Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
triumph as at once the inheritor of the mantle of earlier civilization and the
forger of a new spiritual principle. As Carter Ratcliff explained the new meaning
of “art” some years ago,
If galleries are no more nor less commercial than auction houses or
business firms in general, then art is a commodity like any other . . .
Above all, we will no longer have to feel qualms about the marriage of
art and money. We will no longer have to wonder if it is possible to separate
the esthetic value of an art work from its commercial value . . . If
we are to live in our historical moment, we have to look at [van
Gogh’s] Irises [sold at auction in 1987 for $53.9 million] (or a reproduction
of it) with a full sense of the price it fetched and try to see that
outrageous number as part of what the painting means now. 64
Reproduction’s role is subordinate to and defined by this ongoing transformation
of the social functions of the artwork, which both reflects and includes art’s
absorption by the sphere of mass entertainment. The high price of Irises, as a
critic wrote, doubtless in part reflected its prominent place in a blockbuster show
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art “and its reproduction on a popular poster
for the show.” 65 The museum, even if still the temple of art and redeemer of
commercial gain, also functions as partner of auction houses and collectors in
the metamorphosis of money into art and back again, a process in which
mechanical reproduction has its place. As once reproduction served the creation
of aesthetic aura, so it now plays its role in the open transformation of genius
and authenticity into bankables.
64 C. Ratcliff, “The marriage of art and money,” Art in America 76:7 (July 1988), pp. 84, 147.
65 Carol Zemel, “What becomes a legend most,” Art in America 76:7 (July 1988), pp. 92/151.
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