Reviews for Art in the age of mass media

The average rating for Art in the age of mass media based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-04 00:00:00 Nick Maggiore Some key ideas: Our culture is dominated not by fine arts but by mass media. Changes brought about by the industrial revolution, by the development of a capitalist economic system, and by emergence of an urban, consumer society, have irrevocably altered the social context in which fine arts operate. Mass media expands the study field of art historians. It is impossible to understand art as a social phenomenon without examining its links with ideology that takes place where certain artwork is being produced. Fine arts - it is not about technology of making itself, rather about the way in which materials and tools are habitually used, social institutions within which works are produced, distributed, categorised and consumed. Art itself can be regarded as social invention. Context of displaying is crucial. For instance if artworks are displayed in the museum in chronological order, it fosters the idea that works of art developed autonomous, growing primarily out of earlier rather than out of external social demands. A specific set of practice, training schemes, organisations, institutions, etc ensures the particular identity and continuity of fine arts. Machines and their outputs enables wider communication to take place, but they also stand in between audience and performer. A television programme is watched by millions, though their experience is not collective one. The mass media atomise and demobilise their audiences. The mass media functions vertically - messages are transmitted in one direction only. The older media tend to become the content of the newest. The mass media reproduce dominant ideology and are thus a conservative or counter-revolutionary force; they encounter passivity and aphaty; it is concentrated in the hands of few people who are motivated by self-interest, private profit or social control. Fundamental painting can be seen as the last attempt to protect the identity of the painting in the face of competition of the mass media. We live in media saturated environment. Raymond Williams - „The culture of distance" - the audience is distanced from the actual event, protected from reality by the antiseptic style of representation (pop art). Hamilton's aim - to monumentalise the everyday world of the bourgeoisie (same as Dutch painters of the 17th c., Impressionists and Seurat). He is a person who adopts an anthropological attitude to a cultural phenomenon. It is non sufficient for an artist to incorporate popular imagery to become part of mass culture; the whole production, distribution and consumption also needs to challenge. Mass production does enable the consumer goods to be enjoyed virtually everyone in an industrial society, it does produce a level of culture, a uniformity of social habits. What artist says about his/her work should be noted, but also critically evaluated. A critic should necessarily accept expression of intention, or explanations of meaning, by the artist as 'truth' of a work of art. Warhol - produce industrial art to industrial society. Warhol introduced 'mistakes' to his paintings in order to produce unique marks which would consider the painting as unique. The shock value of the image is progressively diminishing, image acquires the character of stereotype because of it being exposed multiple times. Warhol is an artist who has worked in the full glare of publicity and instead of being destroyed by it, he has exploited it for his of purpose. He celebrates the values of western countries as realists of soviet ones. The truthful depiction will necessarily reveal the faults and contradictions of that society. Lichtenstein and Jones transmitted despised material from trash to art. Courbet was also using popular culture as his field of interest. The influence of mass media can reveal itself by what artists avoid doing. In our society every human is formed by the stereotypes of mass culture. Laurie Anderson's works are based upon awareness of language and other communication codes, and on understanding the ways in which the mass media filter information and mediate between us and external reality, and between people. Our relationship to art is being transformed by mass media. It transforms the very nature of art and since our experience is being mediated by mass media, it is way different from that of pre-industrial cultures. Artworks mediated by mass media can be detached from their original social and cultural context. Stereotypes by which artist are presented by mass culture (f.e. mad genius). Mass media absorbs and utilizes the fine arts in variety of ways. From the point of view of the mass media, the fine arts are simply one set of social activities amongst any others, they take a not of them, but generally regard them as far less important than sport. Benjamin Walters argument: the traditional work of art had a presence, an aura, which was the result of it's uniqueness - 'its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be' - an authenticity. Exhibition value may have replaced cult-value, but the function of museums is surely to preserve the aura of a work of art - in fact, enternalize it. Malraux argument: (a) the existence of museums has altered the way in which art is experienced; (b) the millions of art reproductions constitute a musée imaginaire, a museum of imagination and of images, a museum without walls; (c) hence the imaginary museum extends the process set in motion by the physical museum and makes available to the private individual the art of all times of all people - though at the cost of decontextualisation and providing substitutes for originals. Marshall McLuhan argument: invention of major new media alters our existing sensory modalities and, furthermore, that new media change the standard relationship of older media (f.e., by challenging their individual integrity, by endowing them with an art status, and by upsetting the balance power between them). Benjamin: artist should not supply apparatus of production without simultaneously seeking ti change it in the direction of socialism. 'Functional transformation'. Benjamin also proposed that artist's activity should have organising function and provide the instruction if he or she seeks to challenge or change social environment. F.e. Brecht's theatre. 19th c. fashion for collecting 'primative' artefacts was a cultural phenomena closely linked to Europe's colonial and imperialist exploitation of vast areas of the globe. In this way Europe renewed itself both economically and spiritually. Adorno - artists are spcialists of representation, therefore they are the ones who examine how is it being done at certain period in relation to on going technical changes.' While artists started working 'between styles' (post-modernism), they started challenging our most deep-rooted orientations to the world whether they are in terms of art/culture, elite/popular, or male/female. The ability to poke fun at the cliches, stereotypes and conventions of advertising commercials within an advertising commercials, implies a distanced and knowing relationship to the material. Example: symbol of Nazi can be used as a shock effect tool rather than acknowledging oneself to Nazism. It is difference between sign meaning and actual beliefs. Artists are active producers of culture, not passive consumers of it. Artists generate their own representations of reality and consequently are not dependent as non-artists on the representation supplied by mass media. Artists want and can establish relationship with audience different from mass media. Mass media can be a source of raw material which is then subjected to reworking in order to effect an ideological critique. Deconstructing the language or inventing a new one - one of may ways artists may take in order to communicate with their audience. Amateur photographers do not try to show world the way it is. Rather, they concentrate on beautiful and picturesque.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-04 00:00:00 Jon Sod Some labyrinths are worth descending into just to get a glimpse of the Minotaur, even if you can't yet defeat him. Art as Experience is one of those. It will require several more descents to get the clearest picture of the Minotaur and more familiarization with the territory in order to be able to face it head on. But I have seen the face of the Minotaur, and it is beautiful and terrifying. This is my attempt to follow the threads back out of the maze. Dewey's monstrous work - and I use this as a term of admiration, rather than derision - is daunting in scope, yet, at it's core, it is a simple argument: People change, their perception changes, so that every encounter with a potential "art" carries with it the possibility of an aesthetic experience. The imposition of one's preconceived theory on art interferes with one's direct interaction with art, since it imposes generic ideas on the mind that do not take into account both the artists and the viewers own experiences as influences in the interplay between creator and created, viewer and viewed. This flies in the face of several philosophical traditions that tend to shoehorn art into their paradigms as an afterthought or even a necessary nuisance - philosophers seem to recognize that they ought to include art in their thought-system, but they don't really know where to place it on the map. From this springs the aesthetics-theory equivalent of Ptolemaic models of the geocentric universe, with their complicated, strained systems of deferents, equants, and epicycles. Dewey's solution is to abandon philosophical preconception and begin from the ground up, defining the very word "experience" with some logical rigor, then examining whether or not that definition accurately communicates the difficult-to-quantify interplay between art and those who appreciate it (or not). His theory arises from art as an experience, the experience of production and enjoyment, rather than imposing his theory on art and aesthetic experience. He uses flowers as an analogy to show the difference between the mere appreciation of art and the understanding of art: "Flowers can be enjoyed without knowing about the interactions of soil, air, moisture, and seeds of which they are the result. But they cannot be understood without taking just these interactions into account - and theory is a matter of understanding. Theory is concerned with discovering the nature of the production of works of art and of their enjoyment in perception." Note that Dewey addresses not only the understanding of art, but the understanding of its production, as well. He gives importance to the conscious manipulation of materials during an artist's work (he is careful to identify "work" as more of what an artist does than of what an artist produces, though the word often works with both definitions simultaneously). While others work for efficiency, especially in the manufacturing and production sectors (I can vouch for this from my day job as a "Continuous Improvement Supervisor" - yes, that's my actual job title), the artist works to consciously form matter into a "work" of art that communicates meaning. I am struck particularly by Dewey's assertion that "It is possible to be efficient in action and yet not have a conscious experience." This is my experience in my day job. And this is why I love writing. Though writing is hard work, and believe me, it's a lot like real work, I am immersed when I write, fully conscious of the experience, and yet "lost" to the outside world. It's like making intellectual love with words and sentences - a very sensual, immediate experience, very much unlike the job I use to pay the bills. That's not to say that someone can't produce something of great craftsmanship with efficiency. But Dewey is careful to indicate that the conscious work, bolstered by an emotional investment, something of the "heart" of the artist, again in an attempt to communicate meaning, is different than the work of creating a functional object. A chair is just a chair, unless the artist can somehow, in the chair's construction, communicate meaning beyond the mere utility of the chair, thus providing an aesthetic experience to the audience: "Without emotion, there may be craftsmanship, but not art" Dewey also separates the art object from that which it represents. Once the artist has manipulated matter to create a work of art, it is its own thing, despite what it might represent. Thus, Dewey includes abstract art as fully capable of engendering aesthetic experiences, again depending on what the artist puts into it and what the audience brings to its viewing: "When someone complained to [Matisse] that she had never seen a woman who looked like the one in his painting, he replied: 'Madam, that is not a woman; that is a picture'." The "unity" that occurs when the audience comes into dialogue with the artist through the work of art is what, ultimately, constitutes the aesthetic experience. The audience approaches the work of art with their own prejudices (Dewey uses the term "resistances") born of previous experience. The artist has also brought his or her prejudices, also born of previous experience, to the work(ing) of (the) art. In this interaction, the art itself acts as the device of communication between the two parties, and a sort of negotiation takes place. "There is unity only when the resistances create a suspense that is resolved through cooperative interaction of the opposed energies." The audience brings something of opposition to the table, and that opposition cannot always be resolved (take, for example, my utter loathing of The Catcher in the Rye which is loved by some of my close friends and many of those whose opinions on literature I hold in high regard). In the example of Matisse just quoted, one can surmise that either the prejudices of the woman speaking to him did not allow the art to "speak" to her, or that Matisse failed to create the art in such a way that the woman could understand. This is why the appreciation or rejection of art can be such a divisive discourse. Not everyone's communication style is compatible with everyone else's. As with speaking, so with art. This leads to Dewey's criticism of criticism (!). This segment of Art as Experience is excellent in that it shows that any justification toward "objectivity" on the part of a critic is misplaced if the critic doesn't acknowledge his or her then current circumstances, which must inform the criticism. In other words, there is no absolutely true objectivity when it comes to critiques of art (or literature, etc), and such critiques can change over time, as the critics experience changes. Now, I have merely scratched the surface. This is a work that demands to be read and re-read. I am shocked that this wasn't ever included in my studies as an undergraduate Humanities major. Perhaps the professors thought this should be reserved for graduate level studies and, if so, they might have been right. This book, like any labyrinth, is a challenge. But it is worth it, if only to get a glimpse at the horrible beauty of the Minotaur which, in my case, at least, is likely to go undefeated in this lifetime. I simply don't have enough years left to fully explore every nook and cranny of this monumental work, though what I've retained thus far will definitely inform all my own creative endeavors from now on. Finally, I believe that the paragraph I quote below, by itself, speaks potential volumes. It might seem fairly straightforward, but, I believe, it contains subtle twists and turns that could inform ones study of art (in all its forms, whether visual art, statuary, architecture, dance, poetry, or music) for a lifetime. "[The existence of art] is proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism - brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, impulse, and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea - the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity." Go forth, Theseus. But please don't forget about the black sails, okay?