Looking and Seeing

Abstract

This study began with a fascination for the enigma of American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). I began to collect his words. I had been intrigued by German philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin’s (1892-1940) philosophical snapshots and with the notion of an aura that could be pealed from objects by photography. And I was taken by French philosopher, professor of law, and theologian Jacques Ellul’s (1912-1994) claim that religion, philosophy, and aesthetics were mere ornaments that had gone the way of the ruffled sunshade on McCormick’s first reaper. Benjamin’s epistemological understanding of aura, the capacity of the object to look back and to direct the viewer in search for origins, fleshed out Ellul’s claim. The symbol had lost its symbolic dimension in the technical process where words became images and images became concepts; clichés were the nature of this productivity, which became more than tired expressions. The cliché is the machine in its new suit. This insight informed my reading of Warhol and Benjamin with Ellul. And, of course, my reading of Ellul has influenced my reading of Warhol and Benjamin.