Methodology

When I looked for Benjamin’s work, the google linked me to a Marxist website, and to my surprise, I found Barthes and Benjamin were both listed as the Marxist writers. Thus, I think interpreting from the angle of their philosophy is a good way to do the analysis and interpretation. Making them as a group and Eco as a non-Marxist, I can make some comparison and find some similarity and difference between the group and Eco, at the same time, the comparison between two persons in the group is available as well. To this point, the main ideas are gathered, and can be applied to the artwork I study.
Concretely, let me select some important sentences from these three essays. “a certain change has taken place in our conception of language” (Barthes 155), which can be applied to Mike Bradford’s A Truly Rich Man Is One Whose Children Run Into His Arms When His Hands Are Empty. When you first see this “painting”, there’s nothing you can see from it, even you can’t connect the content with the name. The painting is a language, the reason why this “junk” artwork can be accepted and awarded is that a certain change has taken place in our conception. Meanwhile, “Over against the traditional notion of the work, for long -- and still -- conceived of in a, so to speak, Newtonian way, there is now the requirement of a new object, obtained by the sliding or overturning of former categories.”(Barthes) express the same idea that the traditional notion of work must be replaced by new text.
“One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” (Benjamin )The particular production of “aura” and its way of feeling history make it alive in art work, which represents a harmony communication between audiences and works of art. I noticed that every artwork made by Bradford has a long name, which in my opinion is for a better expression of the “aura”, and keeping harmony communication between audiences and himself through the artworks, because all these artworks are so abstract that without the assistance of names, “no one” can understand what he wants to express. As to Barthes, who can be a philosopher other than a pure writer has given out more fundamental explanations. “The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing.” This can be thought as the bridge between audiences and artists. Let’s go back to previous point that in order to convey the “aura” to audience, we need the help of the “text”. Thus, as long as corresponding the methodology, we can "ask Barthes to come out” to make explanation. If it is relevant to reality and expression, Eco will help. As to Benjamin, he is the bridge between methodology and reality.