Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
SANAT TARIHI DERGISI-JOURNAL OF ART HISTORY, cilt.29, sa.2, ss.679-705, 2020 (ESCI)
No matter how we describe the name of the age we are in, it is not possible to deny that there is a bit of reproduction and repetition in every field today. The visual regime of the contemporary period takes place in a sense through the ideology of reproducing what exists. In this context, the productions of the most important thinkers, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno are determined as the origin point, and after about eighty years, a discussion is made about the point where the subject has reached today. If we consider communication as a socialization process, analyzing the last period of art, which is one of the sub-systems of this process, becomes important for understanding socialization itself. Therefore, case studies selected from the last hundred years of contemporary visual artworks are discussed in the context of reproduction. In addition to the repetitive capacity of contemporary art, shocking and aggression are also considered as one important convention. Concerning this, the uncertainty of the borders is tried to be evaluated in the context of reflections of these in contemporary visual arts by considering both globalization and fluidization of fixed norms. The study is structured both contextually and formally, inspired by the work of Benjamin and Adorno. As can be seen, the work itself is a self-reflexive reproduction. Desired; instead of making an objective and general descriptive classification, it is to try to reach their original context by analyzing samples in terms of their sociality like Benjamin. In the theoretical part, it is a topic of discussion on theoretical and artworks from Dadaism to Fluxus art, from Pop art to Conceptual art. Following this episode, which is dealt with in a historical materialist retrospective, is the art of appropriation Jeff Koons and Appropriation? / Case? the exhibition is examined. Under the title of the ontological ambiguity of the work of art, Tracey Emin's work named My Bed has been scrutinized. Sherrie Levine's work named After Walker Evans, Richard Prince's controversial works, and Ahmet Gunestekin's work of Chamber of Immortality are treated as repetition and appropriation. Under the title of shocking and aggression, Serkan Ozkaya's David statue, Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, and Pinar Yolacan's Perishables are examined. This article, which tries to reach a more general perspective to the point where contemporary visual arts have come, tries to follow the traces of Benjamin and Adorno by underlining the blurring of the borders. It would not be wrong to say that the ideology of copying in daily life displays a similar appearance in the art market. On the other hand, those that have the core of creating a shocking effect are certainly effective in terms of attracting attention, just like the repeated ones. However, this does not mean that every striking work reaches its aesthetically definitive point. Koons' repetitive works and Hirst's shocking works receive a similar acceptance in the art market, and this acceptance reveals the dominance of a highly differentiated aesthetic understanding, mostly determined by the exchange value of the work. As a result, we can say that in the context of the uncertainty of the borders, it gets democratized by getting rid of its class hegemony, and it becomes monotonous by massifying.