The 'aura',"the hook" to me , is similar in meaning as the word
'aesthetics'. they
emanate from expressed arrangements of words, colors, forms, ideas,
etc..
Why is that such a mystery?
mando
On Oct 31, 2008, at 8:42 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There was a short discussion of aura some time ago. While reading
Adorno, A
Political Biography, I found the following: "The concept of the
"aura" of
the work of art had been coined i the years around 1900 and was
based on the
assumption that a work radiated a quality that was to be mirrored
by a cultic and
emotional response. The concept came into use at a time when the
status of
works of art and the cultural tradition in general was being called
into
question within the field of tension created by historicism,
modernity, and mass
culture. Initially it seems to have been only clairvoyants and
theosophists who
used the term 'aura' to describe a subtle emanation of the body
that was
imagined as having one or more colors and which, it was believed,
would provide
information about the essence of an individual. The circle of
writers associated
with Stefan George then began to use the concept of the aura to
articulate its
disquiet at the way in which th world had lost its mystique, a
developement
that was felt above all as the loss of cultic authority, which
ancient
artefacts had suffered by being placed in museums. Benjamin took up
the concept around
1930 and redefined it: setting out from the works of avant garde
artists,especially Dadaism,glass architecture, Brecht's epic
theatre,photomontage amd mass
culture,he predicted shifts in the concept of art....."
Stefan George started out as part of the circle around
Mallarme,returned
to Germany, and wrote poetry with a strong tilt towards Greek
classicism. It
was privately published in a special typeface with peculiar
orthography. He
had a forceful personality and a group coalesced around him.
This background doesn't really support 'aura' as a serious concept pf
aesthetics.
Kate Sullivan
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