Art theorist Boris Groys developed a rather original aura theory; for him, the commercialized and thus "humiliated" artwork in the late eighties has to be seen in the context of suffering and resacralization. First, he confirms Benjamin's thought that modernism deprived the artwork of its originally ritual context by liberating it from all references outside art, thus stripping it of its aura. In his opinion, the postmodern picture was now looking back in melancholy, trying to suffer through this process as it sacrificed. "Depriving original art of its aura causes its simulacrum to regain one: The media copy of the original becomes the place of its suffering, its alienation, its travels through the desert and of its cross. (...) The criticism of the sacral which takes away its aura immediately endows its own language with a new aura."[1] He is also critical about the regained aura of the postmodern picture: "In other words: the aura flees anyone holding on to it while haunting anyone who rejects it. This is why the postmodern picture is, in fact, not critical. It is not "art about art," but simply traditionally auratic. (...) This also explains why postmodern art is commercially successful (...). Commercialization and auratization compensate for and complement each other."[2]

One could think that Groys's highly original theory was developed for the "Plaster Surrogates" by American artist Allan McCollum. In the early eighties his plaster-cast easel paintings conquered the commercialized art scene. In the little generic paintings the appearance of the artwork is reduced to a minimum, content seems to have been banned from the "zero surfaces" painted black so the works can easier be marketed as trademarks through sales channels and as handy little sets for the art show circuit. Recognizable forms avoid complications when it comes to finding a position in the art discourse. Variable formats and frame colors are enough for a likeness of an "original" or "unique piece." In a rather recent statement about the capitalization of art, Peter Sloterdijk said that the impact of a work as a cult of humanity and as a message has long been replaced by its exchange value. "Certainly, young investors at the art exchanges need not listen to stories about the spiritual value of art. They have drawn their conclusion from modernization: The equation between form and form of an artwork is clear. Deep inside, works glisten and gleam with the golden option of bearing valuable fruit. (...) Artworks are exhibited as aesthetic shares."[3] At the time (1988), the philosopher advised that art should "fold up" withdraw to save itself for what is worthy of revealing itself as it fills the exhibits with happiness that cannot be bought and sold, that it should reduce its "interface with the world," its "surface touching the rest of the scene" and to check whether "it was worth while being well in the line of visibility all the time."[4]

The crisis has meanwhile made this piece of advice pointless. However, we know today that Sloterdijk and Groys underestimated the multifariousness of the postmodern artwork. McCollum's "Plaster Surrogates" conceal a complex structure aiming at survival, not only in the commercialized "operating system of the art world," but also in the culture of reflection pertaining to the nineties. Thus, the framed black "zero surfaces" again and again grace the covers of "institutional critique" publications.

At the same time, they must be discussed against the backdrop of a revised concept of aura; Groys coined the phrase "double quotation," adding a further keyword to this context. "The contemporary picture generally refers to a classical model, to a picture that was read 'uncritically', and, at the same time, to anonymous modern design characteristic of mass consumer goods or the mass media."[5] McCollum's objects in fact synthesize the most diverse achievements of modernism: The easel painting of concrete art, objectified in design, which was out to create a non-referential identity of painting and material painted on, Duchamp's ready-made, an auratized mass product, Warhol's Brillo boxes, products transformed into pure commodities. At the same time, the American's artistic concept can also be seen in terms of non-identical reproduction, the "third stage of the simulacrum." Novel computer-assisted production technologies will enable the market to stop selling soulless identical mass products and distribute masses of unique pieces and clones made by industrial robots, mobilizing the aura of handicrafts through built-in irregularities, even capable of artistic originality. Thus the anonymous standard product will grow an "aura of being special" the way we know it from nostalgic serial products of the fifties. This is the stage of non-identical reproduction reflected in Allan McCollum's 10,000 "Individual Works"—radially symmetrical unique pieces produced by hand to have the look of computerized permutations.

Footnotes:
[1.] — Boris Groys: "The Suffering Picture," in: (cat.) "The Picture After the Last Picture", Galerie Metropol Wein, 1992, pp. 108 and 109.

[2.] — Groys, op. cit., p. 11.

[3.] — Peter Sloterdijk: "Kunst faltet sich ein," in: (cat.) "Lehrstunde der Nachtigall," Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, 1989, p. 6.

[4.] — Sloterdijk, op. cit., p. 11.

[5.] — Groys, op. cit., p. 105.