既出のテキストを英訳しました。英語は苦手です。間違いやおかしな点があったら、指摘していただけると有り難いです。

I wrote about Andy Warhol and Capitalism.

Andy Warhol used his work to draw a perspective between things and "things".
This “things” is not the same as things. Things are what we usually treat as such. On the other hand, “things” used by Warhol is the “things in the 20th century consumer society that continues until the present in the 21st century”.“Things” have no anima.
What do his works mean?
They may mean a self-mocking consciousness that work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction have lost Aura. Or it can be considered that Hyper realistic expression, which has lost its symbolism and meaning, is a second coming of Dadaism.
If I speak in his own words
"If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it."
It turns out that. In other words, there is no meaning.
But nevertheless, when we see his works, they seem that we find divinity there.
Campbell cans lined up as if they had reached zero degree of personality, Marilyn Monroe's smile colored in artificial colors, finding his signature and production number on the back of the silkscreen is somewhat like finding a trace of God by once a religious person.
How can we explain this feeling or psychology?

To answer this question, I would like to mention about two keywords.
They are “modernity as the construction of the subject ” and "the present day as the disassembly of the subject”.

Max Weber's famous treatise “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” gives us one answer on how our civilization that we live in today(In other words, capitalist society) was generated / configured.
Weber pointed out that in the 16th century Western society, the influence of religious reform led by Luther, Calvin, etc. resulted in strict asceticism by Christian doctrine, which led to the birth of a capitalist society.
"That powerful tendency toward uniformity of life, which to-day so immensely aids the capital- istic interest in the standardization of production, had its ideal foundations in the repudiation of all idolatry of the flesh."(PDFText page 114)
Our civilization eliminates anima, symbolism and meaning from things and creates "things" in consumer society.Weber said it is because our transcendental divinity, which is deep within us, works on "A Priori" as its substructure.Protestants forbidden idolatry.
This is because, even though it is a representation of God's figure, it was considered evil that human creation have divinity as a substitute for God.
A good believer is one who sees God only in the relationship between God and himself.Therefore, according to Weber's point, the reason why things become coded "things" is because a kind of religious force is working.It can be said that the things are standardized and flattened not because of the convenience of distribution or the effect of flooding advertisements, but because of the will of God who loves a rational spirit.Luther and the tradition of German idealism are all about the thesis of “No God, No intelligence”.
God loves human “rationality and knowledge”.
While we live in a modern age that calls itself the scientific era, we still seem to live our daily lives based on the perspective of the divinity of "something" that resembles God.

Let us consider “modernity as the construction of the subject ” and "the present day as the disassembly of the subject” mentioned above.
The movement of constructing independent subject in modern times was accompanied by the collapse of a vertical power society(a society monarchy, feudalism, etc).A vertical society will lower its power in order from the top.At that time, God was requested to be the highest.The movement of constructing independent subject was made by internalizing its existence with the death of God accompanying the collapse of the monarchy.In other words, the death of God was a social necessity, but it actually survived and found its place in subjects of individual people.This, at least as a premise , transplanted an abstract god into the inner surface of every person within the social framework. This is "modernity as the construction of the subject". But God hates people to have the same face as himself. "The repudiation of all idolatry ” is directed to all objects, that is, even self-consciousness conscious as a object.Between the inner “God” and the outer “person”, this relationship is often reversed.In short, it is that the human being feels becoming a God.But it is never allowed.In other words, the internalized God is never humanized, it must remain as a god and continue to rule over humans.The separation between human and God should never be "aufheben".To God, human beings remain objects.This is "the present day as the disassembly of the subject”.
The apperception senses self-consciousness as a finite object and separates it.This tendency is no exception in the post-structuralist that seemed to dislike totalization and uniformity, but rather was strengthened by them.
Warhol said, “There is nothing behind it”, may be it is trying to conceal the existence of one's own subjectivity and maintain an objective attitude.

We who live in after modern times internalize secret beliefs and use the vertical dynamics to build their own identity.However, it is also exposed to the horizontal force that tries to desubject it.
It must be meaningful to confirm the coincidence between the concept of Aura advocated by Walter Benjamin and Kant's Transcendental Philosophy. Aura is found in a work of art that contains original presence in "time" and "space".Benjamin pointed out that contemporary art works tend to lose Aura.In other words, he explained that it is losing the presentity of "time" and "space".
On the other hand, for Kant's transcendental philosophy, "time" and "space" Is a format of sensibility that forms the basis of an intelligent subject.The format sets up the contact point between sensitivity and phenomenon. And this sensibility provides the material for self-consciousness that is unified vertically through the stage of enlightenment ← reason.Assuming that the concept of this “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and the “transcendental theory” coincide, what Aura's loss shows is the dismantling of self-consciousness as a unified reason.That is, the unjust identity that the inner god and human self-consciousness were connected was detected.(In this way, a new “myths and structures” as Baudrillard says begins.） We must treat even our identities in the same way as "things" that function as codes of synchrony.The individual self-consciousness that should have been constructed and guaranteed by the internalized god is now discarded by the direction of God.Rather, it might be better to say,the homology between God and humans has never been established.
God continues to live in human beings as different from human beings.One calls this God's name "Capitalism".

“Modernity as the construction of the subject ” and "the present day as the disassembly of the subject”.
These seemingly contradictory and contradictory trends are the power of the present day / capitalist society, and this shift causes the gears of consumer society to rotate.
The more tasteless drying these “things” are, the stronger the consciousness of the divine beings is seen.For that, the circumstances that we have seen are working "behind it".(Religiously pure white and white as MUJI overlap here.)Now, almost no one in our society really believes in the existence of God.The strict society that once banned idolatry has now abandoned even faith in God itself as impure.But we already have a new idol.It is “things” in which the divinity, transcendence and individuality as idols have been thoroughly discarded.Andy Warhol expressed that kind of “things”.Idol worship without idols.The dignity of God depicted by the absence of God.
“Things” are our own mirror image.We, “Me” in an abstract sense and never be the subject, can no longer survive without such objects.We are also "things" and be lined up with them.It is not divinity, not subjective, material and realistic.Materialism is presented as the only positiveness permitted to us who exist objectively as "Negation of God". The dignity of God is felt because it is absent.It is uttered by staring at “the surface” of the work, as Warhol recommends.There is nothing on the “behind” of the work.Because "it" is not the work but the back side of the viewer's own viewpoint.The viewers fill the blanks of Warhol's work with the gods within them.

#art #artist #andywarhol #warhol #popart #critique #contemporaryart #painting #哲学 #philosophy #批評 #criticism #review #美学 #esthetics #MaxWeber #ProtestantEthic #SpiritofCapitalism #protestant #capitalism #MarilynMonroe #monroe #campbel #Baudrillard #god #英語 #english #translation #翻訳 #英訳