Artworks and the Paradoxes of Media-Transmitted Reality

Christiane  Wagner

doi:10.25038/am.v0i20.324

Authors

Christiane Wagner

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.324

Keywords:

digital narratives, global image impact, media convergence, transformation processes, visual culture, political images

Abstract

This article analyzes selected classic art that influences contemporary images. The basis of this study is an analysis of the transformation of long-established and internationally-recognized artwork through digital technology and social media. This investigation also highlights the symbolic meaning behind the representation and reproduction of media images concerning the political impact of global visual culture.

Visual culture consists of images of reality that are constantly being reconfigured. Thus, the visual arts develop consensually, based on democratic ideals and freedom of expression. Nonetheless, transgression occurs due to a lack of universal reference criteria and a dissolution of common human values. This situation explains why visual culture is often misunderstood and remains unassimilated. In addition, actual tragedies in life even become confused with art due to the fact that art so often closely imitates reality.

Visual arts, a significant area of concern for media outlets, involves deciphering the meaning of images that have been manipulated and instrumentalized according to particular political and ideological interests. The objective of the current proposal is to help people discern fact from fiction and to look at and understand society’s emergence and relationship to democracy. Therefore, visual arts will be analyzed through a historical and iconological lens to investigate it as a form of communication and current social effects of political images.

Finally, it is also considered the artifice of images and the absolute reference values of human existence on visual arts in the face of technological progress and their effects on social networks.

Article received: May 14, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Christiane Wagner

The University of Campinas, São Paulo
Brazil

Christiane Wagner, Visiting Professor of Aesthetics and Sciences of Communication, Postdoc, UNICAMP, (2014–2018). Ph.D. in Sciences of Art and Aesthetics, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (First Class Honours Thesis, 2013). She attended the Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt, graduated at the College of Fine Arts, São Paulo. Master in Sciences of Communication and Ph.D. in Design and Architecture, University of São Paulo. Recent publications: Aesthetic Experience: Visual Culture as the Masterpiece of Nonhumanity, On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, Gießen, 2016; Poïésis: entre la raison et la sensibilité. Les nouveaux médiums de l’art, French Journal for Media Research, Toulouse, 2017; Rationality: Beyond Aesthetics and Communication. 1st International e-Conference on Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Belgrade, 2018. Art and Perfect Illusion: From Architecture to Cinema. On the Era of Technological Convergence. “Image Evolution. Technological Transformations of Visual Media Culture”. Yearbook of Moving Image Studies, 38-61. Marburg: Büchner, 2018.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.324 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.324