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    Bennett-Carpenter - The Divine Simulacrum of Andy Warhol - JCRT 1.3

    The Divine Simulacrum of Andy Warhol: Baudrillard’s Light on the Pope of Pop’s “Religious Art”

    a review of The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, Jane Daggett Dillenberger. (New York: Continuum, 1998); 128 pages, $39.95.

    By Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter

    From explicitly religious art to art that ‘is, but isn’t’ ‘religious,’ from that which lies beyond art, such as objects of veneration, to a postmodern iconography of simulacra, Andy Warhol contributes significantly to the negotiation of twentieth, and now twenty-first, century culture in America and beyond.’ His influence on contemporary art, religion and culture is recognized and will continue to increase as thinkers pursue questions about image and reality, representation, originality, visual culture, identity, and sexuality, not to mention technology, spirituality, business, and God.’ Of Warhol’s multiple contributions, several stand out in particular.’ Warhol’s explicitly religious art, especially brought to light in Jane Daggett Dillenberger’s recent publication, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, reveals a transformation of traditional religious images and themes into lively twentieth century religious art.’ But beyond his explicitly religious works as highlighted by Daggett Dillenberger’s book, one can see that Warhol’s entire oeuvre has ‘religious’ qualities, producing an art that ‘is, but isn’t,’ religious.’ Further, Warhol is significant for his part in what Jean Baudrillard calls the ‘disappearance of art,’ a kind of transfiguration of art into objects of veneration.’ Finally, in line with Baudrillard’s thought regarding the ‘successive phases of the image’ and the ‘disappearance of God’ into simulacra, Warhol produces images like that of Marilyn Monroe that no longer represent reality but offer a simulacra, a never-ending play of signs among signs stretching to infinity.

    The Religious Art of Andy Warhol

    > who was at the opening with Warhol, told how this ‘series appeared as an extension of the now-inaccessible message of Leonardo’s famous masterpiece: a sort of replay and reactualization of the original fresco, an act which took on all its symbolic value on the white walls of the Palazzo delle Stelline,’ which was a defunct convent that had been made into a gallery situated fifty meters from the Leonardo Last Supper’.Restany continued, ‘Andy’seemed penetrated by the importance of the moment.’ He greatly surprised me when he said to me: ‘Pierre, do you think the Italians will see the respect I have for Leonardo?’‘Consciously or not, Warhol seemed to me to having acted there as a curator of a masterpiece of Christian culture, of maintaining a tradition he was a part of.’[1]

    The ‘Religious’ Art of Andy Warhol

    > In Marilyn, Liz, Jackie, Warhol seeks an imagery that codes a private meaning placed at the service of a sacerdotal rite, one at odds with what these glossies might otherwise conjure in the public mind.’ To Warhol, like all ritual artists, image is both representation and actuality, image become icon. ‘Marilyn, Liz, Jackie supplant the hagiographics, the holy pictures of Andy’s Pittsburgh boyhood.’ Warhol’s stars revert to an imagery of saints and intercessors now done up in Hollywood drag; his paintings celebrate a contemporary cult of movies and celebrity.’ Warhol’s icons are kind to sacred relic, embodiments through their very imagining, their very packaging, of the star’s power and grace, however soiled during send-up, during ascension.[2]

    The Disappearance (Transfiguration) of Art

    > [Duchamp] extracted the bottle rack from the real world’, displaced it on another level to confer on it an undefinable hyperreality.’ A paradoxical acting-out, putting an end to the bottle rack as a real object, to art as the invention of another scene and to the artist as the protagonist of another world.’ To all aesthetic idealization Duchamp opposes a violent desublimation of art and of the real by their instantaneous short-circuit.’ Extrematization of the two forms: the bottle rack, ex-inscribed from its context, from its idea, from its function, becomes more real than real (hyperreal), and more art than art (it enters into the transaesthetics of banality, of insignificance, of nullity, where today the pure and indifferent form of art is to be seen).[3]

    > contemporary painting cultivates not only ugliness (which is still an aesthetic value), but the uglier than the ugly (the ‘bad,’ the ‘worse,’ the ‘kitsch’), an ugliness elevated to the second power because it is liberated from its relationship to its contrary and henceforth susceptible to redouble itself.’ Thus, freed from the ‘true’ Mondrian’, you are free to produce a Mondrian more Mondrian than Mondrian himself.’ Freed from the genuine ‘Naifs painters,’ one can paint more ‘naifs’ than the naifs, etc’.Liberated from the real, you can create things more real than the real’hyperreal.[4]

    > I asked Ivan [Karp] for ideas too, and at a certain point he said, ‘‘Why don’t you paint some cows, they’re so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.’’ (Ivan talked like this.)’ I don’t know how ‘pastoral’ he expected me to make them but when he saw the huge cow heads’bright pink on a bright yellow background’that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked.’ But after a moment he exploded with: ‘They’re super-pastoral!’ They’re ridiculous!’ They’re blazing bright and vulgar!‘’ I mean, he loved those cows, and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them.[5]

    Divine Simulacrum

    > To this murderous capacity is opposed the dialectical capacity of representations as a visible and intelligible mediation of the real.’ All of Western faith’was engaged in this wager on representations: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange’God, of course.’ But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest to his existence?’ Then the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.[6]

    1. It is the reflection of a basic reality.
    2. It masks and perverts a basic reality.
    3. It masks the absence of a basic reality.
    4. It bears no relation to reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.[7]

    1. Does the image of Marilyn reflect a real Marilyn?

    2. Does the image of Marilyn mask and pervert a real Marilyn?

    3. Does the image of Marilyn mask the absence of a real Marilyn?

    4. Does the image of Marilyn bear no relation to a real Marilyn at all?’ ‘Is it its own pure simulacrum?’

    1. Warhol’s ‘original’ silkscreen image of Marilyn

    2. The cropped publicity photograph of Marilyn used by Warhol

    3. Marilyn ‘herself’ at the photo shoot

    Bibliography

    Andy Warhol: A Retrospective.’ Edited by Kynaston McShine.’ New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989.

    Baudrillard, Jean.’ ‘Absolute Merchandise.’’ Translated by David Britt.’ In Andy Warhol: Paintings 1960-1986, edited by Martin Schwander.’ Stuttgart: Hatje, 1995.

    ----------.’ ‘Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality.’’ In Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact, edited by Nicholas Zurbrugg.’ London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997.

    ----------.’ ‘Fatal Strategies.’’ In Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster.’ Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

    ----------.’ ‘Objects, Images, And The Possibilities Of Aesthetic Illusion.’’ In Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact, edited by Nicholas Zurbrugg.’ London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: Sage’‘’’ Publications, 1997.

    ----------.’ ‘On Seduction.’’ In Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster.’ Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

    ----------.’ ‘Simulacra and Simulation.’’ In Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster.’ Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.‘’

    ----------.’ ‘The Precession of Simulacra.’’ In Simulacra and Simulation, translated by Sheila Faria Glaser.’ Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

    ----------.’ ‘Transpolitics, Transexuality, Transaesthetics.’’ In Jean Baudrillard: The Disappearance of Art and Politics, edited by William Stearns and Willian Chaloupka.’ New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

    Benjamin, Walter.’ ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’’ In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt.’ New York: Schocken Books; Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1977.

    Bockris, Victor.’ The Life and Death of Andy Warhol.’ New York: Bantam, 1989.

    Cone, Michele.’ ‘Warhol’s Risk: Voyeurism or Exposure?’’ Arts Magazine, 63, no. 10 (Summer 1989), 51-55.

    Daggett Dillenberger, Jane.’ The Religious Art of Andy Warhol.’ New York: Continuum, 1998.

    Danto, Arthur C.’ After The End of Art: Contemporary Art And The Pale Of History.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.

    ----------.’ ‘Who Was Andy Warhol?’’ Artnews 86 (May 1987): 128-132.

    Giles, Paul.’ American Catholic Arts and Fictions.’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

    Heartney, Eleanor.’ ‘Andy’s Icons.’’ Art in America, June 1999, 35-36.

    Herbenick, Raymond M.’ Andy Warhol’s Religious and Ethnic Roots: The Carpatho-Rusyn Influence on his Art.’ Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997.

    Leider, Philip. ‘Saint Andy.’’ Artforum 3, no. 5 (December 1964): 26-28.

    Magocsi, Paul Robert.’ ‘Andy Warhol.’ Carpatho-Rusyn American III, 2, Summer 1980.

    Pincus-Witten, Robert.’ ‘Pre-entry: Margins of Error; Saint Andy’s Devotions.’’ Arts Magazine 63, no. 10, Summer 1989, 58-9.

    Richardson, John.’ ‘Euology for Andy Warhol,’ [1987].’ In Andy Warhol: Heaven and Hell Are Just One Breath Away!’ Late Paintings and Related Works, 1984-1986.’ Essay by Charles Stuckey. Foreword by Vincent Fremont.’ New York: Gagosian Gallery and Rizzoli International Publications, 1992.

    Rosenblum, Robert.’ ‘Saint Andrew.’’ Newsweek 64, December 7, 1964, 100-104.

    Schuweiler-Daab, Zan, ‘For Heaven’s Sake: Warhol’s Art As Religious Allegory.’’ Religion and the Arts 1:1 (Fall 1996): 15-31.

    Taylor, Mark C.’ Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion.’ Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

    Updike, John.’ ‘Fast art: the sweatless creations of Andy Warhol.’’ The New Republic vol. 200, no. 13, March 27, 1989.’ Database on-line.’ Available from Lexis-Nexis.

    Warhol, Andy.’ A; a novel.’ New York: Grove Press, 1968.

    Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett.’ POPism: The Warhol '60s.’ New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

    Wolf, Reva.’ ‘Introduction: A Radio and a Crucifix.’ Religion and the Arts 1:1 (Fall 1996): 10-14.

    Notes

    She also notes that the day after Warhol’s death, a Swiss art journal which was supposed to receive some prints based on typical Swiss images like cuckoo clocks, the Matterhorn, and Toblerone chocolates instead received a ‘package from the Factory [that] contained a photo edition of 120 numbered and signed copies of four stitched-together photographs of skeletons’!
    ‘’’ Later, after his discussion of Robert Mapplethorpe, Giles writes, ‘Holding that the religious significance of any given work is more important than what its creator happened to believe’what, after all did Leonardo or Raphael ‘believe’?‘the Roman church has never been shy about requisitioning artist’s work for its own ideological uses.’ The Collection of Modern Religious Art in the Vatican Museums currently boasts the unorthodox paintings by John Sloan (Indian Religious Dance), Graham Sutherland, and Francis Bacon, as well as ceramics by Picasso.’ One wonders how long it will be before Warhol and Mapplethorpe find their way into this elevated company,’ 294-295.

    Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter, most recently a doctoral student in Religion and Culture at Catholic University of America, received an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Denver in 1999. Paper presentations have included ‘Questions of the Divine and Demonic, Neurosis and Creativity in Teresa of Avila’s Life’ and ‘Worlds Colliding: Images of Ganesa.’ Interests include semiotics, rhetoric, visual culture, and performance art.

    jcrt.org/archives/01.3/carpenter

    1. Ibid, 101-102.’ Citing Jay Shriver, interview with Daggett Dillenberger, October 30, 1995, at his studio, New York. ↩︎

    2. Ibid, 58. ↩︎

    3. Baudrillard, ‘Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality,’ in Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact, ed. Nicholas Zurbrugg (London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), 21. ↩︎

    4. Ibid, 14.’ This final quote has it as ‘more real than the ’ real hyperreal,’ perhaps a misprint and one which I have adjusted accordingly above.’ Either way, my adjustment fits soundly with Baudrillard’s thought. ↩︎

    5. Ibid, 17-18. ↩︎

    6. Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulations,’ 170. ↩︎

    7. Ibid. ↩︎

    8. Philip Leider, ‘Saint Andy,’ Artforum 3, no. 5 (December 1964): 26-28; and Robert Rosenblum, ‘Saint Andrew,’ Newsweek 64, December 7, 1964, 100-104.’ While referring to Andy Warhol as ‘Andy’ may suggest more intimacy or familiarity and ‘Warhol’ more distance, my somewhat arbitrary use of either one at various points has tried to keep with the way others refer to him: in this case, sometimes ‘Andy’ and more frequently ‘Warhol.’’ Of course, Andy Warhol was originally ‘Andrew Warhola.’ ↩︎

    9. John Richardson, ‘Euology for Andy Warhol,’ [1987] in Andy Warhol: Heaven and Hell Are Just One Breath Away!’ Late Paintings and Related Works, 1984-1986, essay by Charles Stukey, foreword by Vincent Fremont (New York: Gagosian Gallery and Rizzoli International Publications, 1992), 140.’ Richardson’s eulogy is reprinted in its entirety in Jane Daggett Dillenberger’s The Religious Art of Andy Warhol (New York: Continuum, 1998), 13-14. ↩︎

    10. Reva Wolf, ‘Introduction: A Radio and a Crucifix,’ Religion and the Arts 1:1 (Fall 1996): 11; noting Robert Pincus-Witten, ‘Pre-entry: Margins of Error; Saint Andy’s Devotions,’ Arts Magazine 63, no. 10, Summer 1989, 58-9; Paul Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Mark C. Taylor, Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). ↩︎

    11. Religion and the Arts 1:1 (Fall 1996). ↩︎

    12. Wolf, 12, 14. ↩︎

    13. Raymond M. Herbenick, Andy Warhol’s Religious and Ethnic Roots: The Carpatho-Rusyn Influence on his Art (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997).’ ↩︎

    14. Daggett Dillenberger, 19.’ See also page 116.’ For an excellent account of the book, see Eleanor Heartney’s review ‘Andy’s Icons,’ Art in America, June 1999, 35-36. ↩︎

    15. Daggett Dillenberger, 44-47. ↩︎

    16. Ibid, 48-49. ↩︎

    17. Ibid, 48, 50-59. ↩︎

    18. Ibid, 58, 54. ↩︎

    19. Ibid, 58, 60-63.’ Daggett Dillenberger adds, ‘When one studies Shadows, the eschatological question of mortality and the end of time arises.’ For the artist Julian Schnabel, ‘these paintings hover as the shadow of life’s edge.’’ ↩︎

    20. Ibid, 67. ↩︎

    21. Ibid, 66. ↩︎

    22. Ibid, 67-68.’ Daggett Dillenberger goes on to say, ‘As Walter Hopps said, there are a ‘range, power and empathy underlying Warhol’s transformation of the commonplace catastrophes in the Death and Disaster series,’ and he added, ‘one can sense in this art an underlying compassion that transcends Warhol’s public affect of studied neutrality.’’ ↩︎

    23. Ibid, 67, 69-71. ↩︎

    24. Ibid, 71-77.’ She cites Warhol saying, ‘Few people have seen my films or paintings, but perhaps those few will become more aware of living by being made to think about themselves.’ People need to be made aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.’ ↩︎

    25. Daggett Dillenberger, 85-86. ↩︎

    26. Ibid, 88, 90-92. ↩︎

    27. Ibid, 92-93. ↩︎

    28. Ibid, 95-99. ↩︎

    29. Ibid, 101. ↩︎

    30. Ibid, 103-105. ↩︎

    31. Ibid, 107-114, 116-119. ↩︎

    32. Ibid, 102. ↩︎

    33. Ibid, 120. ↩︎

    34. W. Eugene Kleinbaur, ‘Icon,’ Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990), 448. ↩︎

    35. See Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, ed. Kynaston McShine (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989). ↩︎

    36. Kleinbaur, 448. ↩︎

    37. Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, 212, 242. ↩︎

    38. Kleinbaur, 448 [emphasis mine].’ Zan Schuweiler-Daab adds to this picture: ‘In the style of Byzantine icons, [Warhol’s] paintings lack depth and have hard contours that flatten the image.’’ In ‘For Heaven’s Sake,’ 25.’ ↩︎

    39. John Wilkenson, ‘Iconography,’ Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990), 449. ↩︎

    40. Paul Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 281.’ Giles writes, ‘The whole notion of ‘personal’ art, like ‘personal’ feelings, is abandoned; Warhol represents the Catholic rejection of romanticism at its most extreme.’ ↩︎

    41. John Updike, ‘Fast art: the sweatless creations of Andy Warhol,’ The New Republic vol. 200, no. 13, March 27, 1989 [database on-line]; available from Lexis-Nexis.’ Quoting Ruppert Jasen Smith. ↩︎

    42. Schuweiler-Daab, ‘For Heaven’s Sake,’ 25.’ See also Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism: The Warhol '60s (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 7, 16-17. ↩︎

    43. Giles, 281.’ Michele Cone writes that Warhol’s work was ‘hardly touched by the artist’s hand, probably not even his own concepts.’’ In ‘Warhol’s Risk: Voyeurism or Exposure?’ Arts Magazine 63, no. 10, Summer 1989, 53. ↩︎

    44. Pat Hackett, ‘Introduction,’ in The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett (New York: Warner Books, 1989), xviii. ↩︎

    45. Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol (New York: Bantam, 1989), 341. ↩︎

    46. Raymond M. Herbenick, Andy Warhol’s Religious and Ethnic Roots: The Carpatho-Rusyn Influence on his Art (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 5.’ Noting Paul Robert Magocsi, ‘Andy Warhol,’ Carpatho-Rusyn American, III, 2 (Summer 1980). ↩︎

    47. Robert Pincus-Witten, ‘Pre-entry: Margins of Error; Saint Andy’s Devotions,’ Arts Magazine 63, no. 10, Summer 1989, 56. ↩︎

    48. Ibid, 56, 58. ↩︎

    49. Ibid, 58, 59.’ See also Zan Schuweiler-Daab, ‘For Heaven’s Sake: Warhol’s Art As Religious Allegory,’ Religion and the Arts 1:1 (Fall 1996): 25. ↩︎

    50. Giles, 278. ↩︎

    51. Ibid, 279.’ Giles goes on, ‘His works aggrandize American popular culture but also ironically detach themselves from their own (supposedly celebratory) premises.’ This is the sense of uneasiness that we find in many American Catholic fictions, a residual jokey quality that ensures the audience does not know whether to take the text at face value or not.’ It is what the Jesuit critic William F. Lynch called an ‘ironic imagination,’ which works to ‘de-absolutize’ worldly objects by implying that they possess only a provisional quality in the light of higher truths,’ 279-280. ↩︎

    52. Ibid, 280. ↩︎

    53. Ibid, 281. ↩︎

    54. Ibid, 281.’ Citing Pincus-Witten, 58.’ Giles earlier comments, ‘None of this is necessarily conscious or intentional in Warhol’s work of course, but intentional fallacies should not concern us unnecessarily here.’ Warhol’s place within a cultural tradition [that is, American Catholic] signifies more than any formulations he may have made about his own art,’ 280.’ ↩︎

    55. Arthur C. Danto, After The End of Art: Contemporary Art And The Pale Of History (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 129.’ Danto notes that The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is ‘a title I appropriated from a fictional title in a novel by the Catholic novelist Muriel Spark.’ ↩︎

    56. Ibid, 128-129. ↩︎

    57. Ibid, 124-125.’ One can find the reference to the Brillo boxes at various places throughout Danto’s writings on Warhol and on art more generally. ↩︎

    58. Ibid, 130. ↩︎

    59. Jean Baudrillard, ‘Fatal Strategies,’ in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 187. ↩︎

    60. Baudrillard, ‘Fatal Strategies,’ 187-188.’ A quite literal example of the disappearance of art is to be found at Warhol’s famous opening in the early 1960’s in which the crowd had become ‘so dense and excited’ that the gallery director had to take down all the paintings.’ Thus, an art opening without any art!’ Of course, as Danto points out, Warhol himself was also the art.’ He says, ‘The artist later murmured at the wry irony of an exhibition without paintings, but it was, strictly speaking, not an exhibition without art, for he had, already, become one with his image, and in the definitive catalogue of his work, his life must be registered as an item.’’ I agree with Danto but, in line with Baudrillard, suggest that this is not ‘art’ as we have known it to be, that art that has been radically altered.’ Warhol himself becomes an art beyond the art.’ See Arthur C. Danto, ‘Who Was Andy Warhol?’ Artnews 86, May 1987, 128. ↩︎

    61. Baudrillard, ‘Transpolitics, Transexuality, Transaesthetics,’ in Jean Baudrillard: The Disappearance of Art and Politics, ed. William Stearns and William Chaloupka (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 9-10. ↩︎

    62. Ibid, 13. ↩︎

    63. Ibid, 12, 14. ↩︎

    64. Ibid, 19. ↩︎

    65. Ibid, 19. ↩︎

    66. Warhol and Hackett, Popism, 287.’ He goes on to say, ‘The reviews for a weren’t all that good.’ (My favorite bad review described the book as ‘a bacchanalian coffee klatsch.’)’ ↩︎

    67. Baudrillard, ‘Objects, Images, and the Possibilities of Aesthetic Illusion,’ in Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact,’ 17.’ He also writes, ‘the artists of the Renaissance believed that they were making religious pictures while in fact they were creating artworks,’ and then asks, ‘Are our modern artists, who believe they are producing artworks, not doing something completely different?’ Could it be that the objects they produce are something completely different from art?‘’ His answer is ‘fetish-objects’‘‘objects that are literally superstitious in the sense that they no longer assume the sublime nature of art nor a belief in art.’’ Baudrillard says, ‘Warhol is the first to introduce [such] fetishism.’’ Of course we should not forget Duchamp! ↩︎

    68. Ibid. ↩︎

    69. Baudrillard, ‘On Seduction,’ in Selected Writings, 164.’ See also Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books; Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1977). ↩︎

    70. Baudrillard, ‘Absolute Merchandise,’ trans. David Britt, in Andy Warhol: Paintings 1960-1986, ed. Martin Schwander (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1995), 19. ↩︎

    71. Ibid, 18. ↩︎

    72. Ibid, 20. ↩︎

    73. Here I am using the version of this essay in Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulation,’ in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).’ See also ‘The Precession of Simulacra’ in Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). ↩︎

    74. Ibid, 169.’ Elsewhere Baudrillard writes: ‘Iconoclasts were under the illusion that by destroying appearances God’s truth would shine forth.’ Since there was no truth to God, which perhaps they secretly knew, their failure resulted from the same premise as the idolaters of images: we can only live with the idea of an altered truth.’ This is the only way to live in truth. ‘The alternative is unbearable (precisely because truth does not exist).’ We must not wish to destroy appearances (the seduction of images);’ ‘On Seduction,’ in Selected Writings, 153-154. ↩︎

    75. Ibid. ↩︎

    76. Ibid, 170-171. ↩︎

    77. Baudrillard, ‘Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality,’ 20.’ ↩︎

    78. Baudrillard, ‘Objects, Images’,’ 15. ↩︎