Page 35 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 35
Changing the Mind
Meaning and time are two categories that have a lot to do with art and
– needless to say – vice versa. Quiet frequently, books happen to record
cross-sections between these two notions. To illustrate this statement, I
shall take the example of the book Art Without Boundaries, in which three
authors mainly intend to present their view upon what was considered
visual art in the period of twenty years between 1950 and 1970. The intro-
duction begins with a moderately bold assertion – considering the point in
time in which it was written:
At one time it was easy to distinguish between the ‘fine’ artist and
the commercial artist. It is now less easy. The qualities, which dif-
ferentiated the one from the other, are now often common to both.
The painter, who once saw the commercial designer as a toady to
the financial pressures of industry, may now find that the dealer
can impose a tyranny worse than that of any client. During the last
twenty years or so, barriers have been broken down; and they are
still being broken down (Woods, Thompson and Williams, 1972:
p. 9).
Was it not great in such times, when “barriers were still being bro-
ken down?” The authors of the Introduction, as quoted above, obviously
had thought so. Yet the book itself is not so very ambitious after all; it was
one of those books, which – by the virtue of its qualified assessment – helps
33
Meaning and time are two categories that have a lot to do with art and
– needless to say – vice versa. Quiet frequently, books happen to record
cross-sections between these two notions. To illustrate this statement, I
shall take the example of the book Art Without Boundaries, in which three
authors mainly intend to present their view upon what was considered
visual art in the period of twenty years between 1950 and 1970. The intro-
duction begins with a moderately bold assertion – considering the point in
time in which it was written:
At one time it was easy to distinguish between the ‘fine’ artist and
the commercial artist. It is now less easy. The qualities, which dif-
ferentiated the one from the other, are now often common to both.
The painter, who once saw the commercial designer as a toady to
the financial pressures of industry, may now find that the dealer
can impose a tyranny worse than that of any client. During the last
twenty years or so, barriers have been broken down; and they are
still being broken down (Woods, Thompson and Williams, 1972:
p. 9).
Was it not great in such times, when “barriers were still being bro-
ken down?” The authors of the Introduction, as quoted above, obviously
had thought so. Yet the book itself is not so very ambitious after all; it was
one of those books, which – by the virtue of its qualified assessment – helps
33
