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To explain the nature of art, (Johannes) à Porta (D’net Der Beeltstormers, The Net of the Iconoclasts, 1591) came up with an affecting metaphor. Imagine a young woman, he wrote, recently married and still deeply in love. But her husband must go to war (an everyday reality in 1591). He will be gone for months at least and might never return. Just before he leaves, he gives her a small portrait of himself - her only keepsake. What happens then, Johannes à Porta says, is magical: the meaning (the declaration of love) merges with the object. You could imprint it on your memory, you could even create a perfect copy, yet the relic value assumed by that original portrait makes it irreplaceable. For the young woman, the likeness of her husband could never be replicated. The panel would become her treasured possession. It is the same reason you carry a crumpled photo of a loved one in your wallet for years and cannot bring yourself to tear it up, even though nowadays you could easily copy or digitise it.
According to à Porta, this is precisely what happens with art: if a powerful connection arises between the meaning of an object and its viewer owner, that meaning will merge with the object itself. The work of art or the image becomes the physical relic of a raw emotion or a compelling memory. Something irreplaceable. Art to à Porta was a question of faith: a work of art becomes important if you believe in its history, its significance, and so forth - in every layer of meaning, in short, that inheres within the object.The stronger the cognitive and emotional bond, the more powerful the effect. It is for the same reason that a mechanically produced urinal can become a world-famous work of art. If it is presented as art at the right time, in the right place, in the right context and by the right artist, the original does not even have to be preserved. I refer, of course, to Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp, which now exists purely in the form of replicas. Yet placed on a pedestal behind glass in the world’s most prestigious museums, even those appeal to the imagination.
amor fati next human
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