Musings on Our Society of Spectacle: Lawler, Benjamin, and Friends
Benjamin thinks on Louise Lawler's "Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut" - 1984
A recent post by art history students at The University of California in Berkeley in their blog Photography and After, reinvigorated my interest in the discussion of art-making in our Society of Spectacle.
Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is compared and contrasted with Rosalind Krauss' "Louise Lawler: Souvenir Memories." Benjamin was accurate in his analysis of the advancing technologies of film and print reproduction, in that they would would lesson the one-of-a-kind "aura" of a Work of Art and infuse art pieces with a type of "cult-value" or commodity status. Krauss, however, goes one step further to posit that our entire society is or has become the commodity. That the breakdown between painting, sculpture, and commercial art is upon us.
What would Benjamin think of today's Society of Spectacle?
Portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña
I recently read some excerpts from extreme performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña's essay "The New Global Culture: Somewhere between Corporate Multiculturalism and the Mainstream Bizarre," in which he mourned the takeover of spectacle. He argued that art audiences in this century have become progressively more numb to what were previously thought of as controversial works of art. Gomez-Pena fears his loss of potency, as our society gains a tolerance to "shocking" images.
Could it be? I tend to agree with this sentiment. What with the content of television and Hollywood films, it's no wonder that gallery-goers are no longer stunned by blood, nudity, or weapons in artwork.
Chris Burden - "747" - January 5, 1973
"At about 8 am on a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport, I fired several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747." - Chris Burden
I am still stunned by this image.
It has not lost its "aura", it's preciousness and singularity, at least for me.
But hark! It is now reproducible for you and countless others who may seek this URL and revel in its "cult-value!"
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