ON CONTEMPORARY ART
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ON CONTEMPORARY ART
Ekphrasis exemplifies the connection between literature and art. Greek in origin, ekphrasis is defined as a vivid description of a visual work, and it’s a concept César Aira takes up in On Contemporary Art.
The slim volume, originally written as a speech for a 2010 colloquium in Madrid and published by David Zwirner, expounds on the reproducibility of art and the critical distance between the original and its likeness. An avowed devotee of Artforum, Aira describes flipping through the magazine’s pages and witnessing its inability to capture the works fully without the aid of the attached text. He argues that photography, writing, or any other mode of translating a work will never convey the exact essence of the original, a position that references Walter Benjamin’s classic essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” although such reproductions are not without merit.
Aira draws on literature, a discipline the wildly prolific novelist and translator knows well, as he shares the power of language to amplify a work by “multiply(ing) their expression beyond what is utilitarian.” He ultimately takes the stance that the stories and narratives that emerge from a reproduction can be just as successful and effective as the original. This, of course, embodies the ekphrastic tradition and expands on Aira’s own impulses as a writer, considering he opens the speech by describing painting as a continual source of inspiration.
Language is not all-powerful, though, and Aira confronts its limits, particularly in terms of naming that flattens or confines art and in the discourse from critics, curators, gallerists, and others invested in the creative process and the art market that does the same. Because literature is already rooted in language and in discourse, he says, it doesn’t fall victim to such ineffectual translations in the way that art does.
Especially in an increasingly digital world, On Contemporary Art offers questions and musings for considering how we consume, interpret, and reproduce art and the expansive possibilities we can experience at each junction.
Written by So Textual
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