Author? What author? Part 2

Sherrie Levine is probably notorious for her decision to create 'art' by taking photographs of another persons work and then publishing them under her own name without reference to the original author. Cindy Sherman produces images in which she appropriates the work of others reproducing them with herself as the central figure(s). To ask if this is 'art' and if they can be called 'artists' is to beg the question how we decide whether someone and the work that they produce is is treated in the same way as recognised artists i.e they are artists and their work is art if:

...work of the most radical appropriation artists has been accepted as art, and they have been accepted as artists, receiving every form of recognition for which artists and artworks are eligible: Levine has works in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Glenn Brown has been short-listed for the Turner Prize, the appropriation artists have been discussed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art and other major art criticism venues, and so on. Moreover, the kind of recognition the artists have received suggests that the art world takes them seriously as the authors of their work. If Brown were not considered responsible for his works, however derivative from Dali and John Martin, what would be the point of considering him for a prestigious award? If Levine were not taken seriously as an author, what would be the point of interviewing her in major art magazines?”


(http://mrsilverthorne.blogspot.com/2006/07/author-or-forger-sherrie-levine-and.html)


The question at the end of the quote in which the writer asks whether if Levine  was not taken seriously as an author, what would be the point of interviewing her in major art magazines seems to be a circular argument - she is interviewed because she is a serious author and she is a serious author because we are interviewing her. Of course the awful truth is that is exactly how things happen. It is questionable whether Damien Hirst would have been taken seriously as an artist if it had not been for the patronage of Charles Saatchi - a man of considerable influence in the contemporary art world - where Saatchi went others followed. The 'author' is everything. It would seem that the art world has no objective criteria (can there be such a thing?) by which to judge the status of an individual piece of work and ultimately the status of the individual offering the pice of work as his/her own.


Benjamin argues strongly that the provenance of a piece of art is important in giving the work an 'aura' and that, by definition, includes, if not exclusively, the author. Remove the author and we would not be able in our present state of thinking to experience the work in the way that we do now. Would millions of people from across the world visit the Louvre if the Mona Lisa was not credited to Leonardo De Vinci? I would suggest not. Given the present viewing arrangements behind bulletproof glass there is nothing extraordinary about the painting and yet it almost worshipped by the visiting crowds. Stuck on the wall of a provincial gallery and called 'Mary Smith' with no reference to the author it would be seen as the work of a competent artist and rarely viewed. I wonder whether we are being shown the 'original' Mona Lisa or whether the museum authorities to avoid crippling insurance costs lock it up in a vault and offer us only a copy. As long as we believe that the image is original then the magic remains.

The 'aura' is dependent upon the author being known and the removal of this information would lessen if not destroy the reverence in which the piece is held.

I cannot see the relevance of the question about the unregulated nature of the internet. If I was to place a work say by Jeff Koons on to the internet and claim that the works was mine my guess would be that I would be receiving a letter from his lawyers within a week. It is a common misconception that the internet is unregulated. Leaving aside the work of GCHQ in trawling the net for possible intelligence across a range of interests (if by the time you have read this I am facing trial for breach of the Official Secrets Act then you will know that GCHQ are active) there are a mass of monitoring systems both governmental and private that trawl through the masses of material posted everyday to ensure someones rights are not breached. 


Furthermore in a world where  the 'author' is dead and the 'reader' is alive then whoever posts work on the internet cannot attach his/her name to the piece as its author because their part is finished - they die with the publication of their work. All work would be anonymous and how we read and treat it would be a personal response to the content of the work.


Why is it thought that validation of the interest in the intent of an author is required? Even if we do not know or care who the author is we may still consider what was the intent of the 'scriptor' in creating the piece. Interpretation of a piece of work includes, although not necessarily, some consideration of the intent. The death of the author does not mean that we believe the piece simply appeared without the intervention of one or more persons. We would assume that there was an author or scriptor who created the work and that person had similar feelings to our own. (We cannot assume that he had different feelings because we do not have any knowledge to support this view unless we fail in some way to interpret the work within the boundaries of our own understanding and world view.) 


The 'aura' is dependent upon the author being known and the removal of this information would lessen if not destroy the reverence in which the piece is held.