The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Film

1935 essay by Walter Benjamin

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), Walter Benjamin addresses the artistic and cultural, social, economical, and political functions of art in a capitalist club.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the aura (uniqueness) of an objet d'art.^[1] That in the age of mechanical reproduction and the absence of traditional and ritualistic value, the production of art would exist inherently based upon the praxis of politics. Written during the Nazi régime (1933–1945) in Deutschland, Benjamin's essay presents a theory of art that is "useful for the conception of revolutionary demands in the politics of fine art" in a mass-civilisation society.^[2]

The subject and themes of Benjamin's essay: the aura of a work of art; the artistic authenticity of the artefact; its cultural authorization; and the aestheticization of politics for the production of art, became resources for research in the fields of art history and architectural theory, cultural studies and media theory.^[3]

The original essay, "The Piece of work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility," was published in three editions: (i) the German edition, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, in 1935; (ii) the French edition, 50'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée, in 1936; and (iii) the German language revised edition in 1939, from which derive the gimmicky English language translations of the essay titled "The Piece of work of Fine art in the Historic period of Mechanical Reproduction."^[4]

Summary [edit]

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) Walter Benjamin presents the thematic basis for a theory of art by quoting the essay "The Conquest of Ubiquity" (1928), by Paul Valéry, to constitute how works of art created and developed in past eras are dissimilar from contemporary works of art; that the understanding and treatment of fine art and of artistic technique must progressively develop in order to understand a piece of work of art in the context of the mod time.

Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the nowadays, by men whose ability of activeness upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the astonishing growth of our techniques, the adjustability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Cute. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected past our modern noesis and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what information technology was from time immemorial. We must expect not bad innovations to transform the unabridged technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and mayhap even bringing most an amazing change in our very notion of fine art.^[5]

Artistic production [edit]

In the Preface, Benjamin presents Marxist analyses of the organisation of a capitalist society and establishes the place of the arts in the public sphere and in the private sphere. He so explains the socio-economic conditions to extrapolate developments that further the economic exploitation of the proletariat, whence arise the social conditions that would abolish capitalism. Benjamin explains that the reproduction of art is not an exclusively modernistic human activity, citing examples such as artists manually copying the work of a principal artist. Benjamin reviews the historical and technological developments of the means for the mechanical reproduction of art, and their furnishings upon gild'south valuation of a work of art. These developments include the industrial arts of the foundry and the postage stamp factory in Ancient Greece; and the modernistic arts of woodcut relief-printing, engraving, etching, lithography, and photography, all of which are techniques of mass production that permit greater accuracy in reproducing a piece of work of art.^[6]

Authenticity [edit]

The aura of a piece of work of fine art derives from actuality (uniqueness) and locale (physical and cultural); Benjamin explains that "fifty-fifty the about perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and infinite, its unique beingness at the place where information technology happens to exist" located. He writes that the "sphere of [artistic] actuality is outside the technical [sphere]" of mechanised reproduction.^[7] Therefore, the original work of art is an objet d'fine art independent of the mechanically accurate reproduction; notwithstanding, past changing the cultural context of where the artwork is located, the existence of the mechanical copy diminishes the aesthetic value of the original work of fine art. In that fashion, the aura — the unique aesthetic authority of a work of art — is absent-minded from the mechanically produced copy.^[eight]

Value: cult and exhibition [edit]

Regarding the social functions of an artefact, Benjamin said that "Works of fine art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Creative production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may presume that what mattered was their beingness, non their being on view."^[9] The cult value of religious art is that "certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain madonnas remain covered almost all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level."^[x] In practice, the diminished cult value of a religious artefact (an icon no longer venerated) increases the artefact's exhibition value as art created for the spectators' appreciation, considering "information technology is easier to exhibit a portrait bust, that can be sent here and there [to museums], than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its stock-still place in the interior of a temple."^[11]

The mechanical reproduction of a work of art voids its cult value, considering removal from a fixed, private space (a temple) and placement in mobile, public infinite (a museum) allows exhibiting the art to many spectators.^[12] Further explaining the transition from cult value to exhibition value, Benjamin said that in "the photographic prototype, exhibition value, for the first time, shows its superiority to cult value."^[xiii] In emphasising exhibition value, "the piece of work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions," which "later may be recognized as incidental" to the original purpose for which the artist created the Objet d'art.^[14]

As a medium of artistic product, the picture palace (moving pictures) does non create cult value for the motion picture, itself, because "the audience'south identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently, the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may exist exposed." Therefore, "the film makes the cult value recede into the background, non only past putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that, at the movies, this [critical] position requires no attention."^[15]

Art equally politics [edit]

The social value of a work of art changes as a society change their value systems; thus the changes in creative styles and in the cultural tastes of the public follow "the style in which man sense-perception is organized [and] the [artistic] medium in which it is accomplished, [which are] determined not just by Nature, just by historical circumstances, also."^[seven] Despite the socio-cultural furnishings of mass-produced, reproduction-fine art upon the aureola of the original work of art, Benjamin said that "the uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the cloth of tradition," which separates the original piece of work of fine art from the reproduction.^[7] That the ritualization of the mechanical reproduction of art besides emancipated "the work of fine art from its parasitical dependence on ritual,"^[7] thereby increasing the social value of exhibiting works of fine art, which practice progressed from the private sphere of life, the possessor'south enjoyment of the aesthetics of the artefacts (usually Loftier Art), to the public sphere of life, wherein the public enjoy the aforementioned aesthetics in an art gallery.

Influence [edit]

In the late-twentieth-century goggle box program Ways of Seeing (1972), John Berger proceeded from and developed the themes of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), to explain the contemporary representations of social course and racial caste inherent to the politics and production of art. That in transforming a work of fine art into a commodity, the modern ways of artistic production and of artistic reproduction have destroyed the aesthetic, cultural, and political authority of art: "For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, bachelor, valueless, free," because they are commercial products that lack the aureola of actuality of the original objet d'art.^[16]

See too [edit]

• Aestheticization of politics
• Fine art for art's sake

References [edit]

1. ^ Elliott, Brian. Benjamin for Architects (2011) Routledge, London, p. 0000.
2. ^ Scannell, Paddy. (2003) "Benjamin Contextualized: On 'The Piece of work of Art in the Historic period of Mechanical Reproduction,'" in Canonic Texts in Media Inquiry: Are There Whatever? Should There Be? How Nearly These?, Katz et al. (Eds.) Polity Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9780745629346. pp. 74–89.
3. ^ Elliott, Brian. Benjamin for Architects, Routledge, London, 2011.
4. ^ Notes on Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Fine art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", a commentary past Gareth Griffiths, Aalto Academy, 2011. ^{[ permanent dead link ]}
5. ^ Paul Valéry, La Conquête de 50'ubiquité (1928)
6. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Piece of work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. 01.
7. ^ ^{a b c d} Walter Benjamin (1968). Hannah Arendt (ed.). "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations . London: Fontana. pp. 214–18. ISBN9781407085500.
8. ^ Hansen, Miriam Bratu (2008). "Benjamin's Aura," Critical Research No. 34 (Winter 2008)
9. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. four.
10. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Historic period of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. 4.
11. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Piece of work of Art in the Historic period of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. iv.
12. ^ "Cult vs. Exhibition, Section II". Samizdat Online. 2016-07-20. Retrieved 2020-05-22 .
13. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Historic period of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. 4.
14. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. 4.
15. ^ Benjamin, Walter. "The Piece of work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) p. five–6.
16. ^ Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, London, 1972, pp. 32–34.

External links [edit]

• Complete text of the essay, translated
• Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (1932-1941) - Download the original text in French, "50'œuvre d'art à fifty'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée," in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung Jahrgang V, Félix Alcan, Paris, 1936, pp. 40–68 (23MB)
• Complete text in High german (in German)
• Partial text of the essay, with commentary by Detlev Schöttker (in High german)
• A comment to the essay on "diségno"

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction#:~:text=a%20capitalist%20society.-,%22The%20Work%20of%20Art%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20Mechanical%20Reproduction,of%20an%20objet%20d'art.

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