Long-term readers of this column will know that an old favourite of mine is German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. First published in the 1930s, it remains a valuable point of reference in cultural criticism.
Benjamin observed that works of art in premodern societies were usually linked to rituals or sites of pilgrimage — they had a particular “aura” because they were unique, which secured their sacred or spiritual role. But when, say, cheap prints of the Mona Lisa or miniature knock-offs of the Pieta became available by the thousand, did this diminish the originals?
These are not the examples that Benjamin chose, but one does wonder what he would make of the experience of visiting such works today; in the Louvre or St Peter’s Basilica, with thousands of tourists thronging around them, whatever aura Leonardo’s painting and Michaelangelo’s sculpture may have is hard to discern. The images of the Mona Lisa that circulate most widely are photographs of people taking photographs of that no-longer-enigmatic smile.
Benjamin could not predict — although his essay seemed to anticipate — the shift from mechanical to digital reproduction. In the 21st century, works of art may have a putative “original” but they are consumed, by and large, via the infinite reproduction of the virtual. What is lost in aura is gained in access. If mechanical reproduction facilitated commodification but also democratisation in the arts, digital reproduction tends to make virtual encounters with artworks freely, or at least cheaply, available. Wealthy art collectors and institutions can still pay to own and display the unique art object, but its simulacra belong to (and can be seen by) everyone.
I had Benjamin on my mind as I made a visit to the Absa Gallery in the Johannesburg CBD to see Philiswa Lila’s Skin, Bone, Fire: The First Album. A virtual visit, that is: while the gallery and its contents remained safely ensconced in the bank’s headquarters at 161 Main Street, I sat at my desk taking a 3D computer tour. With a downloadable catalogue open in a second tab, I had everything I needed.
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Lila was the recipient of the 2018 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto prize, and this exhibition is part of that award. Obviously, it is in the interests of a sponsor to gain as much publicity mileage as possible from the sponsorship, but if this results in easy public access to the artist’s work, I am all for it.
Ultimately, a virtual experience is not quite the same as being in a room with the art. Even if you remove Benjamin’s concern about aura and take a formalist view, looking at paintings and installations on screen doesn’t fully convey texture or depth. The incompleteness of the experience, the sense that you’re missing out on something, is further signalled in this case by the fact that Lila’s Zimkitha series (four smaller pieces made of beads and string) is hidden in a closed-off viewing booth. What awaits the viewer in the darkness behind the curtain? Only those who visit the gallery in person will know.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed my virtual tour. The art itself is idiosyncratic. The bold, vivid colours of the paintings swirl and merge into inchoate shapes; the effect is mesmerising, evoking the fire of the exhibition’s title. Perhaps the woven hangings, named after unknown women, allude to skin and bone; we read in the catalogue text that Lila’s installations “are linked to forms that will fit bodies”. While this blurb is rather vague in its terms of reference — memory, language, meaning — and tends to emphasise the personal, I am inclined to read the works politically. In SA, after all, the personal is political, especially when it comes to women’s bodies.
Given the spectacle of parliament playing out on our screens of late, culminating in an absurd exchange of braggadocio between male MPs over who treats women “better” or “worse”, Benjamin’s essay is as pertinent as ever. It warns against political spectacle, or the “aestheticisation of politics” — a distraction from the true interests of the people, and the chosen strategy of would-be fascists. What is required to counter this destructive tendency, Benjamin argues, is the politicisation of art.
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