Death of the Author
Below is a link to an article by Roland Barthes entitled Death of the Author. This article voices one of my current favorite notions: once something is written or made the author becomes tertiary to the reader and the continuum in which the work exists with other works. Making art is not about being an individual genius, but about participating.
http://aaaarg.org/roland-barthes-the-death-of-the-author
2 comments:
Wow – the Design/Crime article was fantastic. I have a couple of issues – in Art Nouveau, it was an outsider imposing a comprehensive design on an individual. With mechanical/directed design, it's still a matter of choosing – people fit more than one design niche, left to their own devices, so that's an escape hatch. And part of me says – why should only rich people get good industrial design – I like Target ( at least a little)
Nef
Yes, I think most of us like Target (at least a little), sometimes. I do not think it is a question of providing mechanical multiples, as the choices are still pre-dictated. It is like the choices parents offer toddlers. "Do you want the red or the blue?" Adding more colors makes it appear broad. It is not a real choice: it is fabricated choice. What has shifted here is the target of the criticism.
Each of the movements mentioned, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus, Modernism, and even consumerism, are utopian notions where objects reflect the political, moral, and social values of the person. We are object readers all of us. The issue on the pendulum argument here is aesthetic mixing as a mechanism for a utopian society or purity. I always have to lean towards the pluralistic, even with it’s dangerous boundary busting.
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