questions

In Empire, Warhol creates a film that has many similar characteristics to painting. He lowers the frame frequency so that everything happens slowly. Also, he gives only one point of view to the camera. The audience doesn’t have the benefit of seeing the camera move in time, just as they don’t have the benefit of seeing a painter’s point of view move when viewing a single painting. In making this film similar, but not exactly like a painting, is Warhol trying to show how similar painting is to film? Or is he trying to accentuate the differences between the two?

Ultimately, painting cannot show the passage of time. Warhol accentuates that film can show the passage of time by adding a level of strangeness to the way time passes in Empire. Warhol slows down his film, but the film still shows the passage of time. In slowing down the film, Warhol causes the passage of time in the film to be alien to what the audience is used to. The audience notices the film is too slow, and thus their attention is drawn to the passage of time. Because the film is so long and stagnant, the audience might view it as a painting. A member of the audience could walk up to the picture, look at it for a time, see the same point of view, and then walk away. That person could even return later without there being a huge change in the image on screen. This person, however, would be able to see tiny movements indicating the passage of time, and be reminded that the film isn’t really a painting. All of this accentuates painting’s inability to portray the passage of time, and thus a fundamental difference between painting and film.


Reijnders states, “since we see the light through machines, it seems beyond the human, even immortal.” Machines are a man-made creation portraying light, just as a painting is a man-made creation portraying light. What is it specifically that digital lighting gives to art that makes the art seem more immortal?

The main difference is in the process of the light portrayal. In painting, the picture is man-made. In the image, however, the light that falls on the figures created usually comes from a natural source. The process of the creation of light is not examined by the painter, instead the painter manipulates preexisting light to fit his ends. The light in TV screens is, in a sense, man-made. A human being created the instrument that would generate the light for the artist. The artist then works with this light to serve his artistic purpose. The actual light, however, is created in a man-made process.
Ironically, this makes the technologically produced light more human, or at least more intimate to human creativity. Not only is a creative person molding light to fit his artistic purposes, but another creative person invented a machine that could produce this light. In painting, the light is more inhuman. The light’s creation is entirely remote from humanity. I’m not sure which is more immortal. If immortality is tied to non-humanness, it seems like painting is more immortal in its dealings with light. Then again, painting is an image of light, whereas digital media creates its own light. Maybe the act of creating is what makes people feel this immortality to movies and TV. It’s a funny contradiction, how people feel that machines are so inhuman compared to nature. Machines are a direct product of humanity, while nature is a preexisting entity independent of human creativity. You’d think we’d see the humanity, although indirect, that is behind the idea of the machine. Almost everyone, however, feels a strong lack of humanity in machines and mechanical technology.