Benjamin

Talking about Benjamin from class this week the two most interesting concepts that piqued my interest were that of aura and authenticity and their corresponding relationship. I found the Benjamin to be the best reading thus far at explaining post-modernist ideology and the aura and authenticity pieces were paramount to this. I had never thought about how once art is replicated it loses its special something, its aura, its place in time and space, the artists hand, the brushstroke to the forces of modernization. I have a number of replicated paintings in my room and actually did think about this one outside of the classroom. The artists who aura-less imagery lines my walls are Warhol, Josh Keyes, Pierre Auguste Renoir (Dance at the Bougival - my favorite painting) and a few others. Using the Renoir as my example I want to elaborate on aura and authenticity as I see it framed in my own mind. I saw the Dance At Bougival for the first time in teh 8th grade a the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and was completely enarmoured by it. I was transfixed by the image of the male and female dancer and more importantly by what their subjective body languages said about their experience in that moment. I did not think about the aura of the painting that it was painted in France by Renoir, or that I was seeing his actual brushstrokes stuck celebrated on a wall, timeless and perfectly caught. I didnt think about the autenticity of the work, the fact that i was viewing a piece of history stuck on a wall besides countless other historical paintings from different times, different places on the same wall but about what the piece meant to me. Looking at the Renoir hanging above my bed I am still struck with the same wonderment that I was when I first saw it, which is the reason I bought it. I wanted to have that experience everytime I looked at the replicated piece on my wall and be taken back to the aura of the first time I saw the authentic piece. The difference is that in the MFA I only gazed at he picture for about 30 minutes, having it on my wall I have racked up considerably more time gazing upon the piece and have noticed a number of subtleties about the work I had not noticed in teh authentic view of teh piece. I have the aura captured in my head about how I felt the first time I saw the work and it is transfixed in me in every subsequent gaze to my wall. True that as Benjamin argues the aura and authenticity are nowhere to be found in the replica on my wall but then what of the replication of the moment I viewed the piece in all its glory that comes flooding back to me everytime I wake up or walk in my room? What of the warm feeling I get inside when I remember the impact the piece had upon me that very first time? I struggled with this reading because although I loved Benjamin's work and it explained things in a very worthwhile and helpful way for me I was stuck looking at the works in my room and struggling to apply his work. Sitting here reflecting on that I can see that the authenticity of the work lies in and only in the original piece. However the authenticity of the expierence of seeing the work for the first time in that time and place, observing that aura travels with the viewer and is, in my conclusion the reason for replication. People want to bring those warm feelings, that transfixation of staring at a piece in a musuem and attempting to decipher it brushstroke by brushstroke in its authenticity, with the resounding aura back in some form with them from the experience. Its the reason we take photo after photo of sunsets, of historical monuments, of each other, of loved ones, because we want to capture moments that trigger the aura of emotion and although the authenticity can never be fully replicated, what lives on inside of us staring at the replication is the fire of that aura, of that first time we saw whatever it is we looked at. In my case the boyous wonderment I had staring at a painting I had replicated in art class and finally seeing the original and bringing it home to relive again and again.