The Mona Lisa without a mustache: Art in the media age
Art News, May 1976, v. 75, no. 5, pp. 47-50
The author bemoans the effect of mechanical reproduction on the work of art, calling reproduction a form of "dismemberment," a splitting of the image similar to an "attack of schizophrenia." The development of technology has reduced the margin between original and reproduction, and art has been brought into a media system characterized by globalism, mass production, and programmed response. Contemporary culture has created an equality of images, in art, popular, media, advertising, etc., effecting a disappearance of the distinction between high and low, between culture and popular culture. The disappearance of these distinctions has rendered the museum a mechanism of mass communication on par with weekly magazines and art primers; it has become a competitor with art for popular-culture box office.
ITEM 1976.031 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Rasèe L.H.O.O.Q. – Marcel Duchamp
Camels – Larry Rivers
Video performance with Charlotte Moorman – Nam June Paik
Bowery Derelicts – Duane Hanson