Week 3: Mechanical Reproduction of art (W. Benjamin)

Blog Post topic:

"The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

by Walter Benjamin

Written in 1935, this well-known work by a Jewish-German author goes over the concepts of aura and authenticity regarding mechanically reproducing artworks, but I found them exceedingly tedious. Originality and value are also mentioned throughout the essay, and I found myself strongly disagreeing with his interpretation of most of these concepts. Although I agree generally with his notion that Fascism weaponizes anything and everything (which includes mass reproduction) the issue to me is not found in the technique of copying art but rather the intent of the artist (and a Fascist is a poor representation of an artist). Fascists will continue to use all methods they can get their hands on, but to say that the problem is in the destruction of an object’s aura/authenticity rather than the destruction of the proletarian’s means of power is a mistake in my eyes. While reading this composition, I concluded that the author was writing from a limited perspective that puts each artwork into two categories: cult value or exhibition value.

Benjamin writes, “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 it has experienced.” I believe he is attempting to pre-define aura here (and over-inflate the importance of authenticity) as a few sentences later he brings it up for the first time. One page later he describes the aura of natural objects as “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be.” It seems the vague idea of aura is a most important ideal to preserve and a self-validating concept in what an art piece really is/does. Authenticity, however, is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “of undisputed origin; genuine,” and doesn’t mention the essence or transmissible data a human receives. It seems to me that Benjamin seeks to separate the ideas of mechanical and natural to portray one as harmful and the other as harmless.

Les Merveilles. Black painted elk figure (Lorblanchet 2018) ; a : drawing ; b : photo.

This quote, “Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits.” is very limiting and unsubstantiated as it assumes a very narrow perspective as to what the artist’s intentions were. He didn’t cite a source or give any argument for this, it just is. I find also it notable that he establishes magic to be later referred to as religion but religion itself is never significantly mentioned afterward. The institutions created within and based on religion have had a heavy influence on the art world, and so I disagree with this approach and think that the purpose could have been something other than magic or cult use. (Especially when the churches were so discriminatory and intentional with their power) It seems to me that he is meaning to give inherent contextual value to an artwork's existence because it was significant to tradition, and I feel this is a hasty assumption of ancient artist's intentions.

He also writes, “It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.” To me this is all a projection of his singular perspective. Artwork can be recycled into new art and cease to exist for its original function and still be of a different or not diminished aura. I think of clay casts and the way televisions have evolved into bigger and much different machines. Not all of those replicated and manipulated and built upon objects have their old history attached as a lingering aura of its ingrained past. I believe that this person sees the most value in what he considers original work and is too concerned with bad copies rather than the very real people creating bad production. Fascism is perpetuated by people, not objects. Through this whole reading, I found myself trying to agree with his criticism of Fascism, but just couldn’t get behind the key points he was trying to make arguments with because their sentiments seem rooted in Euro-centric colonial structure.

“The poorest provincial staging of Faust is superior to a Faust film in that, ideally, it competes with the first performance at Weimar. Before the screen it is unprofitable to remember traditional contents which might come to mind before the stage.” If nothing else, I whole-heartedly disagree with the use of superiority in this writing. I find it ridiculous to compare separate works of art and to state so plainly that replicated art must have a diminished aura from its original. To me, there is no competition and each artwork exists in its own right. The fact that there are a lot or a little reflects different things sometimes, but it doesn't make any of them superior. It makes the nature of the environment or other features different. If he was expressing that these works of art were valued differently or in some other new way, I would agree. But this author made it clear that they believe mechanically reproducing artworks would inherently result in diminishing the aura of the original. I disagree with this and instead would argue that each reproduction of anything is simply a new piece. If the process damages the original, then that’s part of that process, but not all mediums work the same way. There are many reasons and purposes for creating a copy of something. I think that this author is making a decent point in how Fascism, (or thinly masked Capitalism, which is impossible without exploiting the common person to benefit the wealthy class) is unwaveringly using everything possible for its agenda but misses that it is the very institutions themselves that are flooding these methods with poison. As a final point, I don’t think that it should be considered any loss to create copies of an artwork, but rather appreciate the latest artwork for its new authentic existence.

Benjamin, Walter, and Harry Zohn. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Schocken Books, 1969.

Braun, Ingmar M. “The Elk/Moose (Alces Alces) in the Upper Palaeolithic Art of Western Europe.” Paléo, no. 30–2 (September 1, 2020): 58–74. https://doi.org/10.4000/paleo.5126.