Notes on Benjamin's "Work of Art"

In this germinal essay, Benjamin considers how technologies of reproduction have dramatically altered the role of the artwork in society. While he grounds his argument in film, many of these ideas have been very influential in considering many forms of reproducible artwork, including digital media and work that draws from commodity culture (see Adorno & Horkheimer and Debord). Benjamin's conclusions are far more nuanced than those of Horkheimer & Adorno and merit close scrutiny in any contemporary intermedia art class.

Benjamin begins by saying that it is far more useful to analyze about the "the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production," in other words, what it is doing in the here and now, than to think about what it might to in some future society (218). He sees this as useful because considering the ways that art has been changed by the fact that it can be infinitely reproducible brushes one of the most famous formulations of 20th century art theory, Benjamin says the reproduced artwork has lost it's 'aura,' or its unique presence in time and space and its claim to authenticity. Mechanical reproductions are unlike manual reproductions in that they are near-perfect (and digital reproductions can scarcely be called reproductions at all, but rather clones), thereby reducing the claim of the original to some auratic authenticity. The aura is also a result of holding art outside of social processes and in a domain of nature, as well as through the ritual use of the authentic object in its original context and tradition.

For Benjamin, the destruction of the aura is a good thing. The reproduction of artwork "enables the original to meet the beholder halfway," making previously lofty and elite art pieces approachable and appreciable in daily life, thereby reactivating the artworks that were reproduced (220). The destruction of the aura is also an indication of "the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life" and therefore to democracy, or "the universal equality of things" (223). By stripping the art object of its context of ritual and mythology, "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual" and "instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice--politics" (224). Because the reproducible artwork is infinitely relocatable and exhibitable, it "becomes a creation with entirely new fuctions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental."

Benjamin goes on to discuss the development of photography and film, arguing that earlier arguments about whether film and photography were arts really missed the point because their very existence "separated art from its basis in cult [and] the semblance of it autonomy disappeared forever" (226). Film epitomizes the withering of the aura because it irretrievably changes the relationship of the actor/artist to the audience and because of the 'mass' nature of the medium. In theater, the audience is reacting to an actor's presence on stage; in film, the audience reacts to a series of fragmentary images of an actor, pulled together from multiple shots and takes. Benjamin believes that the audience is therefore distanced from the performance and becomes "somewhat of an expert" rather than an awed spectator (231). (This point on critical distance is likely influenced by Benjamin's friendship with Brecht). Benjamin also notes that the pervasiveness and accuracy of reproductive technologies, such as printing, film and photography, blurs the lines between artist and spectator: "the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. At any moment, the reader is ready to turn into a writer" (232). In addition, film is intended to be received en masse, in groups of spectators, whose "individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce," yielding a sense of collective identification rather than awed individual spectatorship (234).

Technologies of the mechanical reproduction of reality, like photography and film, cannot, for Benjamin, be separated from the ways they can be used by people. Because of the way that the camera captures more than is visible--and allows it to be framed, replayed, slowed down, etc.--"the film...extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand it manages to assure us of nan immense and unexpected field of action" (236). In addition, the rapid change of the flickering cinematic scene prevents the spectator from losing him/erself in rapt contemplation of the image.

At the same time, Benjamin is aware that film and photography did not by themselves radically reshape society. He sees that film also conditions a kind of distracted attention on the part of most viewers. "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 film its true means of exercise...The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one" (240-1). The essay's epilogue is a meditation on and warning about the ways that Fascism mobilizes the technical posibilities of new art forms while forestalling their radical political corollaries through militarization.

Additional resources:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/WalterBenjamin.html
http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/history/timeline/mechanicalreproduction.html
http://www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html