K fenomenologii masového umění a kultury

Abstract

The study presented here stems from the interpretation of pop-art found in the work of Petr Rezek and Walter Biemel. According to these authors, we find in pop art procedures and forms linked with new types of art, such as film, the photograph, or comics, but without these works themselves being film, the photograph, or comics in the usual meaning of the word. The given form is instead reflected in these works. These authors similarly highlight that this is the case with the use of technology, which is used in pop art both on the level of content and in the form of production, and gives rise to the phenomenon of repetition. This repetition is not however the mere multiplication of things, but a reflection of technical reproduction itself. On the basis of both authors’ interpretations of pop art works, the study determines the moments that the phenomenology of mass art must explore. Specific emphasis is placed by the author on the transformation of our conception of the being of things. The solidity and impenetrability of things disappear and the medial, liquid moment of objects is accentuated. Both the thing and the work become a passage and a place of distribution. Our intentionality does not stop at the object itself, but is diverted further, to our own person in kitsch, to the human of flesh, to rational supercivilization, but alternatively to profit and commerce as well. Even though this character of mass culture is usually understood negatively in the phenomenological tradition, the author reaches the conclusion that what is presented in pop art is, instead of being a bad world, a different world.

Keywords

• phenomenology
• mass art
• pop art
• aesthetics
• mass culture
• technology