Revolutionary Work of Art

1861 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Of what relevance is computer in the field of art

Walter Benjamin emphasizes in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” that technology used to make an artwork has changed the way it was received, and its “aura”. Aura represents the originality and authenticity of a work of art that has not been reproduced. The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican is an example of a work that has been and truly a beacon of art. It has brought a benefit and enlightenment to the art of painting, and it has an exemplary aura that cannot be replaced. A picture taken of the Sistine Chapel is just an imaged “captured”, while the painting is still original, because it is not movable, and its cult value is still intact. He asserts that the origin of an artwork gave its aura and authenticity and since it is not moveable, it does not have the ability to be reproduced by other artists. Therefore, the aura and authenticity is autocratic. For instance, the Sistine Chapel is owned and controlled by the Vatican—Catholic Cardinals. They control its usage to the masses. Once art becomes available to the masses, it becomes in a way ‘successful.’ In addition, he calls to attention that the forces of commercialization have subjected the aura of an artwork to cheapening cult value, which is a positive outcome for the masses. Benjamin does not really find the work of art lamentable, but rather elevated. Replicating an art substitutes a mass existence for a distinctive existence, hence, the reproduction of art, once permitted, brings art closer to the masses (Benjamin 1054). As time gradually changes from its traditional past, to the present “renewal of humanity” (1054), so does the perception of the masses and its movement. I would argue that the development of technological reproduct... ... middle of paper ... ... In final analysis, Benjamin argues that the loss of aura through technological reproducibility and capitalism is a positive thing as time progresses. The loss of authenticity might be a way of making people free and create new access for art to expand its knowledge. Cinema, which could be a radical new art form, can provide the masses with an unchanged picture of reality, while benefiting from the effects of technology. As technology is progressing, the artistic movement is also progressing and so is the way masses receive information from the film while they evaluate it as art. Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 1051-1071

Show More
Related

  • Reproduction Businesses of Thomas Kinkade?s painting

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    A certain emotion or an “aura” is said to be present when an artist creates an art work. However, some of the reproduction pieces inside Kinkade’s signature gallery are highlighted by his specially trained assistant; I believe these paintings are no longer evoking this so-called “aura” of the original work. Aura is something that cannot be duplicated. Reproductions of art pieces are simply tangible and concrete object. They are digital imitations that “could be soaked in water, peeled off the paper, and affixed to a stretched canvas, so that it showed the texture of the canvas the way a real painting would.” As Benjamin stated, “… the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” The original paintings have their own unique characters and history, and these are not the things that art reproductions can generate. "The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity."

    Read More

  • Postmodern Art in Andy Warhol´s Silvier Liz as Cleopatra

    1187 Words  | 3 Pages

    The earliest forms of art had made it’s mark in history for being an influential and unique representation of various cultures and religions as well as playing a fundamental role in society. However, with the new era of postmodernism, art slowly deviated away from both the religious context it was originally created in, and apart from serving as a ritual function. Walter Benjamin, a German literary critic and philosopher during the 1900’s, strongly believed that the mass production of pieces has freed art from the boundaries of tradition, “For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependance on ritual” (Benjamin 1992). This particular excerpt has a direct correlation with the work of Andy Warhol, specifically “Silver Liz as Cleopatra.” Andy Warhol’s rendition of Elizabeth Taylor are prime examples of the shift in art history that Benjamin refers to as the value of this particular piece is based upon its mass production, and appropriation of iconic images and people.

    Read More

  • Progression of the Kouroi

    1348 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Disappointed Art Lover." writ. Francis Sparshott. The Forger's Art. gen. ed. Denis Dutton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

    Read More

  • Renaissance Humanism In The Renaissance During The Renaissance

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the Renaissance, people were dedicated to studying human works. They would observe from real life to gain inspiration, new ideas, and to try to recreate the world as they saw it in their art. New techniques such as scientific and atmospheric perspective were created, changing art forever. Artists would use their skills to create works for patrons, from the Church, various guilds, and other religious orders. During the High Renaissance, Julius II commissioned Raphael to decorate the Vatican Palace. The first of the rooms he decorated was The “Room of the Signature”, where he painted The School of Athens. Originally, this room housed Julius II’s personal library, but later on it would be the room where papal documents were signed. In 1508, Raphael began painting four frescoes that represented theology, philosophy, law, and the arts. As stated in Janson’s History of Art Volume II, This fresco “represents a summation of High Renaissance humanism, for it attempts to represent the unity of knowledge in one grand scheme.” Raphael’s The School of Athens is a prime example of humanistic art, as evidenced by the subject of the art itself, the classical elements in the piece, and it’s scientific and illusionistic rendering.

    Read More

  • Postmodern Film

    2291 Words  | 5 Pages

    The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.

    Read More

  • Sistine Chapel Ceiling and The Last Judgment

    2042 Words  | 5 Pages

    In this research paper I will be looking at two different artworks by the same artist. The two I will be looking at are the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508-1512) and The Last Judgment (1534). Both of these painting are painted in the Sistine chapel which is located in the Vatican. I am going to attempt to evaluate these two pieces of art painted by Michelangelo and explain the cultural and religious aspects of them. I will also look to other scholars to get their perspective and their reactions to the paintings. The last step of my research will be to formulate a theory about the relationship between culture and religion and use my topic to help defend my theory.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of Michael Baxandall's Conditions of Trade

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article “Conditions of Trade,” Michael Baxandall explains that fifteenth-century Italian art is a “deposit” resulting from the commercial interaction between the artist and the purchaser, who he refers to as a client. These works, as such, are “fossils of economic life,” and money, and they play an important role in the history of art. In our current perception of the relationship between the artist and art, “painters paint what they think is best, and then look around for a buyer” . However in the past, especially during the Renaissance period, the customers determined the content and form of paintings, as it was them who commissioned the work before it was created. He states that the artists and clients were interconnected and a legal agreement was drawn up specifying subject matter, payment scheme and the quality and quantity of colors, which would influence the artist’s painting style. Baxandall not only looks at the explanation of the style of painting that reflects a society, but also engages in the visual skills and habits that develop out of daily life. The author examines the situations between the painter and client within the commercial, religious, perceptual, and social institutions, centrally focusing on markets, materials, visual practices, and the concept of the Renaissance period, which saw art as an institution. Baxandall notes that Renaissance paintings also relate to the clients’ motives through such ways as possession, self-commemoration, civic consciousness, and self-advertisement. The author considers works of a wide variety of artistic painters, for instance, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and numerous others. He defines and exemplifies fiftee...

    Read More

  • Artistic comparison

    1410 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Philosophers, writers, and artists expressed disillusionment with the rational-humanist tradition of the Enlightenment. They no longer shared the Enlightenment's confidence in either reason's capabilities or human goodness.” (Perry, pg. 457) It is interesting to follow art through history and see how the general mood of society changed with various aspects of history, and how events have a strong connection to the art of the corresponding time.

    Read More

  • André Bazin: Film Critic Extraordinaire

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    As time evolved so did the means of replicating reality. As far back as cave drawings, humans have tried to make sense of their surroundings through artificial means. We can go through time and see this process evolve from engraving, to painting, to photography, and to its most convincing form to date: cinema. In the task of duplicating reality cinema has surpassed all other forms of representation. Looking at the other means which are mentioned above we see cinema is the first mean that is able to capture movement, and nowadays even sound. André Bazin may well be the most influential critic ever to have written about this process. As …. States: “Bazin envisions each rung on cinema's evolutionary ladder as a step toward a more realistic depiction of the world (sound, colour, depth of field, 3- D, etc.)”. Since Bazin believes that the origins of an art reveal its nature, cinema's quest for realism supports his claim for an objective and pure cinema (…). By using the term pure cinema Basin refers to the truest form of recreating reality. This myth of pure cinema which grew out of cinema's beginnings stands as the standard cinema has progressively evolved toward. Bazin sees cinema as “an idealistic phenomenon” and only consequently technical. Being a humanist he believes that the idea precedes the invention and hence is superior to the technical means used to achieve it (…). To Bazin the cinema is inherently realistic even though the potential for human interference is always present. The myth of total cinema Bazin speaks of concerns the belief that humans’ psychology will always leave men with the need to portray reality, possibly as a way to fight back against mortality. Bazin explains the relationship between the filmed image and...

    Read More

  • Technology: The New Medium in Contemporary Art

    1950 Words  | 4 Pages

    Technology is redefining art in a new ways. A new and strange way that has works created by people moving through laser beams, using robotics, lights, video, data gathering, and many other things. Simply put, technology is changing how art is made and how it is experienced. Though this is not something new, the Impressionists movement might have been very different if it was not for the invention of portable paint tubes that let them paint outdoors. Andy Warhol might not have been such a prolific and popular artists if it was not for silkscreen printing. The whole point is that technology has been providing artists with new methods of expressing themselves for a very long time.

    Read More

  • The Shift Between The Middle Ages And Renaissance

    1352 Words  | 3 Pages

    The shift between the Middle Ages and Renaissance was documented in art for future generations. It is because of the changes in art during this time that art historians today understand the historical placement and the socio-economic, political, and religious changes of the time. Art is a visual interpretation of one’s beliefs and way of life; it is through the art from these periods that we today understand exactly what was taking place and why it was happening. These shifts did not happen overnight, but instead changed gradually though years and years of art, and it is through them that we have record of some of the most important changes of historic times.

    Read More

  • Capitalism In Charles Fourier's 'The Arcades Project'

    2259 Words  | 5 Pages

    Adorno found this position to be naïve. As Richard Wolin describes, Adorno “criticizes Benjamin’s unqualified and uncritical acceptance of technically reproduced art as well as the essay’s complementary rejection of all autonomous art as being inherently ‘counterrevolutionary.’” Benjamin does not exactly ignore the control and manipulations of what Adorno and Max Horkheimer would later, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, call the “culture industry.” He argues, for instance, that there can be “no political advantage” from the mechanical reproduction of film “until film has liberated itself from the fetters of capitalist exploitation” (113). However, the space Benjamin devotes to this threat is much more modest than the space he gives to its revolutionary qualities, which he finds intrinsic in technology itself. An example of this faith in the intrinsic mechanisms of technologies of reproduction is his concept of “reception in distraction”: “A person who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it; he enters into the work, just as, according to legend, a Chinese painter entered his completed painting while beholding it. By contrast, the distracted masses absorb the work of art into themselves” (119). For Benjamin, film is like architecture: we come to understand it “not so much by way of attention as by way of habit” and “in the form of casual noticing, rather than attentive observation”

    Read More

  • Mona Lisa Essay

    795 Words  | 2 Pages

    The mysterious smile of the painting Mona Lisa and her tenderness directly carry my imagination to the Renaissance era. Before the Renaissance liberated the thought of the public, most artworks focused to eulogize the holiness of God. The Renaissance successfully freed people from the shackles of theology and affirmed the value of human beings. Mona Lisa represented the highest art level of the Renaissance and became an important legacy for later generations to feel the spirit of the Renaissance. In this paper, I argue that Mona Lisa was a representative artwork of the humanism spirit of the Renaissance. The artist Da Vinci who created Mona Lisa managed to express the charm of human beings with delicate brushwork, exquisite expressions and

    Read More

  • Early Christian Art

    2520 Words  | 6 Pages

    Stone, W. F. (1897). Questions on the philosophy of art;. London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons.

    Read More

  • Why Do People Watch Movies?

    774 Words  | 2 Pages

    ‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.

    Read More

More about Revolutionary Work of Art

Open Document