Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Essay

In art, there are qualities that speak louder than words. It expresses many different messages and emotions and each person has an experience different from the next. In this paper, I will be discussing two artworks I encountered. The piece is a good example of how people can encounter different experiences in one piece. I attended the Orlando Museum of Art a while back with family and overall enjoyed my experience. On my visit, I found the museum quite impressive and felt a deep connection with specific pieces.

The essays by Berger and Benjamin are similar in several ways in the sense that they follow a common theme and put forward similar arguments. Mechanical reproduction changed the way we view and experience art. Their perspectives on the reproduction of art changed our thinking and feelings for what it can bring.

Benjamin stressed the Marxist democratization of art through digital reproduction, a media which allows for de-emphasizing the original work of art. Throughout the history of arts, particularly visual arts, we have revered the individual paintings created

Walter Benjamins' thesis deliberates the way people as a whole perceive 'change' with social changes thus giving insight into how human sensory perspective is not absolutely biological or natural, but is also historical (Robinson, 2013). Transformations of art can be seen as an effect of changes in the economic structure in line with Marxist approaches of art resembling economic production (Benjamin, 1936; Robinson, 2013). According to Benjamin (1936), works of art historically had an "aura" which can be described as a supernatural space or mythological force arising from uniqueness, inclusive of a sensory experience of distance between the audience and the work of art (Gina, 2008; Robinson, 2013). However, the term aura can be best used to

According to David Hume, a great philosopher in 18th century, “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” As a result, “good art” is the judgement of individual base on their positive sentiment toward an artwork, and that is called the taste of art. Besides, David Hume also believes there is something will make an artwork better than others. To experience that belief, after falling in love with two artworks-“A Bull Fight” and “The Bonaventure Pine”- in the exhibition at Museum of Fine Art Houston, based on the personal taste of art to state that “A Bull Fight” is better artwork than “The Bonaventure Pine” even though both are beautiful.

With the advent of the lithograph, whose origins lie in etching and engraving, works of art were beginning to lose their aura. Just as a written novel is not the same as the oral story from which it may

SO I ASK HOW WE DISCOVER MEANING. OFTEN THE MATERIALS AND PHYSICAL PRESENTATION DO NOT PRESENT A CLUE . . . NEITHER AN ENTRY POINT TO AN ARTIST’S INTENTION NOR A REFERENCE TO THE MEANING OF THE ART. WE ARE AT A LOSS WITHOUT A HISTORY, A CONTEXT OR PERHAPS, AN EXPLANATION ON A MUSEUM WALL. THIS IS THE GLOBAL

Art is one of the most fascinating attractions that the world has to offer us. From its smallest art pieces to its enormous architectural designs. Art doesn’t have an age, whether it was made during the time of our ancestors the Homo erectus or as new as our present day. Art is a way of expression, to tell someone a story about a person event or thing. In this research essay I will be describing the Art work which I have researched that are most fascinating to me.

Out of the collision of ideals derived from Romanticism, and an attempt to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of works in the first decade of the 20th century, which, while their authors considered them extensions of existing trends in art, broke the implicit contract with the general public that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and

Art, in my view, is than an activity of using man-made symbols to represent and transfer ideas. Yet, it is limited by the artist’s ability to manipulate these symbols to express his or her ideas, the clarity with which the symbols themselves express ideas, and the audience’s ability to perceive and understand the ideas that the artist has expressed. Overall, art as I have defined it is limited by our ability to express, transmit, and perceive ideas, as well as the constructs we have created to express ideas. Due to these constraints, it makes it almost impossible, in my view, to create a flawless work of art, where there is no conscious separation between artist and audience. There will always be some conscious separation between artist and audience; yet the great artists, in my view, are able to minimize this conscious separation between themselves and large audiences. Thus, I believe

One thing is permanent about art throughout the ages and civilizations of time: it always expresses some aspect of the culture that produced it. So it may be seen in Renaissance Italy in Michelangelo's David, or in Hellenistic Greece in the Dying Gaul. The Egyptian statue of Anubis reveals something about the spiritual belief of those ancient people, and the abstract expressionism of Kandinsky in the 20th century represents the shift in intellectual concepts of modern spirituality. Art throughout the ages has always been coupled with some sense of otherworldliness. My recent travels through time have confirmed this and these pages will show exactly how artworks from late 2nd century BC China, 1st century BC Rome, and 16th century Northern Europe illustrate the fact that art in every time and place may serve as a shining example of the beliefs and cultural attitudes of that time and place.

John Berger makes a numerous amount of remarks in ‘Ways of Seeing’ towards what the reproduction of art has done to the art community. As Berger expresses his opinion in his essay, he states “What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it.” (Berger, page 126) This makes it clear that Berger is against the reproduction of art. This connects him

1.Has the mechanical reproduction of art opened up possibilities of a more democratic appreciation, or merely reduced it to the status of a commodity?

Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were alltheorists of the Frankfurt School and they were the first to introduce the idea of the “culture industry, the mass marketing of culture in the modern era. However, Walter Benjamin gives a different perspective on the role of culture in modern society, he believed that the possibility of mechanical reproduction (photography) was demolishing the integrity of art in modern society . He gives the example of the Mona Lisa painting by leonardo da vinci. The painting has a specific the existence and particular location but with mechanical reproduction it can be copied multiple different times and occupy more than one place at a time. The question posed by Benjamin is what are we missing

Though within today’s modern society the idea of printmaking in the subject of art has slightly changed its uniqueness due to advancements in printing technology, the originality and rarity of a talented printmaker is no longer as easy to find as it was at one point in time. Printmaking has evolved greatly since its era of major popularity in 1500’s- 1700’s also known as early modern society. Though the sheer skill and craftsmanship that goes into a handmade print or reproduction is harder to come by in todays society, the impact the ability to multiply images was hugely significant on early modern societies, essentially changing the way art is perceived today.