Captain PMS, Benjamin

Captain’s Blog Stardate 09/19

“…for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” Benjamin

On my birthday this past June, my boyfriend took me to the Orlando Museum of Art. They were holding a motorcycle exhibit and even though neither one of us ride we had these visions of these bikes painted and sculpted in cool ways. Since we are not motorcycle aficionados, we were disappointed to learn that the display was really just original bikes shown as they were. The exhibit reminded me of something more suitable for the history museum than the art museum. However, it does remind me of Benjamin’s quote because without mechanical reproduction, an exhibit called, “The Art of the Motorcycle” in which the only thing artistic is the machine itself, could not exist.

Across the street at the Minello Museum, we looked at the Cunningham exhibit in folk art. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. It is simply amazing how many different colors that man could think of to paint the ocean. Since his paintings all follow a few general ideas and are all done by hand, I believe he tended to work under the more “parasitical dependence on ritual.” However, I enjoyed his work more than the mere display of bikes even if the older ones were somewhat interesting. I don’t know if ritual is really a bad thing for art or not, but what I do know is that the escape from it has changed the label for what we can even call art.