Sontag's Theory Applied to Wall, Tapies, and Goldin
This paper applies Susan Sontag's theoretical framework from On Photography to analyze the relationship between photography and painting across three works: Jeff Wall's A Sudden Gust of Wind (1993), Antoni Tapies' Composition with Figures (1945), and Nan Goldin's Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC (1991). Drawing on Sontag's argument that both mediums produce "mere images of truth" rather than reality itself — shadows in Plato's cave — the paper examines how each artist's personal lens and cultural moment shape the work. The analysis incorporates perspectives from Baudrillard, Benjamin, Barthes, Foucault, and Butler to explore themes of power, gender identity, spiritual alienation, and the mass reproduction of images in the digital age.
- Sontag's Theoretical Framework: Sontag's cave metaphor and the artist's lens
- Jeff Wall and A Sudden Gust of Wind: Wall's collage photograph as cultural shadow
- Antoni Tapies and Composition with Figures: Tapies' symbolist painting of spiritual conflict
- Nan Goldin and Misty and Jimmy Paulette: Goldin's defiant portrait of drag queens
- Gender, Culture, and the Reality Behind the Image: Butler, Bernays, and gender identity context
- Conclusion: Art as invitation to examine underlying reality
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors every artwork analysis firmly in Sontag's central metaphor — Plato's cave — returning to it consistently rather than treating it as a one-time reference point.
- It builds theoretical complexity by layering additional thinkers (Baudrillard, Benjamin, Barthes, Butler, Foucault) without losing sight of the Sontag framework that structures the argument.
- The Goldin section moves beyond formal analysis into historical and social context — connecting advertising history, the feminist movement, and Butler's gender theory — demonstrating how Sontag's call to look "behind the work" is enacted in practice.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies applied theoretical analysis: it introduces a single theoretical framework (Sontag's On Photography), explains its core claims, and then applies those claims systematically to three distinct artworks across two mediums. This structure — framework first, then case-by-case application — is a standard and effective approach in art history and cultural studies essays at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction establishing Sontag's thesis and naming the three works under discussion. A dedicated section elaborates the theoretical framework, including the Plato's cave metaphor and Shakespeare's mirror analogy. Three analytical sections follow — one for each artwork — each connecting the work to Sontag's argument. The Goldin section expands into broader cultural and gender theory. A brief conclusion returns to the overarching claim that art invites viewers to look beyond the image toward underlying reality.
Sontag's Theoretical Framework
The relationship between photography and painting, according to Susan Sontag, is that neither medium truly "captures" the world it attempts to depict. Rather, each captures a perspective, while reality remains elusive. Both painting and photography are projections of the artist's viewpoint, filtered through a particular zeitgeist — and it is that zeitgeist which needs to be interpreted at root, not the painting or the picture itself. These mediums are merely means of identifying the spirit or ideology of a particular culture in a particular time and place.1 This paper uses Sontag's theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between photography and painting by examining three different works: A Sudden Gust of Wind (1993), photographed by Jeff Wall; Composition with Figures (1945), painted by Antoni Tapies; and Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC (1991), photographed by Nan Goldin.
To begin, it is essential to understand Sontag's theory. While painting and photography are both visual mediums that reflect the world around us, artistic expression first passes through the head, eyes, ears, and heart of the artist — each of which contains its own lens. In a painting there is a figurative "lens" being used; in a photograph there is a double "lens" — the camera lens and the photographer's own interior lens that frames his or her worldview. Thus, both artists and both mediums are produced through the personal lens or viewpoint of the creator. As Shakespeare notes in Hamlet, art acts as a mirror to reality.2 The effort should, on an objective level, reflect nature to some degree — yet even that objective interpretation remains subject to the subjective viewpoints of both the artist and the viewer.
This is precisely what Sontag focuses on when she asserts that "humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth."3 Both painting and photography are "mere images of the truth" — they are not truth or reality in themselves, nor do they interact on any pure level with reality. They are interpretations or reflections — like the shadows in Plato's cave that the prisoners mistake for reality because they are ignorant of the actual world outside the cave that produces those shadows. Sontag's argument is that while art may be entertaining, the works themselves are not what should be analyzed; rather, it is the reality — the culture, the mindset, the spirit of the times — that produced these "shadows."
Whether it is Wall's Gust of Wind, Tapies' Composition, or Goldin's Misty and Jimmy, the approach should therefore be the same: these are mere shadows passing for reality, and there is a higher or separate reality responsible for producing each one. That, essentially, is the relationship between painting and photography according to Sontag.
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