Baudrillard on Image or Illusion - Essay Example

Baudrillard on Image, Illusion Our modern society is obsessed with the image in many different ways. The more our technology has progressed, the more we have found ways in which to create images in ways that are indiscernible from reality. Special effects in movies are defining the way that we view cinema, and televisions are built in such a way as to diminish the obviousness of watching an image on a screen. In other words, they are hoping to appear indecipherable from reality. The perfection of the image to some might be seen by some to be indicative of our progress, though there obviously are other ways to view this tendency. One person who concerned himself with this tendency to create an indecipherable image was the theorist Baudrillard. To state it succinctly, Baudrillard was concerned with our modern reality becoming a simulation, and that our illusion was coming too close to reality. To expand on that statement, Baudrillard’s view of the way meaning is constructed needs to be explained. If, for example, we are to say we know the definition of the word ‘hard,’ we use other words to represent the definition. We can understand these words through these words, but we also understand the definition of a word by what it is not. When we say something is hard, we are also saying that something is not soft. When we say something is a towel, we are also at the same time stating that it is not a blanket, a car, a computer, or a piece of paper. There are, of course, different ways to approach defining a word, and these myriad ways form an interconnected web of meaning, both defining what a word is and what a word is not. A more extreme version of this states that it is entirely though difference, by defining what a word is not, that we develop these webs. It is through these webs of meaning that we come to understand our connection to reality. Baudrillard was concerned that our modern society tries to hard to understand reality, and because we can only know reality through these webs of meaning, we cannot actually come to understand reality fully, and any thinking that we have come to a better understanding of reality is false and forces us into a simulated version of reality. As mentioned, the way we understand words, and by extension reality is through these webs of meaning. The question then, of course, is to then attempt to describe how we attempt to understand artistic endeavors, which are in a different way webs of meaning that people make. A painting is not the same sort of a concept as a painting. A word will attempt to define a single concept and have a single meaning. It does not matter that this is not what actually takes place; the intent of language and of a particular word is to relay a particular meaning. A work of art, or a painting to be specific, does not attempt to relay one particular meaning. There is not one single web around which the core, actual meaning of a painting is centered. A word can have a web of meaning without a person experiencing it in order to give it some sort of meaning. More specifically, a word does not have an entirely new meaning for every person who experiences the word. There is obviously some difference in meanings that people bring to a word, yet it is not nearly the same as with a work of art. A work of art has a new meaning for every single person who experiences that piece of art. The piece of art can also be made of words as well, and we still relate to and give meaning to a piece of art constructed of words differently than we do with just words. We can now discuss more in depth the idea that works of art are losing their power when we attempt to imbue them with too much reality. In reference to works of art, Baudrillard discusses the terms illusion and image. To Baudrillard, the reason an image is powerful is because, when viewing it, we are aware that it is an image and not reality: “The closer to reality an image is, the less powerful it becomes”1 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Objects, Images and the Possibility of Aesthetic Illusion’, in Nicholas Zurbrugg (ed.), Jean Baudrillard – Art and Artefact, London, Sage Publications, 1997, pp. 7-18. . This is because, in part, we are able to give a piece of art our own meaning. Though we are reliant upon words to describe to ourselves how we view the meaning of an image, we still aren’t reliant upon other people to develop our own thoughts on the meaning of an image. Because of this, in a way we can consider an image to be more real than reality. However, when we attempt to make an image indecipherable from reality, we once again begin to lose the meaning and the power of the meaning that the image held because it is aligning itself too closely with reality, thought the reason aren’t simple. Read More