Elmo, 9/22

When thinking about how going to the Cornell Fine Arts Museum was going to relate to CMC 300 I was a little confused but, being in the museum today and listening to the curator talk about all the art made it all much more clear. Everything the curator was speaking about seemed to relate to our class discussions (shocking).

For me, I could relate most of the work in the museum to the theories of Benjamin. Benjamin asked questions such as “what is real”, “what is original”, and “what makes something unique”; in his theory he seeks to explain this struggle we have with these questions and provides insight into how we may be able to answer them. Benjamin says, “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” (20). This quote seemed to relate well to what we saw in the museum today, which was an array of prints and photographs. The exhibit displaying the prints was interesting because while it had a vast amount of art none of it was the one and only “original” Since the artist made the prints from copper molds, which act like a stamp, it is very debatable as to what is the original work of art. Is it the copper stamp itself or is it the first print made from this stamp? What makes any of the prints less original if they are all made from the same mold? These questions puzzled me. I believe that the copper stamp, or mold, itself is the original and unique piece of art, I do however believe that each print it makes could also be seen as unique because the artist could vary the amount of paint or ink used or the color or essentially any other variable. The most valuable and unique piece of art in this puzzle, to me, is definitely the original copper mold because this is where the artist first let his creativity flow.

In the photography exhibit there was a lot of discussion on how one would read these texts. These works of art brought me back to the theories of Macherey. Macherey argues that, “what is important in the work is what it does not say” (18). This applies very well to art. While the artist was most definitely trying to convey a message to its viewer we will never know exactly what this message was. There is no way to be 100% positive about what an artist meant by a piece unless you ask them, but still even then they may leave some parts up to the imagination. Macherey urges readers to study the gaps and what the author, or artist in this case, isn’t saying. I can confidently say that if you asked everyone in our class what a certain photograph was “saying” everyone’s answer would differ. Visiting the museum today really opened my eyes and allowed me to apply the concepts from class to real life.