Use and contemplation (1973)

Abstract

In 1973, when Octavio Paz writes Use and contemplation, the Western world had long known and assimilated the effects of the culture of technology. Indeed, one could already note signals of contrast: the technique, which had fully accomplished its life's course, was creating its own antidotes . The transnational, serial, anonymous, aseptic nature of the industrial object destined for the dump was counterbalanced by the rehabilitation of those values of which the craft object has always been dispenser: the reference to the body and to a kind of "erotic" aesthetics , the socializing and sharing, the local specialty, a peculiar type of transmission of memory and knowledge. Paz rediscovers in the handmade article the ability to reactivate those dimensions  of existence  neutralized by industry (oriented to the use) and transcended by the religion of the modern art (consecrated by the function of contemplation).