Work of Art… Postcard Series
- Client
Personal Project - Date
Fall 2004
This set of 12 postcards (6 shown here) was inspired by a passage from the Walter Benjamin essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. The essay was written in the mid 30’s and the section used as a frame of reference for this set of cards spoke directly to Benjamin’s belief that as mechanical reproduction of art became more accessible the art world ran the risk of a work of art becoming no more than pieces of popular culture, losing their cultural impact.
My first instinct was to focus on pop-art, a movement that contradicted Benjamin’s premise by taking imagery from popular culture and assigning it a cultural meaning. The words on the cards and the imagery set around it forced the viewer into an internal struggle, examining the worth of both Benjamin’s argument and pop-art in this new millennium.
The type was set using my old, 1960’s typewriter. I love that machine and the fact that I was typing out words from an essay written 70 years prior was the perfect excuse to pull it out of retirement.