 'Nike
Big', Günther
Uecker painted piano, or Fabre's 'Tivoli'
(Mechelen, 1990):
Variants of materials are cupboards in diverse kinds of wood, Rick Beck's
glass saw, or Delvoye's wooden concrete mixers.
Transformations of material are obtained through baking, burning (Arman's
'piano flamboyant)', wetting or drying (clay, dried fish),
or in music through playing on another instrument or through electronic
filtering.
Variants of scale are products in diverse sizes, not only in agriculture (ponies, dwarf rabbits, bonsai trees), but also in industrial production (shoes, clothes, ....). Reductions in scale are popular in the world of children's toys: miniature cars, trains, beds, homes - think of the Petronella Oortman's doll house.
Magnifications are popular in the world of monuments: Oldenburg's
Clothespin (1976), Bob Bydd's 'Giant
Spoon' 'Eat for England' (2006)
Less obvious are transformations of scale: inorganic objects, but
especially living beings are not so easily magnified or miniaturized -
just think of the Jivaro skulls.
Transformation of duration is to be found in slow motion
film or audio records, or of the diminutio and augmentatio in polyphonic
music.
All these characteristics may vary separately or in every
conceivable combination. Combined variation is often unavoidable:
variation in one dimension necessarily entails variation in another -
think of variation in material that is mostly also a variation of
color, or of the variation in scale that entails a variation in material
in non-homogenic materials like wood, stone, textile. Some of Oldenburg's
clothespins are made in wood, but the change in scale entails a change
in texture. Nevertheless, the combination can also be freely chosen, as in Hans Op de Beeck's
'Table', in which change in scale and color are combined:
VARIATION OR TRANSFORMATION VERSUS IMAGE
It is obvious, then, that changes in one of the mentioned
dimensions do not turn an object into an image. Variants are
not images of each other: one croissant is not the image of another, a
yellow Ferrari
not of a red one, a polyester version of furniture not of a wooden version,
an bonsai tree not of the normal tree. Neither are transformations
images of the transformed object: the new model of a car is not an image
of the old, a molten bottle not of the standing original, a globe
painted in blue not of the real globe
IMAGES OF TRANSFORMATIONS
Although variants and transformations are not images, the image is nevertheless the natural habitat of transformed objects. That is already
apparent when the artist is out at making a true-to-life duplicate of
a real object: when he does not succeed, he delivers no
duplicate, but a transformation. But it catches the eye when we realize
that most artist are fond of transforming the object that appear in the image,
precisely because they are no longer bound by the laws of the real
world.
Transformations of form can be obtained automatically
- think of the
deformed images of Kertesz -.
but also manually (Salvador Dali, Tony Cragg) or with digital manipulation - in two or three dimensions (3D-printing).
In the image, there is not only deformation of the original, but
also deformation on the level of the medium: just think of the transformation of shadows in cross hatching.
This transformation tends to be overlooked, because the cross-hatching
is read as shading.
Widespread is transformation through change of color, on the
two-dimensional plane (Franz Marc's blue horses) as well as on
three-dimensional volumes (Nike de Saint Phalle, Claes Oldenburg).
The change
of color can be restricted to the medium: in a black-and-white picture,
color is transformed into tone, whereas the viewer does not read the original as
colorless.
Less obvious is the variation of material. On a
two-dimensional plane, the material of the original has to be replaced with a monomaterial medium (paint, ink). In
three-dimensional images, real objects can be introduced (clothes,
weapons, hair, glass for eyes, and what have you), or materials can be
used suggestively as when marble evokes flesh, plants dog hair (Koons'
Puppy), plastic
ceramics (Claes Oldenburg), or plaster canvas (John van Oers' circus
below) or glass (Hans Op de Beeck in Still Life 8, 2011).
When a suggestive medium is used, that has an impact on the appearance of the original, so that it is transformed accordingly
- just think of the difference between a fresco and an oil painting.
Still less evident is the rendering of objects that are made of diverse materials - think of the human body. In expectance of the further development of 3D-printers, neutralization of the materials is an obvious solution: the equivalent of black-and-white is the use of marble, bronze, wood or steel (Oldenburg's clothespins) or glass (Hans Op de Beeck's Vanitas).
We already mentioned that transformations of scale are endemic in the image: think of images of giants and dwarfs, or of the more modest deviations that highlight sexual dimorphism with Ingres:
The scale can also vary on the level of the medium can vary. Although many images have the same scale as the originals - think of the images of de Andrea, Sam Jinks, Maurizio Catellan, or the horses of Berlinde de Bruyckere
More often, the scale is larger or smaller than the size of the originals.
Just like cross-hatchings and black-and-white, also deviations of scale
are mostly overlooked: we do not believe that the person on the passport
photo or the shrunken skull Jivaro is a dwarf, nor that Michelangelo's David, Ron Mueck's baby, giant sculptures of Nero,
Buddha, Jesus are giants. And that holds also for the giant spider of Louise
Bourgeois, the inflatables of Paul McCarthy, the duck of Florentijn Hofman.
THE IMAGE AS A SPECIAL KIND OF TRANSFORMATION
That the image mostly shows transformed originals should not divert our
attention from the fact that the image as such is a transformation
indeed, albeit a transformation of a very special kind: the image is a
sensorily reduced object. Either some sensory dimensions fail - as when
in the mirror we get only the visual, and not the auditory or tactile
dimensions; or when a recording of a voices provides only the auditory,
but not the visual or the tactile appearance of the object.
Or the sensory dimension is absent altogether - as in representations of
the mind.
Although the objects in the image are mostly transformed objects, they
only become images in that the object is deprived of some or all of its
sensory dimensions - when it is sensorily reduced. That is
already apparent from the fact that not all images display objects that
are transformations of form, color, material, position, scale, and
duration: many an image is 'true to nature' - just think of the mirror
image. Variations or transformations without sensory reduction are not images, but
displayed reality.
VARIATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF IMAGES
With the exception of mental representations - images are objects
themselves. And also of these objects, we can make duplicates (reproductions,
prints), or variants and
transformations (pastiches).
Examples of variations of form are all the variants of
Mondrian
on the same basics formula, Lichtenstein's 'translations' in other media
and styles,
Luc Tuymans
painted photographs,...
Examples of variations of color are Albers' 'Grey Instrumentation',
Warhol's Marilyns, and Yves Klein's Nike.
Examples of variations of material are legion with sculptures:
these are
often available in marble and bronze.
Examples of variations of scale are the countless copies of famous
sculptures in tourist shops all over the world, or the magnified anatomic
model of Damien Hirst:
Also mental representations can be varied or transformed - just think of
the natural transformations as a consequence of translation of narrative
literature. (We leave musical variations aside, because they are not
always variations of images: see 'Mimesis
and music')
That there are variations and transformations of images is another
demonstration of the fact that variation or transformation as such does
not suffice to produce an image: the examples above were images before
they were transformed, and that they are variations does not turn them
into images of images: the Mondrians
or de Albers above are just variants of each other.
COMBINATION OF IMAGES, VARIATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
The distinction between images and duplicates, variations and
transformations is obfuscated not only in that it is mostly transformed
objects that appear in the image, and in that images as such as
transformations, albeit of a special kind, but also in that images are
often combined with duplicates, variants, or transformations. That is
the case when dolls are combined with miniature buggies, or in Hans Op
de Beeck's Still Life (8), 2011, where images (bottles imitated in
plaster) and real objects (table and table cloth).
CONCLUSION
There is a difference between images and real objects, also when these
objects are duplicates, variants, or transformations. The art of making
variations or transformations is another art than the art of making
images. The works of Duchamp, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Arman, Yves Klein,
Carl André, Damien Hirst, and Hans Op de Beeck above are real objects,
not images.
© Stefan Beyst, July 2015.
SUMMARY
Many objects come in many exemplars and many versions.
When they are identical, we call them duplicates.
When they differ we call them variants or transformations.
Duplicates, variants, and transformation are not images. They are often
assimilated with images because images tend to show transformed objects
and are transformed - sensorily reduced - objects themselves. With
the exception of mental representations, images are objects that can be
transformed, and hence can be variants or transformations of each other.
Images are often combined with duplicates, variants, and
transformations.
SEARCH THE MISTAKES
For philosophers: 'A Constable painting of Marlborough Castle is more
like any other picture than it is like the Castle, yet it represents the
Castle and not another picture – not even the closest copy'. 'The plain
fact is that a picture, to represent an object, must be a symbol for it,
stand for it, refer to it; and that no degree of resemblance is
sufficient to establish the requisite relationship of reference.
Nor is resemblance necessary for reference; almost anything may stand
for almost anything else. A picture that represents - like a passage
that describes - an object refers to and, more particularly, denotes it.
Denotation is the core of representation and is independent of resemblance'. (Nelson Goodman,
Languages of Art, 1968, p.5).
For artists
and other non-philosophical readers: "By handcrafting all the elements in monochromic grey, you get a kind of
reduction of the information. So when you shape and handcraft things
yourself, avoid the use of ready-made objects, and choose the textures,
colors and skin of the materials yourself, it becomes an overall
sculptural environment. If I would use ready-made seats and tables and
architectural parts, it would become a simulation, like a film set is a
simulation of the real. My work is an evocation or a representation, but
not a simulation. Just like a couple of my large-scale installations
where the fakeness is extremely obvious. This is very important because
when it’s obviously fake, it’s not a simulation but an interpretation of
the real thing. It’s like a painting, if you look at an old landscape
painting and if you accept the proposition of the painter, you can
really mentally wander around in this painted evocation. That’s the
beauty of painting. My root is also in painting. Somehow I like the
evocation of something fictional, but at the same time credible" Hans Op
de Beeck.