I don’t quite know where to start with my blog, so I guess I will just start. This year I am a scared little freshman and everyday I go to class and sit there in awe. I never thought a college class could be like our cultural studies class. There are so many amazing ideas being thrown around and people instantly responding. All I can do is madly write down people’s thoughts so I don’t forget. And then I think about the day when I may be brave enough to speak up. So, this is the beginning. Here is what I have come up with.
From what I understood of Walter Benjamin’s article I am obsessed with (hopefully what I understood is right). I am not in full agreement is with his stance on Dadaism. Benjamin seems to hate it. He says, “What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproduction with the very production” (31).
Benjamin says this as though it is a bad thing. But this is where art has brought us today. Dadaism is making a statement about our society while using as little as possible. The artists at the time where so upset and angry with western culture and the horrors of war that had been shown through the media. It’s complete lack of order and sense was its theme. I don’t know much about it other than the art that was created, but from it came cubism and other art movements. This was one of the art movements that really freed the artists from any sort of restraints, a urinal became famous, and anything at the time was possible.
Benjamin goes on to say, “Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public” (32).
In my mind, this is the one of the main purposes of art. If an artist feels that there is something wrong with the world, he should show it. Post WWI people were horrified at what had happened and they had to find a way to express it. This happened to be Dadaism.
The painting may enrage people or disgust people, but at least it makes them think. I would much rather stare at an apple in vinegar for an hour and wonder what the artist was thinking then watch another mindless chick flick acted out by terrible screen actor with fake boobs.
The rest of the article I loved. I just felt I had to defend Dadaism because up to last year I hated it. And then I had a crazy art teacher with her crazy ideas. And we spent an hour talking about a urinal and the thousand things it could mean.
This idea of reproducing production is still a hard thing for me to grasp. I still don’t quite understand. Does it mean that I could glue to forks to a piece of paper and ask the class to analyze what I’m thinking and hopefully be offended or revolted by it? I think not. But, maybe it is worth a try.
Hopefully I didn’t miss what Benjamin was actually saying.
3 comments:
I'm interested in your analysis of a urinal, actually, but I guess that is besides the point. What you are arguing about dadaism makes complete sense. Yes it allowed art to become somewhat scandalous and controversial, but why is art not relevant as a political statement? Art is, in many respects, simply a statement of what is going on around you. I think you made this point well.
I wrestle with whether or not you can reproduce that which is originally produced and call it "real" as opposed to calling it a "copy". When an artist makes a work of art, I think it goes without saying that it is one of a kind. Human hands, even the same hands, cannot produce something twice and thus I do not believe something can be reproduced in this fashion. I believe that Benjamin lived in a time of newly invented technology where art was able to be reproduced for the first time but it was not by human hands. Does this discount it as art? I think that is a personal decision, not so much a theory.
one point i think i agree more closely with benjamin on the criticism of dadaism is your comment that, "Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public” (32). While i agree that one occupation of an artist is to speak out against atrocities and express dissent when possible, it is in the mobilization of the public, this job of outraging the public, that makes it possible for art+politicization to = fascism. as i think i mentioned in class, benjamin's status as a german jew in 1932ish looking out upon his country and seeing beautiful propoganda turned into a discourse of a beautiful war (his criticism of the futurists) speaks volumes to his own paranoia about how even something as fundamentally minimalist as the dada movement can be coopted and usurped IN THE SAME WAY that chicks with fake boobs can be. as long as the public can be assured that it is in THEIR interest to partake in a particular ontology (way of being in the world), the actual content of that movement is almost irrelavent, since the end goal is pacifying the public. maybe its also benjamins marx-ish (not marx-ist) roots that facilitate this concern; just as religion was the opiate of the masses for marx, art as a form of aesthetic politics is the opiate for benjamin. either way, they both (suprisingly) dont like opiates.
Thanks for finally throwing your opinion out there =D
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