Walter Benjamin, in "The Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction", thought the camera killed the "cult value" of the picture. Instead of reverencing the object of portraiture the camera, in terms of the way the eye displaces the hand, now merely puts it on display.
Perhaps your point about the rise of 'abstraction' after the camera is making a similar point: the camera has displaced both fidelity to real 'things' and a corresponding need to preserve them. It's perhaps the reason why 'representationalism' gave way to abstractionist theory and technique. And if we take that logic of 'displacement' (what Benjamin calls loss of the "aura") to the next level in digital productions, it seems both art and photography have been reduced to what Baudrillard has called pure "simulacra".
Too much attention's given to social media: it's time to look seriously at how digital reproductions have quite literally reset our perceptions of objects, their relations and their new socio-cultural reconfigurations in the postmod world.
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Walter Benjamin, in "The Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction", thought the camera killed the "cult value" of the picture. Instead of reverencing the object of portraiture the camera, in terms of the way the eye displaces the hand, now merely puts it on display.
Perhaps your point about the rise of 'abstraction' after the camera is making a similar point: the camera has displaced both fidelity to real 'things' and a corresponding need to preserve them. It's perhaps the reason why 'representationalism' gave way to abstractionist theory and technique. And if we take that logic of 'displacement' (what Benjamin calls loss of the "aura") to the next level in digital productions, it seems both art and photography have been reduced to what Baudrillard has called pure "simulacra".
Too much attention's given to social media: it's time to look seriously at how digital reproductions have quite literally reset our perceptions of objects, their relations and their new socio-cultural reconfigurations in the postmod world.
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