Benjamin, W. (2008) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London. Penguin.

My notes while reading.

A copy of a novel is the original - the reproduction is the original - it is the thought which is transmitted, mind to mind. Through a series of mechanics in writing, editing, publishing, distribution, reading, comprehension, imagination.

The reproduction is the original - found painting. In moving image, the digital image is the original.
There are mechanical elements, but it is the arrangement of pixels - light, shade, colour, line, motion - is the original, even in various settings, projections, installations.

WB says quality always depreciates - could be argued against, as certain qualities improve with a bit of depreciation and ageing.

WB - the aura of the artwork withers.

Film does what painting does - raises issues, reveals what we already see, reproduces and evokes feelings and emotions in visual form.

A reproduction is different from a copy / imitation / replica. A reproduction can be unique, authentic, to diffuse work.

27th August 2014

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What I take from the book is the relationships between the real and the actual, the digital and the made, the processed and the accidental. I love that interplay between paradoxes - many great and famous paintings and artworks are known as images only, in reproduction or virtually. I like to grasp and overlay as many layers of such tentative reality as possible, to make it impossible to define what an image is - is it an image, a photograph, an idea, a virtual representation of a reproduction, and so on.

In my own work, especially in Found Paintings, I create the work as paintings, as works of art, because I present them as so. I would like to present them in a painting exhibition as a reframing of the idea of painting. They highlight the nature of how we often see art, and no matter how much their materiality is as a photograph and a digital print, they are in fact paintings.

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/found-paintings.html

11th November 2014