Villanueva, Efraim R.

BAPE 1-1

Critical Analysis: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Art does encompasses our daily lives. It reflects our cultures, beliefs and ourselves
as a whole. But these are dynamic elements of life that changes through time, flexing to
the movement and need of the environment and/or of the society. People and artists of
yesterday have different perception of what is their world before—includes many aspects,
as well the view of the people towards their environment. So does, art changes depends
on its nature and surroundings and as well as of the artist.

However, reproduction of an art devalues the piece. The aesthetic sense may
remain but the “aura” or the story of the art is what supposed to be lost. Reproducing a
work of art in contemporary days is made easy by technology. Even so, on the early times
replication, imitation, print and other mechanical ways of reproduction is already existing,
yet still have been demoralized.

As the saying goes, “Original is better than a copy,” which is indeed true because
the original holds the authenticity and respect for an art, A copy though made through an
image of the original will gain its own uniqueness and story and will be another piece of
art. This may be the situation, still the copy may have its own dignity but will not have the
identity and the authenticity as the original.

An art as the representation of cultures and traditions, it represents also the spirit
of the time it was created. Therefore, the uniqueness of an art work is not just base on
how it was done and what it was made of but also when and why it was created. As
mentioned above, the story behind the pieces of art carries its soul as it is what will give
life and light to an artwork.

There are artworks of similar medium, some also have similar subjects, similar
ideas and etc. This works may seem ordinary but if people will try to look at the deeper
are there will they find the aura and the story of the building.
 In whatever way, artworks of today were all based from yesterdays. Since most of
the art forms were already used and created before, what can we expect but to just modify
and improved what is being offered to us by yesterday. Anything that will be created in
this era will have its similar counterpart from the old times. In example, as mentioned in
the article, the lithography and printing system in contemporary day are both similar but
cannot be considered replica or reproduced because they have different qualities of being
an art.