Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars

Camille Paglia – 2012

Humanities professor Camille Paglia follows up her 2005 book on poetry, Break, Blow, Burn, with one that focuses on the visual arts.  Sculpture, land art and even cinema are included, but the premiere art form from the Renaissance up through the 1960s was the framed painting.  Paglia’s theme, consistent since her first book Sexual Personae (1990), is the lines that connect all of human history regardless of language, time and geography.  Chronology is meaningful to Paglia, not abstract, and crucial to her presentation of diverse works.  “Great art leads to more art.”  This is the message that she drives home from one chapter to the next, arguing that virtually never is art created in a vacuum without influences and ancestors.  The secondary message of the book concerns the spirituality inherent in the artistic process.  She writes that a civilization’s cultural legacy depends on its artistic achievements much more than its political ones.  For example, we may not know who fashioned Tutankhamen’s ornate sarcophagus mask, but we all know and admire it as the symbol of a long gone and mystical empire.  Paglia boldly puts her credibility on the line in her final chapter, which names George Lucas the world’s greatest living artist at the very moment when his reputation seems to be at an all-time low.  Specifically she cites the climax of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005) as a monumental achievement in dramatic visualization that continues to elude the insular and pretentious world of the fine arts.  I’m not sure I agree with her, (though I am a Star Wars fan), but it comforts me to see her so willing to make such sweeping and controversial pronouncements.  What makes her special as a scholar and public intellectual is that she does not demand or expect people to accept her at her word; her goal is to encourage discussion, debate and questions.  Aimed at home-schooling mothers and other lay people interested in art, the book is a concise and easy read, supplemented with great color reproductions of the art works she profiles.