The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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A response to Walter Benjamin's essay, in quotes:

…to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.

The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows [are] useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space; its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

Technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.

The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which has experienced.

: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.

By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.

…lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which the obverse of contemporary crises and renewal of mankind.

We define the aura of [natural objects] as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be.

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

…what might be called a theology in the form of the idea of “pure” art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter,

mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual… To ask for the authentic print makes no sense… Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.

Works of art are received and valued on different planes… the accent on cult value [and] the exhibition value of the work.

…did not expose it to his fellow men… it was meant for the spirits… an instrument of magic. … the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental.

Photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acqure a hidden political significance.

[The viewer] feels challenged by [photographs] in a new way … Captions have become obligatory.

The directives which the captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and more imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all the preceding ones.

… whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art…

“do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the definition of prayer?”

the audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera … this is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.

Art has left the realm of “beautiful semblance” which, so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive.

The “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity.

The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.

…thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.

The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the origination of the expert … the same public that responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.

Made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception. For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of apperception (the state or fact of the mind in being conscious of its own consciousness).

An unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man,

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

The creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later.

The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. … what they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production.

Contemplation became a school of asocial behavior.

My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.

A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. … In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.

For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.

The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that [the mass’s] solution has a become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception.

Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film true means of exercise.

The masses have a right to change property relations; fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.

Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.

Through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way,

Communism responds by politicizing art.