1. What is bogus religiosity and how does it apply to your experience with images?
Bogus religiosity is where the original piece (art, images, or designs) are reproduced in such quantity that it lessens the value of the reproductions and makes the original piece seem even more rare. Because the original piece seems so much more rare, a buyer will pay a large sum for it. Thus making the piece seem more important, valuable, or greater just because it was so expensive to buy.
2. How does your experience with modern design expand on the author’s conclusion about art and a “new kind of power”?
I don’t know if this is the quote you are referring to on page 32 and reproduction of art? I agree with the author’s view about the fact that reproduction can dilute the importance or mystery of the piece. If everyone has a reproduction of the piece of art, or if the art is slapped on coffee mugs, puzzles, t-shirts, and mouse pads it becomes common, something we don’t think twice about any more. I think that this may be true for art in our time as well. I use to do picture framing as a job, and it amazed me how many artists had their art produced as posters. It became so commonplace to see these artist pieces; you begin to forget that there is an actual original somewhere. I think that these reproductions totally diminishes the original piece, because if you took a kid now days to a museum and showed him Van Gogh, Worhal, Picasso, Monet, Ansel Adams, or Dali he would say, “So what, I’ve already seen that, we have that framed in our living room.”
