INTRODUCTION

POSTMODERN CURRENTS/ INTRODUCTION

Figure  I.1.   Georges Méliès,

Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902,  film still.(Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills  Archive, New York)

Fundamental to the understanding of the impact of technological media on society as a whole, as well as on perception and the fine arts, is the work of Walter Benjamin.2  He brought into a key position in critical discourse awareness of the relationship between art and technology. He argued that widespread integrated changes in technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness and trigger important changes in cultural development. His essay  “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) is a significant assessment of the pivotal role played by photographic technologies (first as catalyst, then as instrument for change) in twentieth-century art.

Andy Warhol, Thirty Are  Better than One, 1963, silkscreen on canvas, 1101⁄4in. x 821⁄4in.

Warhol creates an  “original’’ constructed of thirty  copies of the  original. His appropriation of the  most famous cultural icon  of all time  is a comment on the  power of reproductive media to promote celebrity.

(Photo: Nathan Rabin)