Ways Of Seeing (series 4)

      Images that either try to convince us to believe in or buy something are the images that we see most frequently.  We are so accustomed to this that we barely register the vast majority of these images.  These public images, wherever they  appear, have come to represent freedom of choice and the new exciting “modern” world in which you have the choice to change your life in any way.
The idea of “publicity as a process of manufacturing glamour” explains (among other things) why there is a such a craze for celebrity and gaining your own fifteen minutes of fame by doing such ridiculous things as becoming “Octomom” or appearing on “WifeSwap”.  Publicity perpetuates the belief that you revolutionize your life by buying something.
                                      

     “The happiness of being envied is glamour”.  Publicity is about social relations and depicting other people enjoying “happiness” (as deemed appropriate by the rest of society).  The “absent, unfocused look” of so many models in glamour images appearing in countless fashion magazines is an example of how those who have achieved this supposed “happiness” are blasé and do not care that they have achieved it.
                                     

       Publicity makes the potential client envy his or herself as transformed by the product.  Oil painting and publicity promote the same ideals only the props have changed.  An appreciation for art is to today’s culture what an understanding of the Greek myths and legends was to societies contemporary to oil painting.  Valuing these mediums is a sign of your higher class and appreciation for the “finer things in life”.
                                 

     “Publicity is, in essence nostalgic.  It wants to sell the past to the future.”  Publicity would not work if it used a completely “contemporary language”, it must rely on tradition to appeal to the familiar and known to be superior ideals of individuals in society.
      Color photography works as a foil to oil painting in its own time.  The function of oil painting is to celebrate your current life and status with all of its amenities and luxuries.  Publicity’s function is to make you dissatisfied with your current life and self and to strive to change that reality.  Because self worth is tied to publicity so is a person’s lovability and thus in turn their sexuality.  Essentially the more you can buy the more desirable you will become.
                                  

                                        “The dream is always personal to the dreamer.”
       The right and respect allotted to those in pursuit of happiness or their own “dream” also perpetuates “publicity” and serves to widen the “gap” between happiness and real-life and what publicity promises the buyer and what it actually delivers.