Modern: Blurring Boundaries/Bauhaus Machinic Design Utopia

Art as ritual

Within the readings this week I found that I was most attracted to the idea that photography was an active participant, if not the sole reason, for the shift in definition and framework for the idea of "pure art." This was first touched upon by Rancierre in his "The Future of the Image;" "To resemble was long taken to be the peculiarity of art, while an infinite number of spectacles and forms of imitation were proscribed from it. In our day, not to resemble is taken for the imperative of art, while photographs, videos, and displays of objects similar to everyday ones have taken the place of abstract canvases in galleries and museums." I believe that here Rancierre was making the bold statement that photography actually changed the very essence, meaning, and framework of what art had become.

Art as ornament

Before works of art were made to resemble reality, to mimic it as an attempt to capture the very essance of reality, but with the birth of
photography this exploration was made obsolute by the photographs ability to reproduce and resemble reality in an almost perfect sense. Therefore art was forced into a metamorphosis of sorts to keep its relevance intact; paintings became more abstract, focusing on themes and ideas that could not be seen, but thought and spoken...the very notion of conceptual art seems to have stemmed from the invention of photography itself.

Art as resemblance

Osip Brik furthers this idea of photography as the revolutionary keystone of contemporary art in his essay "Painting verses Photography." Brik even ventures so far in "From Picture to Calico-Print" as to suggest an irrelevance for "easel-painting" within the shadow of photography's ability to produce accurate depictions of reality, utilizing it's advantages of "precision, speed, [and] cheapness." Paintings must then be created for a purpose other than "delighting the eye" and existing purely as aesthetic objects to be viewed and appreciated for only by their physical resemblances to reality. To survive painting had to become actively aware of the word happening around it, to the present concerns and political issues, etc. and address them through their media. Only by this exploration and invitation for the viewer to become actively involved in a thought process that went beyond merely looking could painting take it's authority back.

Photography as superior resemblance

This transformation was not mutually exclusive. There are only so many ways to reproduce an accurate copy of an object, person, place, etc before everything is reproduced and the reproductions of reality themselves begin to deteriorate the thing itself, it's "aura;" as Walter Benjamin refers to it in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Photography had to then take the same step forward as painting did, into a realm of the conceptual, to emphasize the sayable as much as the visible.

Art as concept

According to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Adolf Loos art was not just confined to resemblances and reproduction, but was utilized in ritual and ornament. It is not the function of ornament in art that interested me, but the idea of art used for the purposes of ritual and how we have moved beyond ritual in present times into the power of exhibition. For me, creating art as a means for ritual practice is in direct relation to the conceptual goals of artists today. In ritual the work of art is transcended from it's physical presence into a spiritual essence, much like the present political artwork that involves the viewer in a journey of awareness and reform. Photography too had it's hand in challenging the notion of transcendence in art. Before photography, it was ritual that granted works of art the ability to transcend themselves while ornament and resemblance were still rooted in aesthetic. In this post-photography contemporary world the process and idea of "look, see!" became more relevant and therefore created a need for exhibition, where transcendent art is no longer made for the private or select few of a cult, but for a larger "mass" of people.