The image in a critical state

Art critic Annie Lebrun's reflection on the image, its status, its role and its challenges in the digital age starts from a worrying observation shared with her co-author of "Ceci tuera cela", the philosopher Juri Armanda. Interviewed by Beaux-Arts, the curator of the mythical exhibition "Sade - Attacking the Sun" goes so far as to assert without the slightest nuance: "The number has penetrated the image to empty it of its meaning, its content, its being. And it is not a question here of finding that this is nicely said in order to better bury the debate and move on to something more entertaining. And more digital.

Annie Lebrun is not giving up. She wants to get to the bone. With the determination of a pit bull playing the saint-bernard of art. Her critique of the digital world is different from all the others in that it aims to show that everything today contributes to reducing the image to an object of calculation.

It is this new fact that characterises the art of our time, where capital and technology are one. The main lever of this revolution lies in the way in which the instantaneous reproduction and distribution of images affects the conditions and even the very vocation of artistic production. The influence of smartphones on brushes, chisels and other lenses.

First impact: the image is now subject to the "dictatorship of visibility".  It is now more a question of showing oneself than of showing something. Until no more trains enter the station in La Ciotat. The value of an image, it's true, is nowadays summed up by the number of views it gets on the networks. This score is its message. The case of Banksy's Love is in the bin therefore appears to be a "founding moment that consecrates the equivalence of the image and money". It is more profitable to destroy a work of art than to sell it, with the help of notoriety. A strange kind of action painting!

Annie Le Brun's assessment. We were lookers, now we are followers. Indifferent to the background that could speak to us, we prefer the hollow images that are so popular and teach us what we already know. A first-class burial for the imagination. Worse still: in this new economy of the gaze, every image becomes both an object of profit and a means of control. Aren't images, vectors of our collective myths, looking at us all as we are? Yes, they do. All you have to do is integrate an eye tracking device

Photo: Annie Le Brun - Juri Armanda This will kill that - Essays Stock