"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."I think this is important. Ripping something out of it's context, and showing it elsewhere completely changes everything about the work. For example, Duchamp's Fountain has been completely out of context ever since it was first (not) displayed. At the time, the culture would not allow for something as 'grotesque' as a urinal to be displayed, and thus, Art. But now, seen in a museum or in a textbook, it can now only be used as a historical marker... a turning point in the fight over Art vs Not-Art. It is no longer risqué, and is only interesting as a point to make in a classroom.
He talks about the aura of an actor being lost on film, and quotes Rudolf Arnheim as saying the actor should be "[treated] as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and inserted at the proper place." This made me think of how Reality TV is such a successful thing, and why. It occurred that, possibly, since they are not acting, in the traditional sense anyway, their personality shows some of their aura. It also explains why actors get typecast, their personal aura and the character's are so similar that they can be mistaken as one. I guess that seems obvious, though.
It's interesting what he says about the change in relationship between reader and writer. He says, "the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character," which I think is very interesting, because I think that that has happened already. With the advent of the internet, anyone who wanted could become an author, with the rise in popularity of blogging, everyone can be an author and have an audience with relative ease. The evolution of the author is very interesting... over the past millennium, it went from being a select handful of people being literate, to the majority of the population being able to read and write, and with advances in technology, and the mass amounts of text found on the internet, being an author is almost expected of you. Almost more interesting, right now I am an author, and you a reader. What happens when that situation is reversed? What happens when I become the reader of something you authored? Are we so insensitive to that situation in this age of mass-author-ism that nothing happens? Should something happen?
I completely agree with what he says in regards to a mass opinion influencing a individual opinion. Something like Star Wars is so critically and publicly lauded that it is almost impossible not to find some sort of enjoyment from it. Or things like Fountain or Jackson Pollock paintings are held in such high regard in the art world that an artist cannot help but respect the ideas behind it. The easy reproduction of art makes it very difficult to get a individual response.
My first viewings of Duchamp, Picasso, Dali were all in books or on a computer screen. Imagine my surprise when I actually saw "Persistence of Memory" in a museum to find that it was actually the size of, if not smaller than, a textbook. The ability to reproduce things is changing, or has changed, how we perceive art on a daily basis. The bombardment of images that we see on a daily basis has desensitized us to them. This is why nudity and sex are such prominent subjects that have such a profound effect on us, because they are what we don't see, what we are not desensitized to, what elicit a reaction.
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