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Walk the press
11 juin 2008

Art and context

Is context essential to the evaluation of an artwork? This question is the subject of a present exhibition described in an article of The Guardian. In this exhibition artworks are presented without any piece of information. Visitors are thus let alone in front of the works and this could make it hard to get oneself through the labyrinth of visual perception which remains. The reputation of an artist is put in the back and left behind the only present value of the singular work presented on the exhibition wall. Taking a term coined by the philosopher Walter Benjamin we could describe this situation as the disappearance of aura. Aura is the value of an artwork seen in its authentic dimension. An icon handmade in the Middle Ages is a unique object that has been produced in a particular way, respecting a particular tradition, with original mediums. In this sense it is not possible to reproduce this object because its value is founded on its being unique. Value originates therefore partly in the own value of the artist who produced the object. On the opposite side aura can't explain the value of the artworks exposed at the exhibition we are talking about. The auratic dimension of these works is in fact not on the scene because the necessary elements are not given to the public. This is an extremist version of the common modern idea that the name is not at the core of value.Klee__Angelus_novus

The question is in that case: where can then the value come from? What does justify the value of the object seen at the exhibition? The answer lies in the principle of the exhibition: the value relies on the pure appearance of the object. This is a stimulus oriented conception of the evaluation that proves to be problematic. In fact an artwork, although it is not valued on the only reference to the name of its creator, shall be valued in reference to the whole network of objects produced by the artist. The value of one piece is not the value of the whole work, but there is a relationship between the whole and the singular objects. An object is therefore inscribed in a coherent series of objects and its valuation can't be independent of it, although it can't be independent of the material presence of the object. This last dimension is a kind of touchstone for the value, but doesn't establish the value.

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