The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Social Function of Art

Awe

Entertain

Teach us about ourselves

Political

Expression of Creative Genius

Provoke

Theological

pre-modern art:

1. Anonymity
2. Collaborative
3. Religious
4. Patronage

Modernity

1. Authorship, Work of individual genius
2. Social criticism, not celebration
3. Individual agent: Choose their own subjects (‘cause the patron or church doesn’t)

“Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual – first the magical, then the religious kind.” (Benjamin, Part IV)

Cult?

Aura?

Cultural Value

Authenticity


Restricted Exhibition

Provenance

AURA

“But the amazing growth of our techniques …make it a certainty that profound changes are impending …For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was…we must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts … perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”
Paul Valéry, Pièces sur L’Art, 1931

Atget

Lumiere

More Ways of Seeing

From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.

Potemkin

Marx

1. There is a definite connection between art and the material base, between art and the totality of the relations of production. With the change in production relations, art itself is transformed as part of the superstructure, although, like other ideologies, it can lag behind or anticipate social change.

2. There is a definite connection between art and social class. The only authentic, true, progressive art is the art of an ascending class. It expresses the consciousness of this class.

3. Consequently, the political and the aesthetic, the revolutionary content and the artistic quality tend to coincide.

4. The writer has an obligation to articulate and express the interests and needs of the ascending class. (In capitalism, this would be the proletariat.)

5. A declining class or its representatives are unable to produce anything but decadent art.

6. Realism (in various senses) is considered as the art form which corresponds most adequately to the social relationships, and thus is the “correct” art form.

- Herbert Marcuse, from The Aesthetic Dimension

“Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.”

Manuscript

Digital Original