Ways of Doing/ Ways of Seeing/ Ways of Thinking (Art without superstitions)

Abstract

Walter Benjamin’s famous theses about the “reproducibility” of the artwork was the beginning of an era in which Art seems to have conquered a freedom of movement and a fluidity never before known, breaking with its dependence on the ritual of the places sacred and the worship of images. Thereafter, images come to meet us without offering what was once looked for at them, something transcendent. This article reviews the ideas of Benjamin and its reinterpretation by John Berger to expose how Jacques Rancière criticizes them and to show finally how these three philosophers are opening the door to the arrival of an aesthetic utopia. It consists on thinking that Art does not teach us anything, it does not impose any truth. It calls us to venture into the forest of things and signs, it requires us to re-articulate what we see and what we think about what we see, without any image of a purpose or a goal to achieve.