Sontag's Theory Applied to Wall, Tapies, and Goldin

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.

Jeff Wall and A Sudden Gust of Wind

Wall's A Sudden Gust of Wind is a photographic collage — Wall used separate images, cut them apart, and pasted them together to create the effect he was after. This work may be examined using Sontag's theory by looking at the world in which Wall created it. Wall himself was a painter before he became a photographer, and he has indicated that both mediums, while unique, are essentially after the same thing in their own way: reality.⁴ Yet Sontag would remind us that the "reality" is not the image itself but the world that allows the image to be produced.

A Sudden Gust of Wind shows various figures reacting to a gust of wind as it scatters one person's papers across a field.⁵ The image is arresting because of its narrative quality: it catches the viewer in medias res — in the middle of the action. The scene depicts the lives of ordinary, unsuspecting citizens having their orderly lives (they walk in a straight, single-file line) disturbed by nature — by reality. The wind blows the papers everywhere, and the flat horizon amplifies the chaos of the wind-blown pages as they scatter in every direction. The characters, staged with precision for the camera, react as actors would to an event unfolding before them: their expressions and gestures convey surprise, shock, fear, and helplessness. As Baudrillard would observe, the image shows "a radically non-objective world" in the sense that it is both a manufactured image produced through collage and a representation of the personal or subjective experiences of the characters in the frame.⁶ Wall photographs and edits an image to convey a personal feeling — there is nothing documentary about the photograph.

The work is indicative, as Sontag's theory would show, of a culture that feels the need to remind itself of its fragility — its being on the verge of catastrophe as it mechanically moves forward without considering what might happen when reality reasserts itself. Interestingly, Wall's photograph illustrates the essence of Sontag's main thesis when she writes that "the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads — as an anthology of images."⁷ Sontag argues that this grandiosity is a false sense of security, for it is not reality that is being contained but rather shadows and images — falsehoods. This same idea is conveyed in Wall's photograph: reality (the gust of wind) comes along and scatters the "ideas" out of the hands of the individual in the frame. What one thought one possessed is now gone; the collection of papers (like Sontag's catalogue of images that one collects) was not reality. Reality is what blew them away.

Sontag continues, stating that "to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed."⁸ In this sense, Wall takes what is not his — a scene choreographed in reality — and seals it in a box (the frame), isolating it from its context. Outside that context, the photograph adopts a new meaning with its own narrative — and, like a book, it can be collected and stored on a shelf or hung on a wall. A Wall on a wall: the surrealism of the expression underscores Sontag's point that the image itself is not reality, and that the narrative it conveys has more to do with the artist's outlook, as situated within his culture, than with the actual reality photographed on that day.

Sontag's theory holds that art, any kind of art, "means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge — and, therefore, like power."⁹ Thus the relationship between photography and painting could be described as a relationship of power. Both mediums are equally capable of producing that feeling, as can be seen in Tapies' Composition. In the Digital Age, the ability to mass-produce images — including reproductions of paintings — makes both mediums virtually equal in what Walter Benjamin calls "presence in time and space": viewing art is no longer a matter of being physically present before it at a given moment.¹⁰ The Internet makes all things immediately available — one simply types in Wall's Gust of Wind or Tapies' Composition and up it comes. Art is immediate; it is stored in the cloud. But as Sontag insists, it is not reality.

Antoni Tapies and Composition with Figures

Tapies' Composition with Figures depicts an androgynous figure at the center of the canvas, hedged in on either side by anonymous twins. Above the nameless central figure is a symbolic but abstract form — a bird, a dove, a small person? Conventional religious allegory would suggest a bird, a symbol of the Holy Ghost, whose spiritual purity radiates outward in the form of yellow light. The two flanking figures reverently bow their heads and close their eyes as though in prayer with the Spirit. Yet the central figure's eyes are open, and the face expresses fear, worry, concern, and even dread. The source of light falls behind the central figure, leaving him or her more in shadow than in light. The heads of the two flanking figures reflect some of that light, and as they sit somewhat higher than the central figure they project a condescending tone, as though their spirituality were dwarfing the recipient of the gift of light. The light does not appear to be reaching its intended recipient — perhaps it is being absorbed by the "angels" on the left and right. Their satisfied expressions contrast with the unfulfilled expression of the central figure and suggest a conflict between the main subject and the light brought by the Holy Spirit.

Something stands in the way, whether the two attendants or some psychological or spiritual obstacle within the central figure that blocks out the light. This obstacle echoes the dread found in Munch, while the light echoes Van Gogh: both earlier artists made use of impasto strokes, and the same technique is evident in Tapies' work.¹¹ The subject, however, is far more modern in that the inner conflict is rendered explicitly, expressed in symbolic terms.¹²

Tapies blends the symbolist style with abstraction to focus entirely on action rather than character. The figures are not the heart of the narrative — the action is. That action conveys spiritual exhaustion or spiritual loss. The personal conflict of the central character is unspecified, as the subject is rendered in abstract and symbolist form: the viewer does not even know the individual's gender. What drives the painting's narrative is the dissemination of light and the overbearing smugness of the "light-grabbers," whose faces press close to the central figure and seem to judge him or her for failing to receive the light. The frustration apparent on the central figure's face is the most palpable emotion in the work, indicating that this frustration is the true subject — the viewer is meant to feel it.

Munch's work was influenced by the Post-Impressionists, and the exploration of psychological states in Munch is similar to what Tapies undertakes in Composition. Munch's The Scream (1893) and Dance of Life (1900), for instance, both offer vibrant depictions of an unhealthy inner state. In The Scream, the central figure is in a state of mental anguish whose origins are unknown — just as in Tapies' Composition, the reasons are not necessarily what matters. What the viewer witnesses is not reality but an expression of the artist's feeling and perspective. Tapies depicts a world in which religion and spirituality become oppressive through "leaders" who insist on interposing themselves between the Spirit and the individual. Sontag would suggest that viewers can certainly dwell upon the work, but she would also insist that the reality of the problem needs to be examined beyond the canvas — dealt with in reality, not in a museum or in one's thoughts alone.

As Sontag notes, "What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings."¹³ Tapies' painting is thus an interpretation of reality. A photograph such as one by Nan Goldin, Sontag suggests, does "not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."¹⁴ Here Sontag's theory wavers slightly, since both painting and photography are art forms that, as Wall suggests, attempt to give an interpretation. In Goldin's photograph, it is clear that the viewer sees the world from Goldin's perspective alone — she essentially dares the viewer to look through her eyes. The photograph is an invitation to know the world beyond it, and Sontag would surely concede the point, as would Foucault, who views both mediums as art forms that do not necessarily attempt to capture reality — especially outside the documentary genre. Instead they can be representational, interpretive, and inviting.¹⁵

Conclusion

Painting and photography deliver a reflection of reality — but that reality is determined through the lens of both the painter's eye and the photographer's camera. It is not reality itself, but an interpretation of it — or, in the case of photography (as Sontag would say), a miniature of it. There remains for the viewer a need to question what reality actually is, because that is the ultimate purpose of art regardless of medium. The purpose, as Shakespeare acknowledged, was for those in the audience to see afresh, to see anew. That is why artists do what they do. But there is still work to be done once the art is produced. The viewer cannot be content with the image alone, as though that were sufficient. As Sontag asserts, one must dig even more deeply and look behind the work to see the actual world.

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