Group items tagged

cult value

easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple

The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it

Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art

cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance

The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture

It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the 'arts' forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it -- with a striking lack of discretion

Do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the definition of prayer?

the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person

aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.

art has left the realm of the 'beautiful semblance'

the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory.

The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the 'personality' outside the studio

The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the 'spell of the personality,' the phony spell of a commodity

the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers -- at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for 'letters to the editor.' And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public

The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses.

Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today.

painting, under special conditions and, as it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses.

graduated and hierarchized mediation

Thus the same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.

One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later.

The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form.

Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial -- and literary -- means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.

What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production

painting of Arp

ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace

Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it

In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.

Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.

Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit.

attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building

Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception -- or rather, by touch and sight

For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.

art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film

Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true .means of exercise.

The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.

War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system

An `idea-meme' might be defined as an entity that is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another.

The human brain, and the body that it controls, cannot do more than one or a few things at once.  If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense of `rival' memes. 

I have been dissatisfied with explanations that my fellow-enthousiasts have offered for human behaviour.  They have tried to look for `biological advantages' in various attributes of human civilization