Art is a lie?

Have you ever tried looking at the world through the lenses of a camera? The world on the other side of the lens is more often than not a splitting image of the one we are in. In fact, many people feel that the camera is incapable of lying to us, as it can only capture the image of whatever we place in front of it.  What we see is what we get.

Or is it…?

Pablo Picasso once said that ‘Art is a lie that brings us nearer to the truth’. With photography now readily being accepted in the mismatched family of arts, it is of little surprise that this claim applies to photography as well. As such this means that we are assuming first, art, and in association, photography is a lie and as such, it brings us closer to the truth. 

  Let us begin our journey into the esoteric discipline of epistemology by exploring the notion of art being a lie.

  With many definitions for ‘lie’, the most suitable one given the context would probably be ‘incongruence with reality’. Art can be considered a lie as art is more often than not, the depiction of a section of reality without a given context; this is likely due to the fact that the general goal of artists is not to faithfully represent reality or truth but to express and or elicit certain thoughts and ideas, which at times results in art being prone to misinterpretation, but it is not merely the actual visual aspect in which we are discussing, as one may argue that whilst abstract art are lies, still-life paintings are not; but the human intention level. This is especially true in conjunction to photography.

  Take for example, the photograph a woman slapping a man. Based on the photograph, we can be sure that the man was slapped as the action is factual; yet, we cannot discern of the photo depicts spousal abuse, or if the man had said something offending to deserve the violent action. Any speculations based on the photo are just that, speculations, unless we know the human intention behind it. The speculations of the photo can easily be confirmed if the photo was captioned ‘man disrespecting woman’, even then, the photo’s potential for misinterpretation are large and may leave many to conceive untrue conceptions that are incongruent with reality. In this respect, art can therefore be asserted as a lie. There is however a valid argument to this concept.

  Most of us should not be unfamiliar with the notion of a passport, in fact, most, if not all of us owns one. Now the most important element in this little book is no doubt the two by two inch mug shot of us usually looking none the better. Semiotics expert, Winfred Noth, in his article, listed this small photo as a ‘pertinent example’ of photographs ability to convey truth, from a legal point of view as the ‘legal status of a passport photo as a document for establishing the real identity of the person presenting the passport to the authorities’1 In this respect, we can hardly argue that photographs lie.

  Thus the issue at hand is not if art is or is not a lie but whether or not it is but rather if it was intended to be one. In essence, it all boils down to human intention; the intention of the artist and the intention of the audience that bestows context upon a piece of art. Revisiting the passport example, the photographer of the photograph intentionally made the mug shot as congruent with reality and possible whereas a food photographer will intentionally make the subject of a photo shoot as appealing as possible even at the cost of not faithfully representing reality. It is then up to the audience to interpret the photographs and decide if it is a lie from their perspectives, typically in four ways: with emphasis on the artist, emphasis on the artwork itself, emphasis on the context of the natural or society and emphasis on the knowledge community. Take for example monochromatic photographs, we can with emphasis on the photograph itself, say that visually, it is a lie as reality is not black and white, yet assuming that the photographer intended for it to depict the world through the eyes of a color blind individual, then is the picture, given such context, not telling the truth? Hence on the topic of art being a lie, to quote semiotics researcher Umberto Eco, ‘If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth.’2 Art is a lie and therefore the truth.

  Our next destination on this epistemic journey is between the bearings of truth and art. Does art bring us closer to the truth?

We often confuse the concept of being closer to truth as knowing the truth, but the two are not one and the same. On the topic of truth, Truth has been defined as ‘that which is true, genuine, sincere or factual’3. In all honesty however, this definition is about as informative as saying ‘the truth is the truth’. Hence what I personally believe would be a more appropriate definition for truth would be the opposite of a lie, ‘correspondence to reality’4.

  As we have explored earlier, it can be agreed upon that the ultimate goal of art of any sort is to inspire; and it is precisely this inspiration that art generates that leads us nearer to the truth because the first step towards truth is inevitably, awareness.

  A Pulitzer Prize winning photograph really ought not to be so hauntingly thought-provoking, yet Kevin Carter’s Stricken child crawling towards a food camp was just that. Depicting a hunger stricken child feebly attempting to crawl towards somewhere, with a vulture behind awaiting the child’s inevitable death as its next meal, this photograph makes its audience dreadfully aware of the cruelty in life. At this juncture, it would be worth bringing back the four aspects in which one can evaluate art. With cruelty as the epitome of the photograph, let us attempt to evaluate the photo using two of these aspects. 

  In context of the photographer, it is known that the release of this photograph sprouted much controversy as Carter had ‘abandoned’ the child after the photograph was taken and months later, he had committed suicide. Some speculate that Carter had intentionally created the scene by placing a vulture behind the child, while others assume that the guilt of not helping the child scarred him, both of which lead to his suicide. Setting aside the truth of the speculations, these interpretations clearly reminds us of cruelty within ourselves, just as the St. Petersburg Times commented on Carter The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.’5 If we focus on the implications of society and natural world of the photograph, it inspires yet another set of awareness. To us, the act of the vulture preying on a suffering child seems mortifying yet to the vulture it cares not if its prey is a young child so long as its next meal is assured. This implication makes all who sets eyes upon this photograph acutely aware that nature is ruthless and more importantly inspires us to wonder if despite our talk of morals and ethics, our society too is a dog eats dog world? 

  Having said all that, you will notice that depending of the perspective we choose to approach the photograph, we will come up with varying conclusions that are all tied to the same fundamental concept of ‘cruelty’. Assuming that the truth in this case is ‘cruelty of life’, do these disparities mean that there is more than one truth? Generally, we can all agree that reality is composed of countless complicated elements and therefore has many dimensions to it. Thus, understanding the reality would mean extensive understanding of every aspect of this complication. This accounts for the disparities as the same notions can exist and be interpreted on a multitude of levels and contexts. Hence, the different aspects we choose to evaluate the photograph in helps us understand a certain aspect of reality thereby bringing closer to the truth. In short, art inspires awareness which promotes thought process thus leads us towards the truth. Of course, you can argue that false thoughts may be inspired; however, we cannot fully comprehend the truth until we have fully explored the false, no?

  We are now reaching the end of our epistemic journey, and so to conclude it all, let us once again bring Picasso back into the picture.

  Picasso is renowned for being one of the pioneers of cubism, an art form that ‘seeks to present different angles of an object or scenery at the same time through the use of cubic shapes’6, in other words presenting many perspectives simultaneously. Curious enough, we too have more or less established that whether or not art is a lie is based on perspectives, art bringing us closer to the truth is also based on perspectives and even the truth itself can be portrayed in many perspectives. It is common knowledge that in the epistemic world, truth is fickle and elusive, and so perhaps the ultimate answer in our tedious attempts to quench our thirst of the absolute truth just may be as Picasso suggests through this quote, is perspectives. After all, reality just may be, as Friedrich Nietzsche describes, ‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’7   



Citations:

1.          Nöth, W. (1991). Handbook of semiotics. The Semiotic Review of Books, 3, 6-7.

2.          Umberto, E. (1976). A Theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

3.          Martin Manser, Megan Thomson (Ed.). (1995) Times-Chambers Dictionary (pg 1312, 1st ed.). Singapore: Times Press.

4.          Tomkinson, J.L. (2008). The Enterprise of knowledge. Athens, Greece: Anagnosis.

5.          The Life and Death of Kevin Carter. (1994). Time.com. Retrieved 9.30pm, Aug 7 2010 from

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981431-6,00.html

6.          Warncke, C. (2006). Pablo picasso. Los Angeles, USA: Taschen.

7.          Reality Quotes. (2010). Quotegarden.com. Retrieved 10:15pm, Aug 7 2010 from http://www.quotegarden.com/reality.html