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The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin, brn in a burgess Berlin Jewish family in 1892, was nt nly a brilliant literary critic and sciolist f culture, but als ne f the mst creative me Marxist thinkers. Benjamin with his first bks n the concept f art criticism in German romanticism, and n German barque drama. A sympathizer f the communist movement, he visited the Set Unit in 1 92 7 and 1 928 but never joined the German Communist Party. Free int exile by the Nazis in 1933, he lived precariously in France with a stipend frm the Frankfurt Schl, which published in its Journal fr Social Research sme f his mst important essays (n Baudelaire and n the wrk f art in the age f mechanical reproduction). Trying t escape the Nazi ccu patin f France by crossing the Pyrenees in September 1940, he was arrested by the Spanish (Franc) price. Threatened with being turned ver t the Gestapo, he preferred t commit suicide.
His last writing, the Theses n the Concept f History, is ne f the mst important documents f revolutionary the in ur times. Known nly t a small circle f people during his life, he became, after the 1960 s, an increasingly influential thinker fr a new generation f radical students and intellectuals in Europe and America. In 1936 the Marxist critic Walter Benjamin published his celebrated essay The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reproduction. It is the mst free read f Benjamin's texts and although it is comply referred t as "The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reproduction", a better translation f the title would be "The Wrk f Art in the Age f its Technical Reprducibility." It remains ne f the mst incisive and thought-pricing analyses f the way appreciation f the uniqueness f a wrk f art was transformed by the invention f new processes f reproduction, in particular photography and film. Fr Benjamin, such inventions had political consequences: art was thereby liberated fr the enjoyment f the masses and freed frm the possession f elites. Nearly seventy years n, ne central argument f Benjamin's essay seems dated.
He believed that what he called the 'aura' possessed by a unique wrk f art would inevitably be diminished by the ease with which such wrk's could be reproduced and that media where there was n true 'regional', such as photography, would displace the where there was, such as painting. Walter Benjamin used the term "aura" t refer t the feeling f awe created by unique r remarkable beats such as wrk's f art r relics f the past. According t Benjamin lder cultures can generate auras and particular beats f veneration, while capitalist culture has the paste effect, causing the decay f the aura due t the proliferation f mass production and reproduction technologies. It is possible t argue that entirely the reverse has happened, and that Benjamin failed t free that the very accessibility f mass-produced images would price a craving fr the unique.
Seventy years n, painting remains the mst highly valued f all art frm's, and there is a near-universal recognition that although photography is indeed an art, it is a many ne. Benjamin believed that the new mass media would liberate art frm its traditional function, the service f religion r hierarchical elites. Tw development in particular undermined that prognosis. ne that Benjamin could nt have foreseen was the rise f art history as a discipline that has bestowed immense prestige n unique wrk's f art.
It is dd, however, that he says nothing abut the send development -- the growth f the art market. Here Benjamin was perhaps naive. He believed that ne photograph r lithograph was exactly the same as anther, and was blevins t such aspects as provenance, condition, date and the crucial question f whether a print r photograph was produced under an artist's direct supervision. Meter, the steep rise in the price f wrk's f art ver the past generation is convincing evidence f hw uniqueness continues t be important if nly because it has may commercial implications. Benjamin consider and rejects that the prpsitin that cultural history can claim t have surmounted existing division f academic last. N such interdisciplinary venture can, t use Engels's term, "verse" these division.
If cultural history is itself already s thoroughly problematic as t be in sme sense nonexistent ("I take it fr granted that there is n such thing... ") n new, improved models will d. A dialectical-materialist model, t name but ne, would merely incorporate critical elements int the existing mld. Such containment is in Benjamin's eyes ultimately political in nature, and he finds evidence f it everywhere he lks. New wine is everywhere being pure int ld bottles because new free f production have nt engendered new relations f production. This surely remains a clear and present danger, however chimerical a project the revolution may foreseeable be. ne can easily imagine Benjamin's critique f cultural history being incorporated int a new cann f cultural history which would thereby cure up yet anther deceptive mirage f the ld and the new.
The growing prletarianizatin f modern man and the increasing formation f masses are tw aspects f the same press. Fascism attempts t realize the newly created proletarian masses with affecting the property structure which the masses strive t eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses nt their right, but instead a chance t express themselves. The masses have a right t change property relations; Fascism seeks t give them an expression while preserving property.
The local result f Fascism is the introduction f aesthetics int political life. The violation f the masses, whm Fascism, with its Fuhrer cult, free t their knees, has its counterpart in the violation f an apparatus which is pressed int the production f ritual values. All efforts t render politics aesthetic culminate in ne thing: war. War and war nly can set a gal fr mass movements n the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula fr the situation.
The technical formula may be stated as files: nly war makes it possible t mobilize all f today technical resources while maintaining the property system. It ges with saying that the Fascist anthesis f war des nt empty such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifest n the Ethiopian clinical war: Fr twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding f war as anti-aesthetic... Accordingly we state: ... War is beautiful because it establishes mans dining ver the subjugated machinery by means f gas masks, terrifying megaphone, flame towers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-f metalizatin f the human by.
War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering made with the fiery rapids f machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench f putrefaction int a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that f the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the site spirals frm burning villages, and many ther's... Pets and artists f Futurism! ... remember these principles f an aesthetics f war s that yur struggle fr a new literature and a new graphic art... may be illumined by them!
This manifest has the virtue f clarity. Its formulating deserve t be accepted by dialecticians. T the latter, the aesthetics f today war appears as files: If the natural utilization f productive free is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources f energy will press fr an unnatural utilization, and this is fund in war. The destructiveness f war furnishes prf that society has nt been mature enough t incorporate technology as its read, that technology has nt been sufficiently developed t cpe with the elemental free f society. The horrible features f imperialistic warfare are attributable t the discrepancy between the tremendous means f production and their inadequate utilization in the press f production in ther wrd's, t unemployment and the lack f markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion f technology which clients, in the frm f human material, the claims t which society has denied its natural material.
Instead f draining rivers, society directs a human stream int a bed f trenches; instead f driving seeds frm airplanes, it drp's incendiary bmb's ver cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way. Fiat ars percent minds, says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war t supply the artistic gratification f a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation f last pur last. Mankind, which in Here time was an best f contemplating fr the lyman gds, nw is ne fr itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its wn destruction as an aesthetic pleasure f the first re. This is the situation f politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic.
Communism responds by politicizing art. Bibliography: Walter Benjamin: A Biography Transl. Malcolm R. Green and Ingrid Ligers Verso, London, 1996. pp. 352, 100 illusory. Walter Benjamin (1936): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
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