Walter Benjamin

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin starts his argument with the Marxist approach, applying  “his critique of the capitalistic mode of production”  to his age- that of mechanical reproduction.

“In principle, a work of art has always been reproducable… Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new.” 

And he summarizes the history of mechanical /technical reproduction of  works of art starting from the Greeks until  twentieth century. He gives his examples  mostly from photography and film.

“Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. A film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the image at the speed of an actor’s speech.”

First of all, there is one thing about all reproductions of a work of art which is explained through these lines:

“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. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence.” 

“The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical- and of  course, not only technical- reproducibility.”

And he explains that there is an aura of the work of art which gets weakened throughout the process of 

mechanical reproduction:

“One might  subsume the eliminated element in the term ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.”

This  sentences reminded me of  Gündüz Vassaf’s book  In Praise of Hell (Totalitarianism in Everyday Life) in which he argued  how the power of  pressing the buttons have a great effect upon all of us and how every behaviour of ours is automatized. Even taking lives ( by pressing the trigger of an automatic rifle, or by pressing the button that launches an atomic bomb, for that matter) is automatized with a simple act of pressing or switching a button. Vassaf claimed that “There is not much of a gap between pressing the release button of nuclear headed missiles and silencing a Chopin nocturne by pressing a button of a cassette player.”  That is, he explains, because they share the same privation. These automatized acts are deprived of the essence of things (The person who launches the button is a stranger to the essence of fighting as opposed to a medieval knight and the person who silences the nocturne is a stranger to the essence of listening to classical music as opposed to the historic audience listening to Chopin in an opera house.)  There is this alienation of the mechanical reproduction age.

Benjamin sees the connection of film and traditional value of the cultural heritage as such:

“Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage.” And he quotes Abel Gance  “ Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films…” and comments on the quotation: “Presumably without intending it, he issued an  invitation to a far-reaching liquidation.”

It is hard not to agree with him about the liquidation of the cultural heritage but the movie Amadeus which was originally a play written by Peter Shaffer, was one of the best movies I have ever seen and it is a film of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s, in this case. The film was, in a way, a different perception of the cultural heritage in a different age rather than just liquidation of the cultural heritage. I am not sure how the liquidation works, though…

In order to understand Benjamin’s argument one needs to understand the concept of aura and the decay of aura.  

“We define the aura of the latter (the natural object) as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as the transitoriness and reproducibility in the former.”

The experience  that a work of art or nature gives along with its uniqueness is its aura. While I was reading the sentences above, I was sitting on a bench near Lake Leman and I stopped, looked at the view and thought about “the aura”. It really seemed like something rather to be experienced. Then I thought about how  the desire of the contemporary masses work. The tendency is not even to get a hold of an object by way of its reproduction, it is towards, for example, getting a property with such a nice view, as if the view itself could be bought one would like to buy it right away (And then there would be no such good view, it is a good thing the vineyards of Lavaux  are protected from development by the law, thanks to being one  of the UNESCO world heritage sites.)  

And aura is strictly connected with its ritual function.

 “It is significant that  the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function.”

About the tradition and the traditional context Benjamin says:

 “ The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura.”

Therefore aura is the uniqueness of a work of art and has the  ritual function and authenticity. However, in the age of mechanical reproduction, authenticity has little importance:

“…For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual… The work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example one can make any number of prints; to ask fort he ‘authentic’ print makes no sense.”  In the age of digitally reproducing art, this statement gains more importance, maybe. In the age of peer to peer file sharing and downloading any movie or photographs to personal computers, the authentic one becomes nothing but  ‘the original copy’ .

“But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on practice- politics.”

Benjamin also claims that the exhibition value of art increases as the work of art is now being designed for reproducibility while the  cult value  “demand(s) the work of art remain hidden.”

“In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance… The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge fort he cult value of the picture.”

Most of the people who has cameras indeed take photos of the places they go, of the people they love  to immortalize the memories for themselves rather than exhibit their work. But again, they do not do that to make art, so maybe it is just  this need, this cult of remembrance is what  leads us  and the camera producers as they produce face recognizing, smile capturing cameras and market their products as a means of freezing the happy times so that you can actually “buy”  the digital reproduction of happy moments. He then argues that exhibition value of photography increases  as “man withdraws from the photographic image.”  And he gives Atget and his photographs of the deserted streets of Paris as an example. “It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime… With Atget, photographs become Standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance.” Art for art’s sake, all right. But also every work of art has a connection to politics somehow as every individual view comes with the package of a political view.

Benjamin then compares painting and photography as well as he compares the performance of a play to film. The exhibition value is of utmost importance whereas the cult value disappears. “The artistic performance of a…screen actor… is presented by a camera… The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera, its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.”

ALIENATION

 “What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance – in the case of sound film, for two of them.”

“The stage actor identifies himself with the character of his role. The film actor very often is denied this opportunity. His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is composed of many separate performances.”

Today, this must be in a whole new level along with the “surgeon’s” (cameraman) process of cutting and editing a movie to give it its last illusionary form. The actors standing in front of a green background, their dresses all wired up with motion detecting equipments and all… Benjamin’s example of how the frightened reaction can be filmed  (behind the actor without warning him) is a striking example. “The frightened reaction can be shot now and be cut into the screen version. Nothing more strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the ‘beautiful semblance’ which, so far, had been the only sphere where art could thrive.”

And  then film actor’s alienation as a result of the new modes of production enters the stage. It is to such a degree that he becomes a commodity :

“The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one’s own image in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become separable, transportable. And where is it transported? Before the public… While facing the camera he (the actor) knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. The market where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has little contact with it as any article made in a factory.”

“The cult of the movie star, fostered by the Money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the ‘spell of the personality’, the phony spell of a commodity.”

Then there is the issue of the opportunity the mass reproduction brings with itself. The opportunity for masses to write and be published in newspaper’s  “space for  ‘letters to the editor’”

“At any moment reader is ready to turn into a writer.”

I guess this is kind of what I am doing at the moment.

“Any man today can lay claim to being filmed.”

This sounds very much like Warhol: "In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes."

And with Youtube who can deny its truth? Gangnam Style is a fact as well as the Justin Bieber fans who film themselves and catch instant fame.

“Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie.”

The reaction changes toward art changes.

UNCONSCIOUS OPTICS  - This is the part where film, by its technique  is more available to analyze the 

filmed behaviour and reveals what is hidden in the objects that are always there in our everyday life.

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

This is probably why the cinematic narrative in novels and other forms of literature gains more and more importance. Some of this filming techniques are used in literature perhaps because of the fact that it helps us to analyze the behaviours or objects more easily.

“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later.” “Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial – and literary – means the effects which the public today seeks in film.” “One requirement was foremost(For dadaists): to outrage the public.” And film now has this shocking effect. “ I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images” (Duhamel) The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film.”

CONCENTRATION AND DISTRACTION

“ A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into  this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”

“The public is an examiner, but an absent minded one.”

EPILOGUE

“Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves… The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values. All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system.”

“Its (Mankind’s) self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.”

Having watched a great deal of Holywood action movies, war movies, and also having watched Triumph of the Will, the infamous propaganda movie of the Nazi party mentioned in the Norton Anthology introduction, I can do nothing but agree with Benjamin.  The striking example of Marinetti moves anyone who watches all those easy, numbing movies which are violent yet lacking a statement and finds beauty in them.  And then, upon seeing Triumph of the Will and the planes, the tanks, the high technology warfare equipments and Fascist propaganda that is clearly going on in the movie, I had contemplated upon the resemblance between that movie and all the other movies once. Now upon reading Benjamin I think of that once more, how the artillery is presented to the audience as an aesthetic form in that movie and also in all others which are not so obvious propaganda movies.  Their relation to fascism is more obvious than ever, now. Communism's respond is also a dangerous one, when it starts to censure all art except classical and/or politicized ones. When this goes towards a totalitarian regime under the disguise of a utopic ideology this politicized art is also dangerous.