The Accident of ArtThere is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive.—Paul Virilio, The Accident of Art Urbanist and technological theorist Paul Virilio trained as a painter, studying under Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Bazaine and de Stael. In The Accident of Art, his third extended conversation with Sylvère Lotringer, Virilio addresses the situation of art within technological society for the first time. This book completes a collaborative trilogy the two began in 1982 with Pure War and continued with Crepuscular Dawn, their 2002 work on architecture and biotechnology. In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right. |
From inside the book
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... art , who exploded its sacred side , because official art is always a sacred art . There are plenty of great painters : Poussin painted marvelous- ly , and Chardin , too ; Corot is a good painter ; but the Impressionists went off the ...
... sacred status through similar practices ? Not really . The profane body reclaims the sacred through the Homo Sacer and the sacrifice . What was grand in sacred art , whatever the religion , becomes monstrous in profane art . But it is a ...
... art . Sacred art idealized it . What is sacred art ? It makes the demiurgic impulse official - taking oneself for God . The demiurgic impulse today is no longer sacred , it is profane . And ultimately the demiurgic impulse has been ...