Slideshow presentation of our key concerns

2. The Doppelcharakter of the Art Object

3. Key Theories

5. The Sublime The sublime: something of high moral or spiritual value, raised up, inspiring deep veneration or awe. Verb to sublime: to change directly from a solid to a vapour or gas without first melting Subliminal: resulting from processes of which the individual is unaware.

6. How Fetish relates to The Sublime The Contemporary Sublime: Sensibilities of Transcendence and Shock by Paul Crowther For Burke, Sublime is existential , we enjoy the sensory overload, the shock revives our sense of being alive. But for Kant, the Sublime is what is ‘beyond all comparison’ great. This can only be measured by our rational capacity . Baudrillard: boundaries between consciousness, its products and reality have been totally erased, thus producing the Hyperreal . Sensationalism is no more just a break from routine, it is a modern addiction . While novelties, outrage and scandal have been an important element in Modernism, in Postmodernism they are demanded almost as a matter of course. We need Hirst and Mapplethorpe to satisfy our cravings

7. Baudrillard: Simulation and Transaesthetics: Towards the Vanishing Point of Art (1987) Jean Baudrillard talks about the absolute object as one with no value and with indifferent quality, which avoids objective alienation by making itself more object than the object, giving it a fatal quality . The transcendence of exchange value and reckless speculation on art works is a parody of the market and he adds that we find ourselves in a realm that has nothing to do with value, only the fantasy of obsolute value, the ecstasy of value (sublime). Baudrillard states that art is profoundly seduction and that we are in the jungle of fetish objects and adds the fetish objects and adds the fetish object has no value in itself or rather it has so much value that it cannot be exchanged. The art object as fetish must work to de-construct its traditional aura in order to stand out in the pure obscenity of commodity.

8. … refers to the concept of aura in relation to certain works i.e. that there is a sense of awe and reverence felt by the viewer in the presence of certain works. … maintains that this aura doesn't originate from the work itself but from external factors, such as line of ownership restricted exhibition publicized authenticity cultural value For example Caravaggio's Taking of Christ , there is the history of this masterpiece and how it went missing in the late 18th century, turned up in 1990 in the canteen of the Jesuit head quarters in Dublin. However one could argue that leaving all this info aside when you walk into a room and see it, the object is impressive, Caravaggio and his use of light stands up today as dramatically as it did when it was painted.This has then been embellished with the provenence of the work. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the age of M e chanical Reproduction (1935)

9. The development of the mechanical reproduction stepped up a gear with the advent of the internet. Despite the proliferation of images and the increased accessibility to all, the notion of the original art object maintains its power, i.e. the mechanical reproduction has heightened the aura of certain works, adding to their prominence in the collective mind's eye… Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the age of M e chanical Reproduction (1935)

11. Key Works

14. MONA LISA (1519) Leonardo DaVinci An artwork with extreme power/presence, obviously, but why? Looking at why may explain further its Icon/Fetish status - Its transformation into a global cultural icon was essentially a historical accident: the fact that the painting came to France with Leonardo in 1516, rather than staying in Italy, and that it ended up in the Louvre as a result. The myth of the Mona Lisa was born out of 19th-century northern Europe's fascination with the Italian Renaissance in general, and Leonardo in particular. It was also, Sassoon says, intimately bound up with the morbid Romantic fantasy of the femme fatale: that idea of an ensnaring, exotic, decadent belle dame sans merci which so exercised the contemporary male imagination. Important French literary figures such as Theophile Gautier, Jules Michelet and the Goncourt brothers described her in rhapsodic, hyperbolic terms: "this sphinx of beauty who smiles so mysteriously "; her "divinely ironic" gaze intimates "unknown pleasures"; she 'seems to pose a yet unsolved riddle to the admiring centuries' "like a 16th-century courtesan", who wears "the smile full of night of the Gioconda."

15. 2001 , Breakdown , an installation/event in which Michael Landy destroyed everything he owned: His possessions were catalogued, bagged up, placed on conveyer belts and destroyed . "To certain jury members, his former dealer Karsten Schubert reveals, "destroying other artists' works was completely unacceptable. It was an act of complete vandalism. Denying him a nomination was a way of putting this message across." [guardian newspaper] One of the last objects to be destroyed was his father's sheepskin coat. "The things I valued the most I left till last." [M L] The coat became a testament to his new value system as it circulated through those two weeks to its destruction.

16. For the Love of God (2007) Damien Hirst Hirst explores the fundamental themes of human existence – life, death, truth, love, immortality , the body, the relationship between the sacred and the profane , between reason and superstition, and art itself. ‘ The skull is out of this world, celestial almost’ writes the distinguished art historian Rudi Fuchs. ‘It proclaims victory over decay. At the same time’, Fuchs continues, ‘it represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself.' If we keep Ludwig Wittgenstein’s adagio in mind that an aesthetic form or style shows an ethical perspective on the world, then how should we judge the actions of individuals in general and creations of artists in particular? "I thought: 'What's the maximum I could do as a celebration against death?',"the artist said. "It is the ultimate victory over death. When you look at a skull, you think it represents the end, but when you see the end so beautiful, it gives you hope." - Hirst

17. Possible Speakers

21. The End!