Hot Images – mimetic – iconic

Digest of a conference with slide projections in 1992 at the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy in Stockhlom

Hot images shine up and disappear. They are part of the images which enter us regularly. They are hot for some time and cold afterwards. A hot image is obsessive.

Mimetic images seem innocent. They are narrative, they can consist of many elements. On the contrary, iconic images can be dangerous, being a concentrated amalgams of meanings,  compressions of power.

Kurzfassung eines Dia-Vortrags, den ich 1992 in der Bibliothek Nobel der Schwedischen Akademie in Stockholm gehalten habe. Zum Englisch üben.

DIE DIAS:

1. The Aachen Cathedral
2. Robert Indiana, Love Rising, 1968 (in der Neuen Galerie – Sammlung Ludwig Aachen) + Erik Bulatov, Trademark, 1986, beide Sammlung Ludwig

Both Paintings transport “Trademarks” with a double meaning. The golden emblem of the Soviet Communist party put on top of an euphorical sky reproduces the highquality guarantee stamp of the Soviet industry in the Breschnew era and is, appropriated in a contemporary painting, a cynical comment to the products which this industry produces.

Using publicity language in the arts has become internationally common, since the New York artists in the late 50ies developed the strategy. Indiana´s work is based on stamped and stenciledletters, and the love emblem he created became as popular as if it had been developed and distributed by a publicity agency. Painted in black and white in 1968, a year of political uprisings and breaks, the painting is meaningfully dedicated to the death of Martin Luther King.

The Transfer of this strategy took 20 years from New York to Moscow – another  ideological interpretation.