Walter Benjamin

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new.

Highlighted by annafil

nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two different manifestations – the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film – have had on art in its traditional form.

Highlighted by annafil

First, process reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction.

Highlighted by annafil

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

Highlighted by annafil

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. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.

Highlighted by annafil

the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.

Highlighted by annafil

the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura

Highlighted by annafil

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.

Highlighted by annafil

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.

Highlighted by annafil

for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.

Highlighted by annafil

exhibition value

Highlighted by annafil

To an ever greater degree 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 for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Inst ead of being based o >n ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.

Highlighted by annafil

cult value

Highlighted by annafil

ead of being based o

Highlighted by annafil

by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function.

Highlighted by annafil

For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. 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 preceding ones.

Highlighted by annafil

desire to class the film among the “arts” forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it

Highlighted by annafil

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.

Highlighted by annafil

The film actor

Highlighted by annafil

feels as if in exile – exiled not only from the stage but also from himself

Highlighted by annafil

his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence .... The projector will play with his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera

Highlighted by annafil

man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence

Highlighted by annafil

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.

Highlighted by annafil

public, the consumers who constitute the market

Highlighted by annafil

constitute the

Highlighted by annafil

Its 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.

Highlighted by annafil

particularly in Russia

Highlighted by annafil

In the theater one is well aware of the place from which the play cannot immediately be detected as illusionary. There is no such place for the movie scene that is being shot. Its illusionary nature is that of the second degree, the result of cutting.

Highlighted by annafil

The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the 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

Highlighted by annafil

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest they control each other.

Highlighted by annafil

simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times

Highlighted by annafil

filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis

Highlighted by annafil

Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling.

Highlighted by annafil

Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation.

Highlighted by annafil

The question remains whether it provides a platform for the analysis of the film

Highlighted by annafil

Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit

Highlighted by annafil

The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one

Highlighted by annafil

If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war

Highlighted by annafil

The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society.

Highlighted by annafil

With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers

Highlighted by annafil

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. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.

Highlighted by idnca_dk

The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.

Highlighted by idnca_dk

critique of the capitalistic mode of production

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Marx

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

capitalism in the future

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. This holds not only for the art work but also, for instance, for a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie. In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus – namely, its authenticity – is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. 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.

Highlighted by idnca_dk

to exploit the proletariat

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

a work of art has always been reproducible

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Mechanical reproduction

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

something new

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

founding and stamping

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

woodcut

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

printing

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

engraving and etching

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

lithography

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

photography

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

ermined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. The fifth century, with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different from that of antiquity but also a n

Highlighted by theatreofcomets

concept of authenticity

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis-à-vis technical reproduction

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

First, process reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by bowerr

Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

“aura”

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Riegl and Wickhoff

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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 another practice – politics

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

for the first time – and this is the effect of the film – man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

The stage actor identifies himself with the character of his role. The film actor very often is denied this opportunity

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Nothing more strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the “beautiful semblance” which, so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive.

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Before the public

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

consumers who constitute the market

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

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

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

directives

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the “arts” forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

camera

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

an increasing number of readers became writers

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its pure aspect freed from the foreign substance of equipment is the result of a special procedure, namely, the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the shot together with other similar ones.

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

great social significance

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

manner in which

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

characteristics of the film

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

man presents himself to mechanical equipment

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

manner in which, by means of this apparatus, man can represent his environment

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye – if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man

Highlighted by rubyrubyruby

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0

Rank

URL Tag Cloud

Groups (0)

Related Lists

Bookmark History

Public Comment

Public Sticky notes

Site Community

Readers (13)