Week 3: Aura: Reflect

 

In Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” examined how mass production was changing art. What was changing was the way art was being made and subsequently changed the way art is perceived. One of the critique Benjamin, wrote about how painting differs from film. Film has the motive to penetrate what reality is.  Film involves the viewer as if they are present, a voyager in the movie scene. They are one with the moment they are living in the time as it passes through the movie screen. Time and space are condensed into one. Whereas painting is a look into what is happened the moment, almost a snapshot.  With a painting a person knows that ther environment has not changed. The moment captured will forever be just that, a moment captured.  What is interesting about Benjamin’s perspective on film is based on the actors. Benjamin says, “the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person.” Which in turn makes him state, “for the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else.”  This theory can be seen in, Andy Warhol Golden Marilyn Monroe.  Andy Warhol used a publicized still from the 1953 film Niagara. Marilyn Monroe was portraying Rose Loomis. But, most people would not know that since it is Monroe the character does not matter.  She is a cult personality. “Even as Warhol canonizes Monroe, he reveals her public persona as a carefully structured illusion.”1 The statement confirms that Monroe was not playing character she was playing herself. However, herself was an act too that the viewer got to interact with, and how hold on too. Andy Warhol also confirms his analysis on how reproduction makes the subject loose its aura. The originality of the painting does not exist, it is no longer creative it does not hold it vaule because it is not something new. Andy Warhol basically took the image Monroe created and he put his signature on it. The painting no longer feels like the genuine connection with Marlein Monroe because her original, cult personality is no longer there. Andy exploited Marilyn Monroe.

Benjamin, Walter, Hannah Arendt, and Harry Zohn. 1969. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.

“MoMA Learning.” Accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-gold-marilyn-monroe-1962/.