Art as

Persuasion

“art is not a mirror to reflect

reality, but a hammer with
which to shape it”
Berthold Brecht
Art is an overlooked form
of persuasion
 Persuasion’s traditional focus
has been on oral and/or textual
messages
 emphasis is on persuasion within
the “world of words”
 the role of images in general, and
art in particular, has been neglected
The traditional
“layperson’s” view of art
 Art is created for
“art’s sake”
 Representational
view of art—art
seeks to re-create
or imitate reality
Dogs playing poker—kitsch at its
 Romanticism—art finest
seeks to idealize or
romanticize reality
 Decorative
function—art needs
to match the sofa, Elvis on velvet—the
drapes, etc. King, and bad taste, live
on
Thomas Kinkade,
“Seaside Hideaway”—
mall art
An enlightened view of art
 Art serves more
than an aesthetic
or decorative
function
 Just as
“rhetoric” is
more than mere
eloquence
 Just as novels
can provide
more than mere
entertainment
Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” which has been described
 Artists express as “the highest achievement in modernist political
their opinions in painting” (Clark, 1997), is a symbolic indictment of
and through their man’s cruelty to man during the Spanish civil war.
work
 Art serves social
and political ends
Gass & Seiter’s view
 The proper study of
the “art of
persuasion” should
include art as a form
of persuasion.
 Art satisfies the major
requirements for
persuasion:
 Intentionality Tracy Emin, “My Bed”
 Effects postmodern feminist art

 Symbolic action
 Free
choice/conscious
awareness
Controversial art
 Art can create
controversy, conflict, and
even violence
 The cover of the New
Yorker depicted the
Obamas as Muslim
extremists
 Sean Delonis cartoon in
the New York Post
carried racial undertones
More controversial art
Blessed Art Thou,
by Kate Kretz

My Sweet Lord, byCosimo Cavallero

Monument to
Pro-Life: The
Birth of Sean
Preston, by
Daniel
Edward’s
Napalm, by Banksy
Art shines a spotlight on
society
Daniel Edwards’
Octo Mom

Chris Ofili’s Virgin Mary

Van Thanh Rudd

Art as a political tool of
governments
 Greek friezes and frescoes
taught citizens moral
lessons involving Greek
gods and Greek mythology.
 The Catholic church
commissioned thousands “Roses for Stalin”
of works of art to promote
Catholicism
 Politicized art: totalitarian
governments used art to
further the ends of the state
 The doctrine of “Socialist
realism” dedicated members of the
proletariat work happily during
the industrial age
Chinese revolutionary art
 Under Mao, art’s
purpose was to
promote
communist
ideology
 Poster art deified
Chairman Mao
 Poster art
promoted the
ideals of the
cultural
revolution
Art directed against
governments
 Eugene Delacroix’s, “Liberty
Leading the People,”(1830) both
endorses and romanticizes the
French revolution.
 Picasso’s “Guernica” exposes
the horrors of war
 Diego Rivera’s murals depicted
the subjugation of the peasant
class
 Edvuard Munch’s “The Scream”
(1893) expresses a mixture of
anxiety, fear and dread toward
society
 Guerilla street artist “Banksy”
uses stencils to offer social
commentary
public art controversies
 Recent social
controversies
demonstrate the
persuasive potential of
art
 A proposal to build a
monument to the
firefighters at ground
zero was scrapped after
a feud erupted over The “falling woman”
what race the statue, honoring those
firefighters should be. who jumped to their
deaths from the twin
 Post 9-11: The “Falling towers on Sept. 11,
Woman” statue was generated so much
displayed for only a few public outcry that it was
never put on display
days
Art with a social
conscience
 Aschcroft Versus Lady Justice
 John Ashcroft’s covered the bare breasts
of the Majesty of Justice (known as
Minnie Lou) in the Great Hall of the
Justice department
 Aschroft said he wasn’t comfortable
being photographed at press
conferences in front of the her large, Three boobs in this picture?
aluminum breasts
 The new, blue velvet drapes cost $8,000
 Dread Scott Tyler and the
American Flag
 A Republican led group filed a lawsuit to
ban Dread Scott Tyler’s display, “What is
the Proper Way to Display the U.S.
Flag?”
Tyler’s “What is the Proper way to
 The Judge dismissed the suit reminding Display the American Flag” on display at
the court works of art are protected the School of The Art Institute of Chicago
under the First Amendment.
Art as a form of
consciousness raising
 The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)
uses mural to address community issues, foster cross-
cultural understanding, and promote civic dialogue
Art as an instrument for
social change
 “Art has long been a powerful weapon in the
activist's arsenal.” (Fred Baerkircher)
 Artists use art to critique society and promote
social change
 Artists use art to engage the public and
increase public awareness of social issues

Activists who belong The Guerilla Girls seek to change the

to the “Art and patriarchal nature of the art world
revolution project”
protest multinational
corporations and the
WTO through
performance art
Participation through
interpretation
 Participation through
interpretation
 observers reflect on what an
exhibit means or what the artist
is trying to say.
 In their effort to understand the
exhibit viewers engage in active Suzanne Lacy, “Three weeks in
May” (1977)
thinking or central processing
 Active participation
(increasing involvement)
 observers don’t just observe
 they become part of the art
 Peggy Diggs “Domestic
Violence Milk Carton Project” Barbara Donachy, “Amber
Waves of Grain”
Participatory art
 Shoot an Iraqi: Wafaa
Bilal lived in a room for
30 while Web viewers
were allowed to shoot
him via a remote-
controlled paint gun.
 Over 60,000 shots were
fired by people from over
100 countries.
Art as consciousness
raising--continued
 The AIDS memorial quilt,
a.k.a. the NAMES project
 the largest community art
project in the world
 hand-sewn folk art panels
commemorate those who
have died of AIDS
 the quilt is designed to “There was hope we could beat
the disease by using the quilt
increase awareness and as a symbol of solidarity, of
decrease homophobia family and community; there
 each panel puts a human was hope that we could make a
movement that would welcome
face on the grim statistics people—men and women, gay
 traveling exhibits take the and straight, of every age,
race, faith, and background”
quilt to the people (Cleve Jones, co-founder of the
NAMES project).
art as political activism

 Fernando Botero
depicted the torture
and abuse of
prisoners at Abu
Ghraib.
How art persuades--
iconicity
 Images stand for and resemble
the things they represent
 Images can sum up a concept: Assorted icons
 the “trash can” icon in Windows,
female and male silhouettes on a
restroom door
 Paintings of portraits,
landscapes, and still life are The bald eagle as an
iconic representations of icon for America

people, places, and things An icon for

ignoring a
problem
Iconicity--continued
 Iconic art needn’t be
accurate, objective
 Iconic art can glamorize,
romanticize, stereotype,
vilify
 Example: political caricatures
 Example: paintings of the
crucifixion or the last supper
 Example: Medieval paintings
as allegories
 Icons can evoke emotional
responses in receivers
iconicity in political
cartoons
 Pinocchio’s long
nose is an iconic
representation lf
lying
 Depicting a
politician with a
long nose makes
the visual claim
that the politician
is a liar.
Appropriating corporate
icons
 Health Gap is an activist group
seeking increased awareness
and funding for HIV/AIDS in
Africa
 Coca Cola is the largest private
sector employer in Africa, but
only 1.5% of Coke’s workers are
eligible for HIV/AIDS drugs
 Controversial art transforms a
passive viewer into an active
thinker
 may increase central processing
 may trigger cognitive dissonance
Indexicality in Goya’s art
• Goya’s, “The Third May”
(1808) depicts Spanish
partisans, arms
outstretched, being
ruthlessly gunned down
by Napoleon's troops
• Notice: the painting
offers visual “proof” that
the atrocity took place.
Indexicality--continued
The Cottingly
 The documentary aspect Fairies: In 1916
Frances
of images can be Griffiths and
misleading Elsie Wright,
perpetrated a
 Art can serve up hoax involving
photos taken
inaccurate records of with fairies.
events
 Greek sculptures idealized
the human body
 Photographs can be
airbrushed or digitally
altered
When Time magazine reproduced O.J.
Simpson’s picture on its cover, the image
was darkened to make him appear more
sinister and menacing
The camera always lies: the
myth of photographic
objectivity
 April 2, 2003: Brian Walski, a photographer for the L.A.
Times, digitally “doctored” a photograph of a British
soldier guarding civilians. The photo was published on
the front page of the L.A. Times
 The photo, shown below, is actually a composite of the
two separate photos on the right.
 Walski was fired because "Times policy forbids altering
the content of news photographs."
The camera always lies

 More digital editing

You can’t trust what you
can see…
 In the digital age, images are
malleable, changeable, fluid. In
movies, advertisements, TV shows,
magazines, we are constantly
exposed to images created or altered
by computers.
 “photography is highly interpretive,
ambiguous, culturally specific, and
heavily dependent upon
contextualization by text and layout.“
 Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Soon after 9/11, a camera was
Image: The Coming “found” on the sidewalk that
happened to survive the collapse of
Revolution in Photography, the Twin Towers. When the film was
New York: Aperture, 1990, 81. developed, it revealed a tourist in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
The picture is a fake.
How art persuades—
syntactic indeterminacy
 Images, unlike language,
lack logical operators
 Images can’t convey:
 cause-effect relationships
 if-then relationships
 either-or relationships
 Images can convey
Joe Rosenthal’s photo of
 spatial relationships: higher, Iwo Jima, 1945
lower, bigger, smaller
 chronological relationships:
before, after, the passage of
time
 analogies or comparisons
Tom Franklin’s photo
of Ground zero, Sept.
11, 2001
But syntactic indeterminacy
can be an advantage
 Images can equate one
thing with another via
associations
 The associations may be
subtle or obvious
syntactic indeterminacy--
continued
 Images as narratives: panels from Diego Rivera’s “History of Mexico,”
1929-35 tell a story about the ongoing conquest and subjugation of the
peasants
In conclusion
 Art can be controversial
 It can challenge the existing social
order.
 It can make people angry. It can
offend.
 It can heighten people’s awareness.
 It can make people question their
assumptions. It can change the way
they see things.
 It can make them reconsider their
assumptions.
 In so doing, art persuades.