Abstract

The article investigates the work of Paolo Rosa and Studio Azzurro in the light of its political relevance. The article rethinks the concept, originally formulated by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, of “politicization of art”. While for Benjamin the politicization of art concerns the emancipatory movement of the masses, to be opposed to the “aestheticization of politics”, the concept takes now a new meaning. Recalling the title of a book Paolo Rosa wrote with Andrea Balzola, the article shows that art should “go beyond itself”. In other words, the artist should abandon the ordinary ways of creation and fruition, in order to establish new conditions of interaction within the environments produced through the creation of images. In this way, the work of Paolo Rosa and Studio Azzurro recovers in a new key the “aura” of artworks.