Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Term Paper

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Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin attempts to describe how the advent of industrialization has changed the way art is produced, transmitted, and received, and the effect these changes have had on the notion of art itself. Benjamin's argument centers around the notion of a work's "aura," or "the unique appearance of a distance," meaning the unique, individual experience of a work in time and space that cannot be reproduced in the same way that the work itself can (Benjamin 2004: 795). In order to better understand Benjamin's notion of aura and the way photography, film, and other reproduced images contribute to its decay, one may consider an image of Benjamin himself as a case study in changes produced by the mechanical reproduction of art.

When Benjamin talks about "distance," he is referring to distance not only in terms of space, but also time, because the particular historical context and origin of a work of art prior to the age of mechanical reproduction contributes to its aura in the same way that its distance does, with the only difference being that the viewer perceives the temporal distance somewhat less directly than the physical distance. Because a work's aura is dependent on, and in some ways made up by "its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be," mechanical reproduction cannot help but diminish it, as reproduction simultaneously unmoors the image from its original time and space (Benjamin 2004: 793). This is actually how Benjamin introduces and formulates the concept of aura; namely, by identifying it as the thing that mechanical reproduction destroys or diminishes.

After initially describing the concept of aura, Benjamin goes on to describe it relationship to the use and utility of art, and it is here where the discussion becomes most interesting, because Benjamin demonstrates how the loss of aura is not merely a question of artistic snobbery or a desire for a lost tradition, but rather hints at a more fundamental change in the way art functions and influences society.

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Benjamin notes that over the course of human history, art went through a transition from being primarily a magical or shamanic tool to being valued as an art in and of itself (Benjamin 2004: 795-798). In the former case, art was appreciated primarily for its "cult value," but this changed as methods of production changed (Benjamin 2004: 795). In a similar way, the mechanical reproduction of art has precipitated another change in the use and value of art, because as a work's cult value decreases along with its aura, its "exhibition value" increases, precisely because the work can now be exhibited in any time or space (Benjamin 2004: 798).

To see this process in action, one may consider a photograph of Benjamin himself, taken by Gisele Freund in 1937, at the National Library in Paris, France. In his own analysis of Benjamin's work Subhash Jaireth examines this photo alongside a painted portrait of Benjamin in order to discuss the intertextuality of works in the age of mechanical reproduction, and his argument that images now "quote and cite each other" is informative (Jaireth 2003: 36). In the same way that two portraits of Benjamin might quote and cite each other, reproductions themselves serve the same purpose, because they each serve to reaffirm and comment on the simultaneously identical and individual nature of each reproduction;….....

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