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Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathAuteurs
 
 
 
 
 

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off-camera directions. Actors, such as Jack Smith in Camp or the superstars, made clear, recognizable decisions and influenced the proceedings. It was only logical that Warhol should at some point simply subtract himself from the production process, abandoning the position of author (which was still being debated in Paris) and delegating it to Paul Morrissey. Warhol’s response to both the metaphysical concept of authorship (with its origins in bourgeois tradition) and to relations within the culture industry (which had done away with the author, however in a fashion contrary to the intentions of any critique of the institution of the author) was his position that he did, indeed, remain the author. This, even after he had relinquished all functions which belonged to the duties of the director, the figure who now bore the label signalling a compromise, that of the «auteur,» but who had nevertheless remained the central figure of production within the film industry. Authorship could no longer result from industrial film production; authorship could only survive by addressing the metaphysical dimension of the term and its tradition directly. At the same time that Warhol delegated

 

responsibility to Morrissey, conceptual art was attempting to achieve the same thing.

6. The «Arteur»

There is very likely no one who has provided such a more radical response than Warhol to the problem that led to the formula for the auteur in cinema—a problem that art has only learned to deal with in recent years through the introduction of new technological and economic parameters. Problems first encountered in the film world have resurfaced in the fine arts in two respects: on the one hand, there is greater reflection, more often, upon the central role of the medium film and the institution of the cinema in the fine arts. Today, as those brazen media allies, the film print and the space of the cinema, are coming under digital, technological, and economical fire, this reflection is helping to shape a meta-theory of the moving image. On the other hand, the problems that led to the formula for the auteur affect the inner workings of art itself: artists are increasingly reliant upon private patrons and sponsors, producers and executive producers. Phenomena such as Yvonne Force’s Art

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