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Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathAuteurs
 
 
 
 
 

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that of the more or less industrially-produced cinema. Lurking within the auteur, however, is a formula that determines that autonomous art can only originate from authors. As much as the auteur was conceived of around 1960 as a corrective measure hidden within industrial production—this despite the fact that he came about as an odd blend of a normative demand and a pure and simple description of the status quo within the texts of film reviews—in retrospect he seems instead to be an immensely defensive figure, the last bastion against the developments which would, in the years to come, shake (or at least relativize) all models of authorship. Around 1960, the European artist was still active, indeed he was a challenge to the film industry. Only a short time later this kind of artist would be the subject of attacks by the avant-garde and the industry would simply choose to quietly discontinue the model. However around 1960, artists, who were both active in the fine arts and had been influenced by its myths, offered a template for the film world. In 1966, Manny Farber named Pollock specifically as a prototype, an artist who had created autonomous works, a type that did not yet exist in the cinema; it was the cinema’s strength that it was continually being either rescued or ruined by the

 

surprising achievements and mistakes of stars or technicians. [2] Today, the fine arts are in need of models such as that of the auteur in order to reconsider the relationship that exits between its protagonists and participants and contemporary modes of production. Currently, the fine arts are in a similar situation to that of the cinema of the nouvelle vague during its heyday: very interested in «industrial» and technologically-developed methods of production. We may observe today a similar approach in the contemporary genre of narrative installation, for instance. Nonetheless, the fine arts are not prepared to completely abandon models of authorship in favour of others based on the division of labour (though not simply due to misguided vanity or an over-emphasis on subjectivity). Despite their willingness to repeatedly make reference to the seminal texts by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault (which address completely different problems), they are unwilling to begin a new, more productive discussion of the issue of authorship.

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