12/25/2023 0 Comments Walter benjamin illuminations summarySection I: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” The introduction of new forms of technology into art means that Benjamin’s original concepts of “aura” and “authenticity” must be redefined. With the introduction of new technology, the status of the work of art changes. In a sense, traditional photography, it can be argued, maintains the same relation between the artist and his work of art that painting in Benjamin’s time did, whereas the digital photographer is as disconnected from his photographs as the traditional photographer once was. 4 Now, about eighty years later, the digital camera has taken the place of the manual camera, and the manual camera has become the new paintbrush. The invention of the camera and the intrusion of machinery into the process of creating art, as opposed to the “hands-on” technique of painters and sculptors, is the basis upon which Benjamin argues the aura and authenticity of the work of art have eroded in the age of mechanical reproduction. The growing popularity of photography and film in the early 1900’s influenced Benjamin’s essay. As a result, “aura” is a historically relative concept, dependent upon technological change. Indeed, the question of which art forms have “aura” therefore changes with the introduction of new technologies. It can be argued that the traditional camera, which Benjamin believed destroyed the aura of the artwork, has become an authentic form of art since the invention of the digital camera. I will deal with this same issue, but will focus on the transition from traditional photography to digital photography and the effects the change has wrought on the concept of aura.īenjamin believed that photography accelerated the destruction of aura, but the invention of the digital camera demands that we revisit this assumption. Benjamin focuses on the “aura” and “authenticity” of art as they pertain to painting and photography. 2 The digital developments in the twenty-first century mimic this technological leap and force us to once again, redefine art and the laborious processes that art requires. Because the earliest photographic prints took at least eight hours of exposure, the thirty-minute exposure time in the 1930’s was seen as a technological leap into the future. Benjamin wrote during a time when the process of manual photography was considered as quick as digital photography is today. In the same way that Benjamin modernizes Marx, the purpose of my essay is to bring Benjamin’s own essay up to date. ![]() ![]() ![]() In other words, in the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin proposes-from a point of view most closely associated with Communism-that art should be based on politics instead of, as the Fascist view would have it, that politics should be based on art. The “Work of Art” was published in an effort to construct a theory of art that would be useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands on art. Benjamin uses Marx as a starting point for his own essay, saying that Marx has a sound argument, but that technology had been in its infancy in Marx’ time, and it was time to reevaluate the topic. ![]() He argues that in the age of mechanical reproduction, art becomes reproducible and thereby gradually loses its traditional and ritualistic value, causing it to lose “aura” and “authenticity.” 1 About a century earlier, Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote Capital, which alluded to how technology could be expected to affect the superstructure, including art, in the future. He wrote “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in 1935 to examine revolutionary changes in the arts due to monumental advances in technology associated with modernity. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), a key twentieth-century cultural theorist, has been influential in various fields, including art and literary criticism.
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