"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": Response
This article points out an interesting change with our perception of art with the ability to duplicate many of the artisitc mediums currently used. Or rather, if the "original" is merely the means to create duplicates, what is the original, and what value can it contain?
It's intersting to think of art in terms of its "aura" and I definitely agree with the author that this is greatly diminished by modern mechanical reproduction. I think this has less to do with the aura in terms of authenticity, as in the cult that the author describes, but more in terms of historical proximity. For example, first edition books are highly prized because they bring the reader closer to the author in terms of time, not necessarily because they are more accurate or "original" reproductions. The exact same manuscript can have a very different value based solely on the date it was printed, even if it is further from what the author intended, simply because of its historical significance.
Emily Dickenson's poems were initially published with proper punctuation instead of the dashes she used when writing. Although those first editions are far from what she intended (or the original), they have a high value because of their connection to the period of time in which she was writing. Although those editions are the original print, they are not the original piece of work.
I don't think it's possible to calculate degrees of originality, so work increasingly has external factors that give it additional worth. This is evident in the recent trend toward limited production, autographed pieces and first-edition collectibles. Worth has increasingly been attached outside of the realm of the pieces themselves to maintain the type of cult status as older works.
When he writes about architecture and a distracted audience, I immediately thought of graffiti. It's very similar to painting in the materials used and it's ability only to occupy a finite space with a definite original, but very similar to architecture and film in it's attempts to attract a distracted audience. This made me further question the aura the author describes. The examples of paintings he uses are all paintings held in areas that demand quiet contemplation -- churches and museums. If Raphael had painted his works on the side of a building in Rome, would viewers approach them with the same reverence? Do paintings still have their aura, or is it only attached through historical and cultural signficance?
When I went to the Uffizi in Florence, I saw a lot of paintings that I'd only seen before in books. Although I was standing in front of the original, I couldn't help but compare the pictures I'd seen to the real one in front of me. In some way, the photos seemed more "real" than the paintings themselves. The colors weren't as vibrant, they were larger than I expected -- the original somehow became the original way I had encountered the paintings in photographs. To be honest, some paintings I preferred in the photographs I'd seen.
