A Chinese emperor could not sleep annoyed by the sound from the waterfall painting in his bedroom. The Greek painter Parrhasios tricked Zeuxis by drawing a curtain on his painting. The history of image is full of such anecdotes that tell us how visual images can often delude or mislead people.
Although strictly speaking art cannot be equaled to image (coming from the Latin word 'imago' or 'simulacrum'), it is true that the imitative and illusionary nature of image has been appreciated as an important characteristic of art which mainly derives its source from images. According to Plato's concept of mimesis, image had always been an 'imitation,' 'illusion,' or 'representation' of the already existing reality or Idea. However, here we encounter a different identification of image as simulacra by J. Baudrillard. He argued that hyper-reality has replaced reality in post modern society, and the social structure has become a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are images of hyper-real world that create the perversive reality.
It was with the invention of photography that image could overcome its 'Simulacrum' characteristic, changing its identity from icon to index. Following the Peirce's semiotics R. Krauss explain index; "As distinct from icons, indexes establish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their referents." On the other hand, in Greenbergian Modernism subject matter of image is abstraction. Banishing everything except the materiality of the medium, Modernism art has strongly negated the 'simulative' nature of image and strived to become reality in itself.
Suggesting that Benjamin’s theory derives mainly from his interest in the transition of 19-20th century visual culture and human visual experience, I want to explain how image’s meaning have changed in company with seeing and thinking, perception and reading. In addition, I argued that how image can do dialectically interacts with historical and cultural situation. Challenging an Enlightenment opposition economic phantasmagoria and political repression, Benjamin’s arguments give to us the theoretical method to analyze the cultural circumstance of today.