MoMA [THE AUTHENTICITY OF ART]

MoMA, Starry Night, and the Authenticity of the Original

As I approached the fifth floor of the MoMA there was an obvious contender for the most popular and well-known painting on the floor. Approaching the crowd that was thick and packed with people inching their way forward, I started my decent. Inching inching inching, closer to the swirls of blue and rising strokes of the green cypress tree. Waiting at each inch for a series of pictures to be taken by the people in the front, then filtered out so a new group could inch closer and snap their own picture.

I looked around I thought, who is really looking at the painting? And who was just here inching forward, closer and closer, to snap a quick pic and walk away?

This question brought me to an internal dialogue about the authenticity of original art, in this case the Starry Night painting by Van Gough at the MoMA, in the digital age. In an age where photography has been created and allowed the ability for the picture to be proof of an experience that gives authenticity to the persons claim of seeing a certain person, place, or thing, in this case, a painting. In an age where we don’t pay as much attention to the subject as we do to the picture being taken of it. A picture that many of us may never go back and look at. But its there. So the existence of that picture is a part of some sort of authentication in itself.

But what about the authenticity of the original? What draws us to see the original in this age of digital media where we can also just as easily look up a picture? Walter Benjamin would contend that the aura is the element that draws us in. Benjamin described aura as ‘an appearance of magical or supernatural force arising from their uniqueness. The aura includes a sensory experience of distance between the reader and the work of art.’ Benjamin believed the aura has disappeared in the modern age because art has become reproducible, through photography and film. “The aura is an effect of a work of art being uniquely present in time and space. It is connected to the idea of authenticity. A reproduced artwork is never fully present. If there is no original, it is never fully present anywhere. Authenticity cannot be reproduced, and disappears when everything is reproduced. Benjamin thinks that even the original is depreciated, because it is no longer unique.” (https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin-art-aura-authenticity/). The created mystification behind the painting, the story of the art, of the artist, of its historical context, creates the aura that draws the paintings popularity. And although many of us do not know the details of Starry Night and its historical context, we know that it had a prescribed respect and authenticity that comes from actually seeing the original and not a mechanically reproduced version of it.

Quote about Starry Night

“This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” wrote van Gogh (The window to which he refers was in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, in southern France, where he sought respite from his emotional suffering while continuing to make art.)

“But the sight of the stars always makes me dream,” van Gogh once wrote. “Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.”

Extra comments about authenticity:

“The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided. Sometimes the painting was transportable. But it could never be seen in two places at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result it’s meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings” (Berger, 1972, P.19).

“According to Walter Benjamin, what is “aura” and what impacts its intensity? How is aura impacted by mechanical reproduction?”

“The quality or presence of an original piece of art is what Benjamin describes as aura, giving authority to the object. Benjamin explains that perception changes overtime, and the aura is part of perception and is thus historically determined. Perception, and therefore the historical context framing that perception, impact the intensity of aura. However, the interpretation of a piece of art can be significantly skewed based on the ‘aura’ that has been prescribed to the piece. According to Benjamin, any mechanical reproduction weakens the aura of the object.”