Walter Benjamin The Work of Art

Introduction and Historical Information
Despite its relative brevity, Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction,” continues to inspire significant scholarly attention as
a major work in the history of modern aesthetic and political criticism. The essay
is credited with developing an insightful interpretation of the role technological
reproduction plays in shaping aesthetic experience; more specifically, Benjamin
catalogues the significant effects of film and photography on the decline of
autonomous aesthetic experience. After fleeing the Nazi government in 1933,
Benjamin moved to Paris, from where he published the first edition of “Work of
Art” in 1936 (Brodersen XV). This publication appeared in French translation
under the direction of Raymond Aron in volume 5, no. 1 of the Zeitschrift für
Sozialforschung. Benjamin subsequently rewrote the essay and after editorial
work by Theodore and Margarethe Adorno it was posthumously published in its
commonly recognized form in his Schriften of 1955 (Wolin 183-4).
Basic Themes and Arguments
Benjamin begins his essay by briefly distinguishing his categories from

traditional aesthetic values, those of “creativity and genius, eternal value and
mystery” (218). In contrast, “Work of Art” relates these tendencies to bourgeois
and fascist ideologies and to the conditions, inevitably generated out of
capitalism itself, which provoke “revolutionary demands in the politics of art”
(217-8). In order to catalogue and ultimately subvert classical and Romantic
aesthetic ideals, Benjamin describes the process by which modern technological
reproduction strips these institutions and their iconic artworks of their aesthetic
authority. Benjamin claims that in times past the role of art has been to provide
a magical foundation for the cult. Here the artwork’s use value was located in its
central position within ritual and religious tradition (223-4). A statue or idol
conveyed a sense of detached authority, or frightening magical power, which
inhered in (and only in) that particular historical artifact. The reproduction in
mass of such an item would have been unthinkable because it was its unique
singularity that produced the sacrality of the ritual.
In order better to describe this illusive quality Benjamin introduces the concept
of the “aura.” As the term implies, the aura includes the atmosphere of detached
and transcendent beauty and power supporting cultic societies. It also includes
the legitimacy accorded to the object by a lengthy historical existence. 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” (221). In order to clarify the idea he compares
it to the experience of natural phenomenon: “we define the aura of the later 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” (222-3). Benjamin’s example is noteworthy
because, as with the cultic artifact, the aura of the mountains seems to rest on
something autonomous and free from human intervention. The statue is not like
any other object produced or used within a society; it appears free from the taint
of ideological control or human interference, as though its power, like that of the
mountain, issues independently from within.
The coming of modernity and the disappearance of the cult only partially signal
the end of auratic art. Benjamin recognizes in modern art’s emphasis on
autonomy a lingering cult of the aura. Specifically, the L’art pour l’art movement
preserved and developed the sense of autonomy and distance native to ancient
religious works (224). In fact, it could be said that Romantic and symbolist
aesthetic ideals, derived partially from Kant’s apotheosis of the artwork’s
autonomy, represent an extreme attempt to indemnify the aura. For example,
Mallarmé’s vision of a “pure” artwork is of something utterly detached from
everyday reality or social and political influences (Melberg 100). Much of
nineteenth-century art and aesthetics thus represent a conscious attempt to
defend the special status of the artwork from the banality of bourgeois
capitalism. More specifically, the cult of “pure” art is a response to the
mechanical reproduction of artworks that threatens to strip them completely of
their aura.
Benjamin acknowledges the reality of artistic reproduction throughout history,

although he suggests that mechanical reproduction introduced an entirely new
and revolutionary change in the experience of the artwork (218). With
mechanical reproduction, which appears in its most radical forms in film and
photography, millions of images of an original are circulated, all of which lack the
“authentic” aura of their source. This process both affects and is the effect of
changing social conditions in which all previously unique and sacred institutions
have become equal (223). The general willingness to accept a reproduction in
place of the original also signifies an unwillingness to participate in the ritualistic
aesthetics and politics of earlier times. For example, a photograph or film of a
Catholic cathedral denudes its unique aura, transforming the role of participant
into that of a spectator or possibly a detached commentator.
Film
Although Benjamin discusses photography briefly, his argument focuses

primarily on the revolutionary potential of film as a mode of mechanical
reproduction. The film actor, unlike stage performers, does not face or respond
to an audience. The audience’s view also becomes synonymous with the
imperious perspective accorded to the camera. The net effect of these
innovations is to place the viewer in the impersonal position of critic—something
prior cultic experiences of art would never have allowed (229). The prevalence of
film, as well as other mechanical reproductions, also creates a culture of minor
experts ready to judge art rather than loose themselves in participatory ritual
(231). Benjamin also notes that film relies on a series of cut and spliced images
that must be assembled to form an aesthetic whole. Like Dadaist painting, film’s
swift juxtapositions and movements strike the viewer violently, disrupting
contemplation and easy consumption of the image (238). Susan Buck-Morss
develops this point further, commenting that for Benjamin art must “restore the
instinctual power of the human bodily senses for the sake of humanity’s self-
preservation, and to do this, not by avoiding the new technologies, but by
passing through them” (5).
The deep political and social significance of these reflections are developed
briefly in Benjamin’s epilogue, wherein he recognizes in fascism a final and
terrible instantiation of the L’art pour l’art movement. As a form of extreme
capitalism, fascism ultimately does not alter the structure of property
relationships. Instead it substitutes aesthetic expression into the world of
politics, thus supposedly allowing the masses the right to self-expression. The
result is a reinstatement of the aura and cultic values into political life, a process
which inevitably ends in war (241-2). In a chilling final paragraph Benjamin
suggests that self-alienation within fascism has become so extreme that the
destruction of humanity becomes an aesthetic experience. In response to this
total aestheticization of politics, Benjamin writes that communism responds in a
supposedly positive gesture by “politicizing art” (242).
Reception and Interpretation
Numerous scholarly articles and books continue to focus on Benjamin’s artwork

essay, with a mixture of positive and negative responses indicative of its general
readership over many years. Ian Knizek, for example, criticizes Benjamin’s essay
by suggesting that the aura could be transferred effectively to the reproduction
(361). Adorno similarly criticized the essay by pointing to the manner in which
modern modes of reproduction produce less rather than more critical citizens.
He also suggested that in certain instances the autonomous work of art excludes
the aura and produces greater self-rationalization (Wolin 193-4). Other more
recent critical work has explored Benjamin’s arguments in the context of
contemporary debates about the unprecedented levels of participation in art
that novel forms of electronic media offer (Ziarek 209-25). Generally speaking,
the essay continues to play a significant role in understanding how technology
contributes to a de-aestheticization of the artwork in modernity. However, its
relatively optimistic attitude towards technology and media, one not shared by
many of Benjamin’s contemporaries, has been linked by Miriam Hansen to that
of the avant-garde aesthetics of the 1920s (181-2).

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Introduction and Historical Information

Benjamin begins his essay by briefly distinguishing his categories from

Benjamin acknowledges the reality of artistic reproduction throughout history,

Although Benjamin discusses photography briefly, his argument focuses

Reception and Interpretation

Numerous scholarly articles and books continue to focus on Benjamin’s artwork

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