There were two ideas in the Benjamin piece yesterday that really caught my attention, and can be seen today. The first was the concept of aestheticization of politics vs. politicization of aesthetics. I think that the aestheticization of politics can not only be seen in war time but is always around us; political campaigns, prime minister/presidential addresses, anything to do with politicians in the media thanks to their PR people; but also in other areas of political action, rally’s, for example, are packaged into one great drama story with either heroes or villains for their five minute news slot. So now the aim is to politicize aesthetics… how the hell does that happen? I fully understand and support our projects of feministeppin and zines; works of art with some political punch. My worry is how to move that to the big scale without aestheticizing our politicization of aesthetics. Maybe I’m just being a skeptic, but it seems to me that nothing can reach the masses without it being packaged to please, without it looking good no matter what political message it has to ‘ease up’ on.
The second idea I wanted further discussion on was the question posed before our break: does the reproducibility reduce the aura? It seemed to me that most of us had come to the conclusion of ‘no’ without much thought of how it just might. Yes some people still go to see the Mona Lisa, yes the Grand Canyon is still a main attraction, but there is still a large diminish on the respect and ‘aw’ we give to these works of art. Great pieces are always mocked in the media; the Simpsons with the statue of David for example. Another great example is from the wonderful Mr. Bean, in his movie he goes to see the Mona Lisa, sneezes on it, and destroys it; he then proceeds to ‘fix’ it, after trying to repaint it he gives up, goes to the gift shop, buys a poster, pours some chemical on it to look like it was painted and passes it off as the original. I think this says a lot about reproducibility, originality, authenticity and authority. How do we know what original is anymore; is there even such thing as original? Going back to the original question, I do believe reproducibility has reduced the aura, perhaps it has not erased it completely, and perhaps it never will, but we do not think of fine art they way we are told ‘they’ used to.
The second idea I wanted further discussion on was the question posed before our break: does the reproducibility reduce the aura? It seemed to me that most of us had come to the conclusion of ‘no’ without much thought of how it just might. Yes some people still go to see the Mona Lisa, yes the Grand Canyon is still a main attraction, but there is still a large diminish on the respect and ‘aw’ we give to these works of art. Great pieces are always mocked in the media; the Simpsons with the statue of David for example. Another great example is from the wonderful Mr. Bean, in his movie he goes to see the Mona Lisa, sneezes on it, and destroys it; he then proceeds to ‘fix’ it, after trying to repaint it he gives up, goes to the gift shop, buys a poster, pours some chemical on it to look like it was painted and passes it off as the original. I think this says a lot about reproducibility, originality, authenticity and authority. How do we know what original is anymore; is there even such thing as original? Going back to the original question, I do believe reproducibility has reduced the aura, perhaps it has not erased it completely, and perhaps it never will, but we do not think of fine art they way we are told ‘they’ used to.
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