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.The argument is this:the authentic now often seems less real than the reproduction.Postcards, postersand prints of art work, all readily available and affordable, tend to command ourattention and indeed form our interpretation of what has not yet been seen insitu, where the original is located in real time and space.The current physicalenvironment and previous locations of the original artwork provide what thecritic Walter Benjamin calls the aura of a work of art. The uniqueness of a workof art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. Whatsurrounds the work of art, its aura, gives it special meaning.This contention is part of Benjamin s extensive consideration of Art in theage of mechanical reproduction that appeared in his Illuminations (1950) and wasone of the first serious statements about the effect of the reproduction on theoriginal.Moreover, as Benjamin also pointed out, the work of art can now meet the viewer.It can enter the house, arriving by mail or, in our own time, New world of images 61by electronic transmission.And so Claude Monet s paintings of water lilies, inactual number fewer than two dozen, have multiplied into the millions asMonet s work has gained in popularity.Moreover, as a new example of mixedmedia, Monet s work can be downloaded to serve as a computer screensaver.Equally familiar is the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa.Would anyone dareestimate the number of images produced of Leonardo da Vinci s painting,arguably the most popular of all art works?The matter is complicated by the workings of the marketplace.As neverbefore in history, art has become a highly marketable commodity.On 31 January2002, the well-known art auction house Sotheby s announced that it was joiningthe most successful on-line auction site, e-Bay, to auction fine art.Art collectinghas been seen by many corporations, including the ill-fated Enron, as a form ofsound investment.An interesting contemporary example of art in the marketplace is theimpressive popularity of the painting done by the American Thomas Kinkade,self-styled painter of light. Through the use of canvas lithography, he providesunusual reproductions that are then enhanced by hand-retouching to addsomething of the texture of the original.Currently there are 5,000 retail outletsselling these reproduced paintings and 350 signature galleries where the hand-retouching is done by on-site artists working on easels set up before the purchaser.Kinkade has profited from a new expression of artistic endeavor, what might becalled perhaps disingenuously production painting.All of Claude Monet spaintings of haystacks were individual interpretations of a commonplace scene.Eventhe lithographs of the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec were originally limited innumber.The profusion of reproductions today with a quality that may even makethe original look inauthentic both democratizes art and predisposes us to comparethe original to the reproduction, not the other way round.Moreover, as the artworkfrequently reproduced is for this very reason accorded the category of the original, it is approached by the viewer with an attitude not reflective of the work s artisticworth but rather as an object of curiosity.It is seen in order to have been seen.New inner and outer visionsWays of seeing have always been culturally and artistically focused, but not until theappearance of modern optics Galileo s telescope and Leeuwenhoek s microscopein the sixteenth century did vision go beyond the range of the naked eye.By theearly twentieth century, electricity charged new instruments that uncovered muchmore, the x-ray machine marking the beginning of that progress.Today, myriadelectronic views of things large and small, but both beyond the power of theunaided eye, are converted into images measured in inches, not megabytes.On a micro-scale, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) systems exquisitely displaythe complicated activities of the body and the brain.On a macro-scale, the HubbleSpace Telescope launched in 1990 has been the most spectacular of many telescopes,which have transmitted data from millions of light years away.These data have beendigitally converted into awesome color photos of vast clouds of light.CRISP (an 62 A History of Popular Cultureappropriate acronym for the Center for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing)at the National University of Singapore uses a space satellite to provide clear, detailedimages of earthly occurrences: urban development, natural disasters, environmentalchanges (website spaceimaging 2001: 1).These new revelations can delight, inspire and perplex our vision of ourselvesand things around us.New techniques of surveillance that probe and pry mayengender mixed feelings.The roving lens of the surveillance camera hasexamined and altered cityscapes the world over.It is estimated that there are onemillion surveillance cameras keeping watch for street and store crime in GreatBritain alone.Moreover, security cameras will soon read the iris of the eye as ameans of personal identification.In early 2002, news articles announced afinding by researchers at the Mayo Clinic that a high-resolution, thermal-imaging (heat-sensing) camera can detect faint blushing around the eyesindicating that the person was lying.This device will doubtless soon join thearray of other instruments that allow police to determine guilt or innocence incrime detection.Such devices of detection now seem to beg for a metaphoricequivalent of the eye as the window to the soul.Our daily encounter with images, both as sources of information and elementsof entertainment is inescapable.Contemporary popular culture is one ofindividual gazes and collective displays, one in which the dominant demand isexpressed in three imperatives Show me, Let me see and Let me beseen all subsumed under the familiar injunction Picture this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The argument is this:the authentic now often seems less real than the reproduction.Postcards, postersand prints of art work, all readily available and affordable, tend to command ourattention and indeed form our interpretation of what has not yet been seen insitu, where the original is located in real time and space.The current physicalenvironment and previous locations of the original artwork provide what thecritic Walter Benjamin calls the aura of a work of art. The uniqueness of a workof art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. Whatsurrounds the work of art, its aura, gives it special meaning.This contention is part of Benjamin s extensive consideration of Art in theage of mechanical reproduction that appeared in his Illuminations (1950) and wasone of the first serious statements about the effect of the reproduction on theoriginal.Moreover, as Benjamin also pointed out, the work of art can now meet the viewer.It can enter the house, arriving by mail or, in our own time, New world of images 61by electronic transmission.And so Claude Monet s paintings of water lilies, inactual number fewer than two dozen, have multiplied into the millions asMonet s work has gained in popularity.Moreover, as a new example of mixedmedia, Monet s work can be downloaded to serve as a computer screensaver.Equally familiar is the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa.Would anyone dareestimate the number of images produced of Leonardo da Vinci s painting,arguably the most popular of all art works?The matter is complicated by the workings of the marketplace.As neverbefore in history, art has become a highly marketable commodity.On 31 January2002, the well-known art auction house Sotheby s announced that it was joiningthe most successful on-line auction site, e-Bay, to auction fine art.Art collectinghas been seen by many corporations, including the ill-fated Enron, as a form ofsound investment.An interesting contemporary example of art in the marketplace is theimpressive popularity of the painting done by the American Thomas Kinkade,self-styled painter of light. Through the use of canvas lithography, he providesunusual reproductions that are then enhanced by hand-retouching to addsomething of the texture of the original.Currently there are 5,000 retail outletsselling these reproduced paintings and 350 signature galleries where the hand-retouching is done by on-site artists working on easels set up before the purchaser.Kinkade has profited from a new expression of artistic endeavor, what might becalled perhaps disingenuously production painting.All of Claude Monet spaintings of haystacks were individual interpretations of a commonplace scene.Eventhe lithographs of the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec were originally limited innumber.The profusion of reproductions today with a quality that may even makethe original look inauthentic both democratizes art and predisposes us to comparethe original to the reproduction, not the other way round.Moreover, as the artworkfrequently reproduced is for this very reason accorded the category of the original, it is approached by the viewer with an attitude not reflective of the work s artisticworth but rather as an object of curiosity.It is seen in order to have been seen.New inner and outer visionsWays of seeing have always been culturally and artistically focused, but not until theappearance of modern optics Galileo s telescope and Leeuwenhoek s microscopein the sixteenth century did vision go beyond the range of the naked eye.By theearly twentieth century, electricity charged new instruments that uncovered muchmore, the x-ray machine marking the beginning of that progress.Today, myriadelectronic views of things large and small, but both beyond the power of theunaided eye, are converted into images measured in inches, not megabytes.On a micro-scale, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) systems exquisitely displaythe complicated activities of the body and the brain.On a macro-scale, the HubbleSpace Telescope launched in 1990 has been the most spectacular of many telescopes,which have transmitted data from millions of light years away.These data have beendigitally converted into awesome color photos of vast clouds of light.CRISP (an 62 A History of Popular Cultureappropriate acronym for the Center for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing)at the National University of Singapore uses a space satellite to provide clear, detailedimages of earthly occurrences: urban development, natural disasters, environmentalchanges (website spaceimaging 2001: 1).These new revelations can delight, inspire and perplex our vision of ourselvesand things around us.New techniques of surveillance that probe and pry mayengender mixed feelings.The roving lens of the surveillance camera hasexamined and altered cityscapes the world over.It is estimated that there are onemillion surveillance cameras keeping watch for street and store crime in GreatBritain alone.Moreover, security cameras will soon read the iris of the eye as ameans of personal identification.In early 2002, news articles announced afinding by researchers at the Mayo Clinic that a high-resolution, thermal-imaging (heat-sensing) camera can detect faint blushing around the eyesindicating that the person was lying.This device will doubtless soon join thearray of other instruments that allow police to determine guilt or innocence incrime detection.Such devices of detection now seem to beg for a metaphoricequivalent of the eye as the window to the soul.Our daily encounter with images, both as sources of information and elementsof entertainment is inescapable.Contemporary popular culture is one ofindividual gazes and collective displays, one in which the dominant demand isexpressed in three imperatives Show me, Let me see and Let me beseen all subsumed under the familiar injunction Picture this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]