Art
Discussion on the concept of Aura
I have investigated the concept of ‘aura’ in a movie theatre where light and darkness create a specific atmosphere; a place where fantasy and reality are mixed in a real space. I believed I could find a connection to what the landscape of my paintings within a virtual scene is like, while also operating at a level that works within a real scenery.
This text claims that people passively perceive images, but I sympathize with Walter Benjamin’s statement that the act of going to a cinema in itself is an atmospheric experience of place.
According to the book's claim, the audience is the light on the white screen (the historical meaning of the aura is claimed to be derived from the light of the believer's halo). The aura is absorbed by the dark’s secret space. That atmosphere which such a space triggers makes me experience beyond what I am merely ‘seeing’.
The author’s claim is that people view the image passively, but I am more aligned to what Walter Benjamin asserts: that the direct act of going to a cinema is an active experience of the place’s atmosphere. Putting it into the perspective of looking at an artwork, I think it's the decision of the audience to decide what to see and experience, and it's the interrelationship with the artwork that creates the fascination to immerse oneself within the work itself. In contemporary art as well, there is no longer a passive ‘viewing’ but a dynamic process which leads the viewers participation.
What I noticed is the atmosphere that occurs in space and the physical characteristics of the movie theatre. Movie theatres are real spaces, but they are also temporarily fictional and disconnected from reality at the same time. This discovery derived itself from the unit two’s concept of heterotopia. Through this investigation I was able to draw inspiration for what the scenery of my work was to be like.
It is almost as if the space of my painting is an individual Heterotopia. It may be a temporary moment that can be separated from reality or a place of reality, but it is nothing more than a fantasy. It is dependent on one’s individual perception. That is why I depicted a garden which project an unrealistic order. Somewhere where various species that grow in incompatible environments coexist in one space, a space of Heterotopia.
The concept of 'Aura'
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin.
Leaving the Movie Theatre by Roland Barthes.
Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias , Michel Foucault.
The subject: the concept of Aura , the theatre
Key takeaways :
By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.(Benjamin,[of II] 1968, p. 4)(...)The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura.(...)It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction.(...)To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the (...)theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. (Benjamin,[of III] 1968, p. 5).(...)The definition of the aura as a “unique phenomenon of a distance however close it may be” represents nothing but the formulation of the cult value of the work of art in categories of space and time perception. (Benjamin,[of III] 1968, p. 21).
Benjamin W. The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction: an influential essay of cultural criticism ; the history and theory of art. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968.
Walter Benjamin (1968) 'II', in Walter Benjamin (ed.) The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 4.
Walter Benjamin (1968) 'III', in Walter Benjamin (ed.) The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 5.
Walter Benjamin (1968) 'III', in Walter Benjamin (ed.) The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 21.
The term was used by Walter Benjamin in his influential 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin argued that '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.' He referred this unique cultural context i.e. 'its presence in time and space' as its 'aura'.
Tate (2017). Aura – Art Term | Tate. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/aura.
Perhaps Benjamin’s best-known work is ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. This short piece provides a general history of changes in art in the modern age. Benjamin’s insight here is that each human sensory perspective is not completely biological or natural. It is also historical. The ways people perceive change with social changes, or changes in ‘humanity’s entire mode of existence’.
ceasefiremagazine.co.uk. (n.d.). Walter Benjamin: Art, Aura and Authenticity | Ceasefire Magazine. [online] Available at: https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin-art-aura-authenticity [Accessed 30 Oct. 2022].