France's Most Wanted, Komar and Melamid, 1995

First of all let’s be clear on this – The Inquisition is no luddite, and has all of the credentials to prove it; a TV that projects moving images in colour (using up-to-the-minute cathode-ray technology – wow sci-fi!), a mobile phone that can both display text messages and take calls and a digital watch with a calculator face. Pretty swish inventory, I know.

More questions than answers (for now)

To be honest, you’d have to imagine the future of reading and publishing is somewhere between Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad. But in the short term the iPad will probably win out, for its looks alone. But would you really read a whole book on it? That’s where Kindle’s digital ink comes in, of course. But how terrible would a coffee-table art book look?

But when all is said and done, being able to carry an extensive (and scrupulously backed-up) library, which you own, is hugely enticing. However anyone who is often to be found in Public libraries and second-hand book shops must wonder; where does that leave us? Publishing rights are closely guarded and this new frontier will be no exception.

More worryingly

In today’s Sunday Times Bryan Appleyard raises a deeply disquieting point; publishers can browse how readers interact with their texts on the iPad. It is not a huge leap of logic to realise that this will lead to greater control over what is published and what is commissioned by marketing departments. After all, publishing is an industry.

Design by committee or democratic voting rarely results in the most worthy entrant winning. The winner in a popularity contest is, in essence, the most intrinsically average. This is not progress.

Komar and Melamid’s Art

The point made in the previous paragraph is hardly the most eye-opening statement to every make it to the hallowed pages of The Inquisition, but it describes a troubling truth. And it is one that was very skillfully explored in the early days of the web by two progressive Rusian emigre artists- Komar and Melamid.

The duo setup online surveys to test respondents’ tastes in visual art and digitally composed images from the answers received. The results are the most insipid pieces you could set your eyes upon. The response from the art world was incensed. But the artists managed to explore more than art; they showed how loathe the general public is to exercise individuality and the very cornerstones of democratic freedom. They showed that when given the choice the most popular choice is mediocrity – just look at the popularity of those god-awful democratic, viewer-votes, phone in shows that are always on the Inquisition’s gloriously expansive 16-inch colour screen.

Bibliography
New gizmos such as the iPad Hope to Turn our Reading Habits on their Head – And Even Save the Written Word. But Can They?, Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times Culture Magazine, Sunday 25th April 2010
Painting by Numbers, Margaret Wertheim, World Art, Issue #2 1996
Komar and Melamid

Apollo on the Roman mosaic El-Jem, Tunisia

The halo is a very effective visual device for picking out individuals of particular reverence within a composition. But when you stop and think about it, its also a little arcane and unwieldy, and not just a little bit weird.

The Inquisition set out to find the earliest use of a halo or aura as a visual device, but eventually had to give it up as a bad job; halos existed before they can be truly understood as such. Figures exist with light radiating from their heads in South American cultures, while the Egyptians placed complete and unbroken discs above the heads of their representations.

The Gero Crucifix in Cologne

Definition & Meaning

Before getting into the historical context it might be best to define a halo, its meaning and conceptual origins.

According to the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, “the halo, or nimbus, is a solar image which possesses much the same significance as the crown and specifically the kingly crown. It is displayed by a radiance around the head and sometimes around the whole body (a mandorla or aureola). This originally solar radiance is a sign of holiness, of sanctity and of the divine. It is a manifestation of the aura.” It goes on to clearly state that the halo is a representation of the emission of light.

The halo is familiar in western iconography and culture as anything from a thin elliptical gold band encircling rapturous ladies in traditional painting, to golden crowns of monarchs (and Jesus’ crown of thorns), to monks’ tonsures to currently being a much-used framing device in less than reverend photography. In short it is a signifier of the bearer’s possession of unique, divine or spiritual qualities.

The halo varies in depiction from the aforementioned ethereal orbits to almost corporeal supra-cranial discs. It has had crosses incorporated in both Byzantine and Celtic contexts to represent the Trinity – the single but divided whole. It has been a soft focus glow, radiating rays and even triangles.

Ra, complete with sun disc

The Earliest?

Well, its frankly impossible to directly attribute the halo’s inception to a certain culture, but it would seem the Egyptians were, if not the originators, then at least, among the earliest adopters. The Egyptian god Ra has the head of a falcon and the sun-disk of Wadjet above his head, in a very early form of halo.

Poseidon mosaic at Bardo

This would tie-in with the area’s familiarity with Zoroastrianism’s emphasis on flames and light as representative of divinity. The Hellenistic and Roman worlds retained the halo for their iconography. This was not just in their visual art – in the Illiad Homer described a supernatural light that frames the head sof warriors in battle. Of course that might just have been huge spatters of blood and gore, but who am I to doubt the veracity of a visual description made by a blind bronze age storyteller?

Bodhisattva at Mogao in Dunhuang, China

Interestingly, there exist many Asian representations of Buddha with a halo which are concurrent with Roman imagery, and are aesthetically closer to more modern interpretations. Although much later in date, masks in South America, as shown above also echo the halo. It is highly improbable these could have been influenced through pre-columbian contact.

A teaching Buddha from India

Alternate Origin

As is the case with such matters of art, time and subjectivity, at least one other theory abounds, and it is a lovely one. The idea is put forward that the halo is actually a very functional and utilitarian device; it was put on Greek sculpture to prevent birds shitting on their heads.

Unfortunately, due to earlier painted imagery using the halo, or variations of it, this thesis sounds unlikely.

Golden mask from Tenochtitlan with emanating halo of solar rays

Bibliography
Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbant, Penguin, 1969
Wikipedia