Tyrania aury
Tyranny of the Aura

Summary/Abstract: The author of the contribution focuses on paintings by two contemporary artists, George Shaw and Gerhard Richter, and shows how in times, when the principle of technical reproduction predominates no longer, Benjamin’s thesis on the existence, or disappearance of the aura can still be applied. Shaw’s paintings, created according to photographs, obsessively reproduce the atmosphere, which Benjamin credited to the so-called auratic art. At the same time, the contribution reveals a semantic shift in Shaw’s perception of the aura, caused by a filter of technique, at which the archetypal connection of photography with memory occurs. On the other hand, G. Richter in his technique of painting according to photography proceeds conceptually since 1960s: his paintings reproduce not the atmosphere of the photography and the following feeling of nostalgia but they attempt to make reproducible that, which produces the nostalgia.

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