Thoughts on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is an essay written by intellectual Walter Benjamin in 1935. A lot has changed since then, but it continues to be relevant. He begins his essay with a short history of mechanical reproduction of art beginning with the Greek method of Bronze casting, medieval woodcuts, eventually the printing press, and finally the invention of photography and cinema, which is his primary focus. So I might pick up where he left off: shortly after the publication of this essay, television brought moving pictures to peoples' homes. Video and audio recording technology continued to advance throughout the twentieth century, becoming more ubiquitous. Handheld video recorders allowed anyone to make movies. In the 1980s, the personal computer was invented and that changed everything. Suddenly, anything could be reduced to the same digital code, anything could be reproduced on a computer screen. Computers advanced relentlessly through the last decades of the 20th century, facilitating the creation of the internet in the early 90s.

        In this world of digital reproduction, anything can be reproduced a billion times instantaneously. Everything is everywhere. I have a reproduction of the entire planet on my laptop; it's called Google Earth. Benjamin talked about the death of authorship as anyone can publish their creations. Today, this is even more absolutely the case; anyone can post their pictures, video, audio, writing, etc., and make it available to anyone connected to the internet. When everyone can publish, "author" as a distinct category becomes meaningless.

       Benjamin also talks about the argument between photography and painting. He makes the statement that the question of which is superior is irrelevant. Today, this is even more true. On a computer, they become the same: a collection of pixels on a screen, or even deeper than that, lines of computer code. As such, photographs lose their absolute fix on reality. They become a blend of reproduction and creation.

Artist Statement

As a child, I drew spaceships. In high school I began to envision whole cities and worlds from the future. I was especially fascinated by planets like Coruscant from Star Wars, a world entirely covered by city. I imagined myself careening through the skies in anti-gravity hover cars and exploring the infinite warrens and alley-ways.Today, my work continues to be inspired by science fiction, the future, technology, only in a more abstract way. I construct intricate, machine-like patterns, combining quick, loose gestures and tightly controlled marks.. The process I employ in my drawings and paintings is integral to them. I let them flow from my intuition, making decisions on the fly. In this way, they embody the apparent chaos of organic growth, expanding with no set plan. My work explores the line between mechanical and organic forms, between mechanism and organism. The intuitive process also involves a lack of conscious control. As an artist, I am very interested in releasing control and making art through processes outside of myself. This method can be either mechanical or natural. Process is important to both.

I work in all the traditional media – drawing, painting, sculpture, photography – as well as digital painting and 3D modeling/animation. I believe that an artist in this day and age needs to be fluent in a multitude of media in order to make the most of an idea. I also believe that digital technology and the internet hold tremendous possibilities for art making today.

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker is a contemporary artist from the UK. She works in sculpture and installation art, using a variety of materials. Most of the work she makes involves the "destruction" of an object or collection of objects. I put destruction in quotes because it maybe isn't the best term. It is more like the transformation of the objects through a typically destructive process: exploding, burning, stretching, squashing, dropping, smashing, etc. For example, for "Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View"(1991), she hired the British Army to blow up a garden shed, then hung the pieces from the ceiling around a light source in the center. She currently has going a series titled "Avoided Object" consisting of different collections of objects that have been transformed in these ways. One example is a collection of shiny metal tableware that have been crushed under a steamroller. What interests me most about her work is the process of creation through destruction. In a way, Parker is redefining destruction as just another form of transformation.

 

Frith Street Gallery profile
more info from the European Graduate School

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse was a sculptor in New York during the height of modernism (late 50s, 60s), though she . She was born into a Jewish family 1936 in Hamburg, Germany. Her family fled Germany in 1938 and arrived in New York in 1939. Eva studied at several notable art schools including the School of Industrial Art in New York, Pratt Institute, and Cooper Union. In 1965 she began sculpting with plastic materials: latex, fiberglass, etc., the materials for which she became known. She died in 1970, at the young age of 34, as a result of a brain tumor, likely related to her chosen materials.

       Her work tends to be organic in form, evoking skin or dried seaweed. She is associated with postminimalism, a trend typified by emphasis on the formal, aesthetic aspects, and lack of formal complexity. Her work is usually the natural color of her materials, having a translucent quality. The materials are often very fragile, and degrade as they age, bringing a temporal aspect to her work In light of the death that they probably caused, Eva's sculptures take on a sinister aspect. Their light airy appearance hides a lurking, invisible threat.

 Article by Arthur C. Danto

John Grade

John Grade is a sculptor from Seattle, WA. He works in a variety of materials including wood, plastics, rubber, etc., making organic forms on a variety of scales. He begins in the studio, where he crafts the initial form, then he takes the piece and leaves it exposed in nature for some time, where it is transformed by the environment. In this way, natural decay and weathering become prevalent themes in his work. The element of chance that this process brings is also important. The artist isn't completely in control of the final product. The natural environment completes the work.

       For example, "Collector", which was displayed for a time at our very own Hallie Ford, consisted of a lattice-framed ring made out of wood which he initially submerged in Puget Sound where in collected barnacles and seaweed, then took to the Utah desert to get baked by the sun.

       Similarly, "Fold", an undulating circular structure made out of wood and resin, is currently buried in Idaho where the termites are having their way with it. 

       He is currently embarking on a project to resurrect pieces of the Wawona, an old schooner that has been rotting into Lake Union in Seattle for a number of years. He plans to carve them, then assemble then into a tree-like vertical tower.

John's Website
A great article from the Seattle Times

A blog is born

Good afternoon friends, artists, art-lovers, and random internet people and welcome to my blog. Here you will find information about me with regards to my art and the art that interests and influences me. Check it!