Page 36 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 36
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
a lot to make canonized art from what happened to be “breakthrough”
works of art relatively soon after they had first appeared. They might have
been very controversial, or just interesting, or inventive, or whatever it was
that caught the attention of professionals and/or the wider public. In books
such as the one from which I took our example, the contentiousness of such
works of art gets categorized, explained and catalogued – of course de-
pending on the degree of recognition of the authority of the authors. The
book is a kind of an ersatz museum or gallery, since it is full of photograph-
ic presentations of different images (paintings, film stills, installations etc.)
of works of art from the period within Western modernity. Therefore, the
book functions much like a thematic exhibition. We cannot be too wrong
if we see it as a display that “creates” a subject/object dichotomy. The object
is there to substantiate the statement… The discourse surrounding the ex-
position, or more precisely, the discourse that is the exposition, is ‘consta-
tive’: informative and affirmative” (Bal, 1996: p. 3). However, no matter how
thoroughly we search their Introduction into the rather brief presentations
of over seventy artists in the book, we cannot find what is actually meant
by the concept of “barriers”. Since, admittedly, the term used to be uti-
lized metaphorically repeatedly we should not blame the writers for their
“non-explanation” of the term since we can essentially gather what they
mean from what is said in their text. In addition, Woods and others claim
that a number of key exhibitions in Europe and the United States “helped
to disseminate new ideas and techniques”. Therefore, they emphasized a
number of exhibitions and contributions of some galleries and institutions
in Europe and the USA, such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kas-
sel, Tate Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary
Arts in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Museums of Mod-
ern Art in New York and Turin. Furthermore, they highlighted the impor-
tant roles of artists and artistic movements, starting with John Cage‘s con-
tribution to the field of theory and multimedia. Among those, whom they
find important are film directors such as Godard, Fellini and Antonioni;
painters such as Genovés, Fontana and Wesselman as well as numerous de-
signers such as De Harak, Rand and the group Crosby, Fletcher, Forbes. Of
course, one cannot argue against the importance and originality of any of
the artists, designers, multimedia artists and so on who are “exhibited” in
the book, which was one of several such illuminating products at the time
when it was published.
34
a lot to make canonized art from what happened to be “breakthrough”
works of art relatively soon after they had first appeared. They might have
been very controversial, or just interesting, or inventive, or whatever it was
that caught the attention of professionals and/or the wider public. In books
such as the one from which I took our example, the contentiousness of such
works of art gets categorized, explained and catalogued – of course de-
pending on the degree of recognition of the authority of the authors. The
book is a kind of an ersatz museum or gallery, since it is full of photograph-
ic presentations of different images (paintings, film stills, installations etc.)
of works of art from the period within Western modernity. Therefore, the
book functions much like a thematic exhibition. We cannot be too wrong
if we see it as a display that “creates” a subject/object dichotomy. The object
is there to substantiate the statement… The discourse surrounding the ex-
position, or more precisely, the discourse that is the exposition, is ‘consta-
tive’: informative and affirmative” (Bal, 1996: p. 3). However, no matter how
thoroughly we search their Introduction into the rather brief presentations
of over seventy artists in the book, we cannot find what is actually meant
by the concept of “barriers”. Since, admittedly, the term used to be uti-
lized metaphorically repeatedly we should not blame the writers for their
“non-explanation” of the term since we can essentially gather what they
mean from what is said in their text. In addition, Woods and others claim
that a number of key exhibitions in Europe and the United States “helped
to disseminate new ideas and techniques”. Therefore, they emphasized a
number of exhibitions and contributions of some galleries and institutions
in Europe and the USA, such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kas-
sel, Tate Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary
Arts in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Museums of Mod-
ern Art in New York and Turin. Furthermore, they highlighted the impor-
tant roles of artists and artistic movements, starting with John Cage‘s con-
tribution to the field of theory and multimedia. Among those, whom they
find important are film directors such as Godard, Fellini and Antonioni;
painters such as Genovés, Fontana and Wesselman as well as numerous de-
signers such as De Harak, Rand and the group Crosby, Fletcher, Forbes. Of
course, one cannot argue against the importance and originality of any of
the artists, designers, multimedia artists and so on who are “exhibited” in
the book, which was one of several such illuminating products at the time
when it was published.
34
