Art

“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial – and literary – means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.”

This is a quote from one of the last sections of Benjamin’s essay.  Here, he contends that art is essentially ambitious.  It tries to reach for something that it can’t do.  All art is trying to reach for the stars but it can’t because of technological limitations.  He cites the example of Dada.  He is a great critic of Dada and says it unleashed many “barbarities”.  But what Dada was inherently trying to do was make art move and give it life, color, energy.  What accomplished this was not Dada - which Benjamin argues was a terrible form of art - but film.  Film accomplished what Dada was trying to achieve.  But Dada couldn’t because the technology was simply not there.  

I don’t know whether I agree with Benjamin here.  Most likely though, I don’t.  At this point, I think the current trend in art - if there is one - is to actually try to relive the past in a lot of ways.  For example in music, songs are perpetually recycled; the same choruses and hooks have been used in rap music from the disco era.  I remember we watched a music video of the band Franz Ferdinand, who were trying to re-create Dada imagery in their work.  So I think the opposite is true.  Art today is not trying to reach for something it can’t because of limitations,  but it is trying to re-create something that was lost from the past.