Reproduction & Originality: The Anti-Aesthetic of Mark Tansey

br Mishra 1

Seema Mishra

India

April 2 , 2008

Reproduction Originality : The Anti-Aesthetic of Mark Tansey

Mark Tansey was not a realistic painter and believed that the problem for representation

was to find different functions other than just realism . According to him the art of a

painting should be able to have different ideas from different viewers be impressive and

change itself completely depending upon the person viewing it and it should be

imaginative too . If a piece of art depicts these qualities it can be

br called a representation

Mark Tansey 's anti-aesthetic view is depicted in his paintings and ` Mont Sainte

Victoire ' is a perfect example of it

Tansey is of the view that no one knows what is reality and all give their own view on

this point . Is it the reality of the picture or the picture frame or the reality behind the art or

of the artist ? No one can give you the exact answer to these questions just because no one

is clear about what reality is . To know the reality one will have to destroy the medium but

we can achieve more by using it than destroying it . The piece of art must have the impact

on the viewers far more than the content of the picture . The main subject matter should

fully get mixed with the actual concept then that can be called real representation and an

original piece of art . The painting can be considered as a formal model but the concept

could be different of different people . No two persons have the same view of any piece of

art either it is a painting or a fiction

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Mark Tansey 's `Mont Sainte Victoire ' must have been created with completely different

view of the artist . But we have numerous articles of interpretations of the painting in the

eyes of the viewer and most of them disagree with each other . Actually these issues of

interpretation of one artist 's work in someone else 's way is a big issue and for this you

need to know the opinions of both of them about each other . The anti-aesthetic of Mark

Tansey seems to be focused on cultural spaciousness and marks a division between fine

art and popular culture of that era . A picture can be decoded by rifts of distinguishes like

the contradictions in the views of the audience , their discrepancies from verifications

characteristics shared and so on . There can be similar as well as different views of the

audience and there are no such criteria that can be fulfilled in one stroke

Mark Tansey is of the opinion that if any piece of art fails to link the image with the idea

there is another way that is to study the illustration of that art . In his piece of art ` Mont

Sainte Victoire , reflection of the metamorphic structure is opposite in the image and the

object and its image are interchangeable

Mark Tansey said

My work is fundamentally drawing . Everything in my...