The Virtuosity of The Virtuoso

The Little Street, Johannes Vermeer, 1658

In pouring over many volumes of forgotten lore in the fortnight just past, Benjamin and Peter Berger to name a few, a nostalgia for virtuosity is creeping into both the artifactual production I control and my argumentation. From Benjamin (whose marxist bona fides we should all feel comfortable calling shinanigans on) I none the less take away from the Benjamin experience the intended lessons on authenticity and craft, something about the workers uniting...I'm bored with myself already.

The Berger history of cultural production is always at the forefront of establishing a narrative from which all maner of production can be associated. The timeline Berger establishes though should not be seen as reflective misty watercolouring, however. The timeline represents the identification of identifiable synchronisities where a particular relationship of cultural production gains prominence and subsequently is overtaken in popularity by another new or recycled relationship of art producers to art consumers and art capitalizers.

When the Benjamin analysis of the means of production is overlaid on the Berger excavation of the punctuations in the history of that production the tendency for any of the types of producer, consumer, capitolizer relationships are in vogue the influence of the technological environment necessarily unwieghts the balance of power in the production/consumption rochambo with the breaking point being new moods within the forward guard. At the nexis of the imbalance producers are given the choise to pursue the now kitsch mode of production in exile nee primary demand method or initiate work introspective of the medium. 

Through this wobbly meniscus the origins of the avant guard become reactive events rather than catalytic agents. 

Okay, now I've confused myself ...I don't even know what I was trying to say anymore.

There was going to be a whole thing comparing 17th century dutch artist Johannes Vermeer to street baller Skip-to-my-lou, this thing about the loss of virtuosity and investigating that through the Benjaminian authenticity model but I've bored myself with my Steinbeckian insistence on not getting to the G.D. point already. 

Whatever. Just for fun let's close the coffin on this corpse by for no good reason paraphrasing Homer Simpson in his introductory essay as food critic for the Springfield Shopper and say:

Screw Chaney...I mean Flanders