New York, September 2004,
The race for the White House was reaching a dramatic climax,
The candidates were neck and neck in the polls,
Both were now desperate to seize any advantage over the other,
President Bush was heading for his party's convention at Madison Square Garden,
This was effectively his last opportunity to get ahead,
His advisors knew that everything depended on how he was presented,
They needed an iconic image to convince the American electorate that he was their man,
And that would mean exploiting the power of art,
Although they didn't know it,
the techniques that they turned to weren't of the modern day.
The methods they would use had been invented thousands of years ago.
The political power of art was discovered by kings and emperors in the ancient world,
It was these leaders who first used imagery to manipulate their subjects,
And today our modern politicians are exploiting those same visual strategies,
This is the story of how those ancient leaders created techniques of visual persuasion
so powerful they've still got a hold on us today.
Inside Madison Square Garden, the delegates eagerly awaited the high point of the convention,
the President's speech,
His advisors knew they needed something memorable and dramatic,
They decided to exploit the most potent political images of his presidency,
his presence at Ground Zero,
Among the ruins of the World Trade Centre, he'd looked strong and commanding,
And yet he still appeared caring and warm,
These were the pictures that defined his presidency,
If his advisors could only tap into the power of these iconic images,
they'd give their man a huge advantage,
With just 12 hours to go, they ordered the original stage to be ripped out
and a brand-new one built in its place,
What they came up with was a modern masterpiece.
(CHANTING)
The President's team drew on a set of visual techniques
that leaders had been using for thousands of years,
(CHEERING)
He walked to the stage alone, a commanding leader, confident and in control,
The set was simple but dominated by the symbols of his power,
He was raised slightly above the crowd, but still stood amongst them,
And they ensured the cameras captured the conviction on his face,
(CHANT: ''F0UR M0RE YEARS!'')
The effect was electrifying,
Here was a man who was strong but caring, a powerful leader, close to his people,
The compassionate head of a family at war,
(BUSH) Thank you all, (SPIVEY) His advisors had succeeded,
The scene recreated those iconic images so familiar to every American,
(BUSH) I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you,
(SPIVEY) The strategy worked,
George Bush shot ahead in the polls and he stayed ahead until the election was won,
(CHANT: ''F0UR M0RE YEARS!'')
But why did it work?
How do politicians use images to persuade us, often without us even knowing it?
The only way of understanding this is to uncover how these powerful visual techniques
were invented by leaders thousands of years ago.
There was a time when our ancestors lived in small communities,
Leaders were the heads of families or clans, Everyone knew them,
They had little need of any artistic devices to communicate their power,
So, what happened?
How did imagery come to be used as a political tool?
It's a process that happens at different times in various parts of the world.
But in one of those parts, Britain,
archaeologists believe that they've recently hit upon the time and the place.
It's new light on one of the country's oldest and best-known monuments, Stonehenge.
This is the biggest prehistoric monument in Europe,
Something extraordinary must have happened here for a structure of this size
to be built by people living in small isolated communities,
This was one of the great mysteries of the ancient world,
Now, through our understanding of the persuasive power of art,
we may have found an answer,
It all began with the chance discovery of a burial site near Stonehenge,
Archaeologists expected to find a Roman burial ground,
common in this part of the world,
What none of them knew at the time was that they had stumbled
into one of the most momentous archaeological discoveries ever made in Britain,
(NEWSPEAKER) We knew that the grave wasn't Roman
because it had pottery that dates to the beginning of the Bronze Age,
so it was almost 2,000 years older than the Roman graves; we had something very different.
(SPIVEY) Andrew Fitzpatrick and his team
had uncovered the skeleton of a man dating back nearly 4,500 years,
And next to it, dozens of objects,
It was the sheer scale of the find that suggested this was no ordinary grave,
and no ordinary man,
(DR FITZPATRICK) It's normal in a burial of this age to find just one or two objects,
And we would have called a grave with maybe 10 things in it rich,
but as the numbers mounted, it was clear that this grave was of exceptional importance,
and as the numbers got to almost 100,
we realised it was the richest grave not Just in Britain but in continental Europe as well.
(SPIVEY) An examination of the objects revealed further surprises,
There were a number of fine objects designed for personal display,
like a stone belt buckle,,,
,,a wrist guard used by an archer and some tiny copper knives,
In amongst all of these there was something very special -
two identical pieces of gold,
As they examined these more closely, they realised they were in fact ornaments,
probably hair clasps, and both beautifully crafted,
They may not look very much now,
tiny, with Just a very simple pattern round the edge,
but at the time when these were created and worn - that's nearly 4,500 years ago -
these were probably the greatest treasures
that anyone possessed in the British Isles.
For the first time, gold had been melted and shaped
and then transformed into an ornament,
This was a new kind of art and the first of its kind in Britain,
The big question then was whose was it?
Archaeologists needed to examine the skeleton in more detail,
and what they discovered was that this man was not from the Stonehenge area,
he'd come from central Europe,
He was a foreigner who'd made an epic journey to get to Britain,
(DR FITZPATRICK) It's a journey without compare at this time,
To cross the sea he would only have had a dug-out canoe or a coracle.
It's a long and very dangerous Journey.
(SPIVEY) How was it that a stranger from hundreds of miles away
had come to be buried with all the trappings of a great and revered leader?
He'd have been known as an exotic, important person.
He had something that nobody else had
and he had the skills to transform raw metal into these finished obJects.
He had knowledge and he had power.
(SPIVEY) It was the gold, so exquisite and rare, that had created the image of a leader,
These would have been like the crown jewels,
strictly reserved for a leader of great importance.
Art fit for a king.
Just imagine how he would once have appeared to his subJects.
0ur king would have looked magnificent,
Dressed in a splendid leather tunic,
his body and face lit up by shiny metals never before seen,
The people living around Stonehenge would have worn nothing but simple animal skins,
This man's appearance alone must have mesmerised them,
What this individual had discovered was something that we today take for granted:
art as personal adornment enhances your status.
It lifts you above your peers.
0ur king was the first leader in Britain
to exploit what would become a universal human trait.
And it's something that leaders from the time of Stonehenge
to the present day have exploited,
The adornments of office enhance your power,
This power of art may now finally explain how such a colossal monument came to be built,
It must have taken a leader of great power to organise the hundreds of people
needed for such an undertaking,
0ur foreigner arrived with his gold around the time that Stonehenge was built,
It's likely that it was he who organised its construction,
What's more, he may well have intended Stonehenge as the ultimate symbol of his power,
If our king did indeed build this,
the most impressive prehistoric temple in Europe,
then adornment had played a crucial role in his achievement.
Art had become a political tool. It was the dawn of a new era.
And it wasn't just in ancient Britain,
In other parts of the world, from Egypt to Mesopotamia,
leaders were also discovering the power of art,
Kings competed to wear ever more dazzling adornments
and to build ever more fabulous structures,
The images had a magical effect on those who saw them,
But there was a catch,
Kingdoms were growing in size,
But the bigger they became, the harder it was for leaders to communicate their power,
Their new subjects simply couldn't see them,
Around 500 BC, this problem was particularly acute for one king above all,
He'd taken control of a kingdom so large, it was the world's first empire,
He needed to find a new way to impose his power across all of this vast territory,
He was Darius the Great, the king of the Persians.
His capital was Persepolis.
Persepolis is in Iran, one of the wonders of the ancient world,
2,500 years ago, it stood at the heart of Darius's vast empire,
an empire that stretched thousands of miles,
from the Mediterranean in the west to India in the east,
From here, Darius ruled over millions of people, across more than 20 nations,
He carved the names of the most far-flung nations on a block of solid gold,
and buried it under Persepolis for posterity,
But how could he rule over so many diverse peoples?
Darius came up with a plan,
a new kind of political leadership, which he outlined in a series of inscriptions,
Their message was radical,
Rather than war and brutality, Darius offered peace and co-operation,
''In a war between two nations, I intervene to protect the weak,
''I am justice and have been asked by God to promote happiness, ''
It's visionary stuff.
The challenge to Darius however was how to communicate this to everyone else.
His empire was one in which very few people could read.
Also one in which there were dozens of different languages.
So how was he going to spread the word?
Darius's brainwave was the beginning of nothing less than an artistic revolution,
The walls of Persepolis are covered with awe-inspiring images,
But there was something unusual about them,
These stone reliefs are not just from one artistic style,
but combined elements from all over the empire,
The most spectacular reliefs of all are those decorating the staircase
that leads to the great hall of Darius.
0nce a year, Darius would invite ambassadors from every nation within his empire
to Join him here,
and as they arrived, all the ambassadors would pass up this staircase
to their audience with the king.
So this was their approach to one of the most imposing monuments in the ancient world.
The ambassadors' eyes would have been drawn to these figures -
the conquered peoples of the empire,
All are shown in their national costumes, bringing tributes to the king,
No scenes of war and retribution, they're happy to honour Darius,
Darius had found an inspired solution to his problem,,,
,,a way of communicating his political vision through art,
the international language of images,
The ambassadors would have left here and travelled home
with one message clearly etched in their mind -
that King Darius valued and respected them.
A new benevolent political era had dawned.
The ambassadors would have grasped Darius's message,
but of course there were still millions of ordinary subjects across his empire
who would never glimpse the vision of peace and prosperity inside the palace,
So how could he communicate this message to them?
0nce again, Darius found his solution in art,
Towering above the desert, just off the main highway to Persepolis,
is a huge political billboard,
Carved on it, for all the passers-by to see, is Darius's vision of his new leadership style,
It looks very impressive, but it's rather weathered now, not easy to make out the details.
Let's get closer.
(GENERAL INSTRUCTI0NS IN 0WN LANGUAGE)
(SPIVEY) All right, I got it. Yeah.
(INSTRUCTI0NS C0NTINUE)
That's better... 200 feet above the desert, face to face with the tomb of Darius.
There's a lengthy inscription describing his benevolent rule,
But it's the depiction of Darius himself that's so intriguing,
There's one thing you can see from up here
which you Just couldn't spot from down below.
It's that Darius is carrying a bow.
The bowman would have been an image familiar to all Persians,
They'd have known precisely what it meant,
which is why Darius chose it as the symbol of his kingship,
To the Persians, the archer was symbolic not Just of military prowess
but of wisdom...leadership.
The good archer had a sense of balance and control,
qualities that were central to the concept of kingship developed by Darius.
''Darius the archer'', there you have it, the first-ever political logo.
And having invented the political logo, Darius went one better,
He discovered a new way to communicate it to his subjects,
Leaders throughout history would profit from his genius,
Darius had unified a disparate empire,
one of the world's great civilisations,
For 150 years after his death, his successors continued to use his logo
and to build on his achievements,
But it was destined not to last,
because someone on the western fringes of the empire had his sights on Persepolis.
He was...Alexander the Great.
Alexander was a brilliant military strategist,
In just a few short years, he defeated the Persian armies and captured the city,
But that was just the start of his ambitions,
Alexander wanted much more than to simply conquer,
He needed a way of uniting the Persian Empire behind him,
But how, as a foreign invader, would he ever win the hearts and minds of his new subjects?
Alexander understood the power of the visual techniques used by Darius,
But he had to come up with an image all of his own,
Archaeologists had always known how Alexander had won the war,
But what still remained a mystery was how he had planned to win the peace,
Where did his image come from,
the image he would use to win hearts and minds,
The obvious place to start the search was where he had planned his campaign,
his homeland, Macedonia,
Macedonia is now part of modern Greece, but back in the 4th century BC
it was an independent kingdom with a warlike reputation,
The problem for the archaeologists was that little remained of Alexander's palaces,
They'd already been destroyed,
So they turned to the royal tombs underground,
Here again it was a similar story of destruction,
Tomb after tomb was discovered, but each one had already been ransacked by raiders.
Then, in 1978, a team of Greek archaeologists at last found one that was intact.
It was one of the great archaeological discoveries of our time.
They came across a tunnel leading deep underground,
It revealed the face of a tomb,,,still intact,
(TRANSLATI0N) The moment the tomb opened it was like a dream.
I had no idea of the significance of our discovery. It was Just a miracle.
They had discovered the secret tomb of Philip of Macedon, Alexander's father.
Its walls were still covered with the traces of magnificent paintings,
And what awaited them inside
was a huge treasure trove.
The centrepiece was a gold sarcophagus with the symbol of the Macedonian king,
(DR K0TTARIDI SPEAKS GREEK)
(TRANSLATI0N) He was surrounded by incredible riches, the riches of a king,
They showed he was a man of exquisite taste.
These are really the most beautiful obJects of their kind we have ever discovered.
(SPIVEY) These were rich trappings
but perhaps what you'd expect from a great dynasty.
Lots of gold, but what light did it shed upon the secrets of Alexander's success?
Well, then, amid the dust and debris on the tomb floor,
the archaeologists picked up something which at first sight looked rather inconspicuous.
It was a delicately crafted ivory carving,
As they dug deeper, they found more,
They were tiny fragments, most less than an inch long,
Pieced together, they formed a hunting scene,
As they examined them more closely, one of the faces stood out,
This was the face that would appear on busts and paintings for hundreds of years
throughout the Mediterranean,
(DR K0TTARIDI SPEAKS GREEK)
(TRANSLATI0N) Suddenly a face emerged of someone we recognised.
It was the face of a real person.
We had discovered the image of the man who was at the centre of ultimate power,
(SPIVEY) They were looking at the face of Alexander the Great,
This was the earliest image of him ever discovered,
It was also the first lifelike representation of a king,
Until now, kings had been portrayed by characterless depictions created to a formula,
But this marked the moment of another artistic revolution -
the birth of the political portrait,
(SPEAKING GREEK)
(TRANSLATI0N) As a portrait, it really captures his political power and strength.
It marks the very moment a new artistic ideal was born.
(SPIVEY) But the most significant aspect
of this little ivory head was when it was made.
It was placed in this tomb.
That means it was made before Philip died and before Alexander became king.
In other words, archaeologists realised for the first time
that Alexander's image had been designed for him
before he fought a single battle against the Persians.
Between them, Philip and Alexander had already come up with a winning image,
an image to take on the world.
But how exactly would Alexander exploit the power of this image
and portray himself as a leader strong enough to unite an empire?
The answer to that was found buried under tons of lava at the foot of a volcano,
the volcano that buried the Roman town of Pompeii - Mount Vesuvius,
The Romans loved Greek art, and in one of the villas in Pompeii
was a mosaic, the copy of an original Macedonian painting from Alexander's time,
It's now in the Archaeological Museum at Naples,
The mosaic depicts a famous battle in which Alexander finally defeated the Persian armies,
This is Alexander,
charging full tilt into the thick of the battle.
His eyes are fixed on his mortal enemy, the Persian king.
Alexander is shown in the heat of action, leading his troops, spear in hand,
He wears no helmet, his hair flying back, a fearless hero leading from the front,
The impact of this image is even greater when you look across to the other side of the mosaic,
Look at the face of the great Persian king - it's a study of panic and fear,
He can't get away quick enough.
The whole of this political poster offers us a clear choice.
Do you go for the brave heart or the coward?
The hero or the villain?
It's a collision of values in which Alexander is predestined for victory.
Alexander had discovered he could use his portrait to persuade his new subjects
that he was invincible,
It was an image to inspire admiration and respect,
Here was a man who could unite the empire and was worthy of replacing the king of Persia,
While Darius had discovered the power of the logo,
Alexander had gone one better and replaced this image with that of the face,
No king before him had exploited a charismatic portrait of his face in that way,
Today, the power of the human face may seem obvious,
How can it be such a powerful tool
in the hands of politicians?
For the answer, we have to turn to modern science.
We asked a psychologist to design an experiment
to test which is the more effective image - the logo or the face?
What he came up with was an election,
He began by inventing two different political candidates,
0ne was publicised using my face,
The other, fictional candidate, was publicised using a logo,
Both had identical manifestos,
Their message, ''Art's for all'',
The question now was would the face or the logo have more appeal?
(GIRL) Will you vote for him?
(ELECTI0NEERING C0NTINUES)
Promoters of these two images then descended on the students of Imperial College, London,
(GIRL) Vote Bowman!
- He's for all. - Vote for us.
(GIRL) We have someone who will make art accessible to everyone.
That's what Nigel is about, making art for everyone.
(SPIVEY) At the end of the campaign, the vote was held,
Identical candidates,,, Identical manifestos,
Distinguished only by their two very different images,
Which would win? The face,,,or the logo?
(M0UTHING)
0f the 100 voters, 40 opted for the logo but 60 went for the face,
The experiment confirms what Alexander had instinctively understood,
Humans have evolved to be influenced by what they see in a face,
So effective was his discovery that throughout his rule he continued to refine it,
Hundreds of statues were made of his heroic physical presence,
Alexander may have had the perfect image,
but it was useless unless he could get it circulated to the people who mattered most,
his new subjects,
Today, we take it for granted
Just how easy it is to distribute an image.
At the press of a button you can send a picture
to vast numbers of people almost anywhere in the world.
But for Alexander, things weren't so simple.
He needed to find a way of giving his subJects a daily reminder of who was in charge.
His solution was, quite literally, to put his face in the palm of their hands.
This is what he came up with - a face on a coin.
He established 30 mints, producing thousands of these throughout his empire.
0n each one, it had a head closely resembling his own.
Alexander had found a powerful way to spread his image throughout the empire,
For generations, Alexander's successors would produce coins with his face on them,
Any association with Alexander would also give them authority,
It was a brilliant idea and one which leaders ever since have used
as a daily reminder to us all of who's in charge,
And, of course, the power of the human face continues to shape our political landscape
today,
(CHEERING)
(CLAPPING)
(CHEERING)
By Alexander's time, leaders in the ancient world understood
just how susceptible the human mind was to the persuasive power of art,
And they'd used images to promote themselves and their message,
But there's a more ruthless type of leader in the modern world
who aims to wield the power of images in another way.
It's something more ambitious than Just self-promotion,
something far darker, much more sinister.
It's the power to persuade us to think what they want us to think,
and to see things the way they do,
And even to deceive us,
So how did art go from being a tool of political promotion
to being an instrument of mass deception?
To find out, we need to discover Just how and why imagery was first used
to tell a political lie.
That weapon was invented here, in Rome,
40 years before the birth of Christ, ancient Rome was on the point of collapse,
For decades a civil war had divided the city,
And the city was split not just politically but culturally too,
A split that manifested itself even in people's appearance,
It seems hard to imagine today...
but it was as if you could tell everyone's political allegiance...
simply by seeing how they were dressed.
(FEMALE SINGING ITALIAN 0PERA)
It would be as if, today, Rome were divided into two camps,
each with their own distinctive uniforms,
Suppose one group dressed in an old-fashioned and conservative way,
They were the republicans,
They believed that the great traditional Roman families should rule Rome
as they had for centuries,
They dressed in traditional or austere clothes,
(INAUDIBLE)
And suppose the other group were more like today's trendies,
Although it seems strange, this group were monarchists,
They wanted to replace the traditional families with a powerful and ostentatious king,
They wore more flamboyant clothes to parade these exotic sympathies,
(CHATTER AND UP-BEATMUSIC)
(0PERATIC SINGING)
These two groups were locked in a struggle for the control of ancient Rome,
Neither side was prepared to compromise,
It looked like the two tribes would be forever divided,
That was, until a new contender appeared on the scene.
He was young and had no great political or military experience.
But he was wise to the political potential of images.
He would unite Rome, not by the force of an army, but by the power of art.
His name, 0ctavian... or as he would become known, Augustus.
Augustus came from the monarchist camp,
Although half of Rome supported him, the republicans remained deeply suspicious,
To win them over, Augustus needed to persuade the republicans
he posed no threat to the power of the traditional families,
He had a problem,
This was his image -
the typical trendy, big-haired look that the monarchists favoured
and the republicans hated,
To get their support, Augustus would need to reinvent himself,
This is what his artists and sculptors came up with,
Something far more humble, Hair flattened, the face more gentle and mature,
All a lot less threatening,
This was the look Augustus finally approved.
Frowning, serious, humble. A man of the people.
A look that was calculated not to antagonise the republicans.
And having created this image, Augustus had it copied.
Hundreds and hundreds of copies went out all around the empire.
His strategy began to work,
The empire prospered and with it his own power and fame,
But Rome itself remained tense,
The republicans were still suspicious
that he was accumulating power for his own personal ends,
They believed he had plans to sweep the traditional ruling families aside
and grab all the power for himself,
Augustus feared assassination,
To win over his enemies, he needed to come up with an image
that would persuade the republicans, once and for all,
This is the Vatican City.
Not only the centre of the Catholic Church
but also home to one of the greatest collections of Roman art anywhere in the world.
Within that collection, one piece is outstanding,
as the most complete example of how Augustus used art as a political tool.
It was a very subtle work of art,
something which would eventually bring peace to Rome,
But its success would have sinister consequences,
And here he is.
I think, even if you knew nothing about Augustus,
you'd instinctively recognise this as a powerful image of authority.
It's this image that would finally win over the republicans,
Here, Augustus meets their fears head on,
While it shows him as a powerful general, there's much more to it than that,
Although he's wearing a military breastplate,
there's no actual suggestion that he's ready for action,
If this were just a military statue,
the outstretched arm would be brandishing a spear,
But here it's more like a gesture of statesman-like command,
You'd expect military boots on the feet, but here they're bare,
More like a sign of humility than power,
This is the ultimate in political art - something in it for everyone,
whatever the political persuasion,
With this statue, Augustus found a way of making military power attractive
to those who feared it most, the republicans.
But that wasn't all.
Emblazoned across the centre of his breastplate
was a scene that was designed to quell any lingering doubts.
The images are of Augustus
accepting the surrender of Rome's sworn enemy, the Parthians,
It was his greatest triumph,
And the gods are shown looking on with approval,
The message is clear - Augustus was simply fulfilling the will of the gods,
Now the war that divided Rome was over,
The statue offers emphatic reassurance.
Augustus is strong but he's not threatening.
He's the leader who guarantees his people a new golden age.
It's the pax Augusta, the Augustan peace.
And even the gods approved.
Augustus had achieved his greatest ambition,
He'd unified the two camps of Rome,
And he'd done it using the power of art,
0ne story tells how, as an old man in his seventies,
Augustus took a boat Journey out of Rome. It was to be the last trip of his life.
0n his way he was spotted by a group of foreign traders,
who spontaneously burst into applause and cheered their leader.
They shouted out that it was to him they owed their lives, their freedom and prosperity.
Augustus was overwhelmed.
To him it came like final proof that he'd succeeded.
He was the unifier of Rome and the saviour of his people.
Augustus was the hero sent by the gods to save Rome,
It did seem like the beginning of a new golden age,
But all of this was built on a lie. The people had been duped.
While portraying himself as a peacemaker, Augustus was eradicating all opposition,
While preaching humility, he and his family lived and behaved like corrupt royalty,
And while boasting that he was handing back power to the people,
Augustus was a king in all but name,
In reality, he had founded a system of dictatorship that would last for 400 years,
Augustus had used images to manipulate people into believing one thing
when in fact the very opposite was true.
He discovered how to use art to tell a political lie.
It was a technique that would be embraced by dictators down the ages.
They too would turn to art to deceive their people,
Through art they would persuade their people to hate,
to turn on their foreign enemies and even on their own neighbours,
And worse,,,to persuade them to believe that some people were less than human,
0ver thousands of years, leaders in the ancient world
discovered the extraordinary power of art to persuade,
They realised its potential to promote themselves and their ideas,
And with Augustus they learned to exploit art for more sinister purposes,
Today's politicians are using techniques
very similar to those invented by leaders thousands of years ago.
Both exploit the same universal human traits.
The leaders of the past used paint and marble, and today's politicians digital technology.
We humans remain as vulnerable now as we ever were
to the persuasive power of art.