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A review by jakeyjake
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media by Walter Benjamin
The title essay, written in Germany during Nazi rule in 1935, with its main criticism art reproduced hash lost its 'aura', feels a bit crotchety to our modern internet-baked sensibilities. So little of the art I consume is direct-from-the-artist.
Walter Benjamin isn't just being grumpy, however. He chronicles art from the earliest human stage with cave paintings made for their 'cult' value, then through to the beginnings of mechanical reproducibility. Wood blocks, lithography, the printing press for the written word. And then to photography, of which he asks, 'whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art.'
Much of the rest of the essay deals with photography and film, with actors acting not for humans in a linear manner, but for lenses and in a most-convenient-to-film scene-by-scene order. He asserts that there is something essential lost in this transmutation, and yet he also seems to exalt film over past art for their ability to represent reality to the viewer. '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.'
There's something to be said for the political bent of this essay (something about the line, 'All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.') but I'll leave others to say it.
It was another line of this essay that sparked my mind. Speaking of publishing writing, Walter Benjamin says at one point, 'today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character.' If only Walter Benjamin could see us now! What I'm trying to interrogate in my mind is the value of aesthetic gatekeeping in art and literature. There's no new insight in saying that most anyone can make and 'publish' on what is a reproducible scale unknown in human history. It's the SoundCloudization of music, the Tumblerization of publishing, Instagramization of graphics and photography. But the irony seems to be that for all this 'democratization', perhaps BECAUSE of this democratization, we seem to continue to look to our curators to do the work of evaluation for us and then to point and say, 'Here, here,' or 'there, there! Listen to this, read that, follow them, wear this.' As the 'basic character' between author and public dissipates, I find myself falling into the pattern of trusting the industry leaders. I read what Random House and Hachette print on their mega-presses instead of self-published laserjet or Reddit offerings. I listen to artists on major labels instead of independent creators. And perhaps I'm getting back full circle to the politics that I said I'd let others comment on, because it seems to me that my patronage of the big gatekeepers of art is a symptom of a sort of capitalist fervor or at least a mental model that believes that quality is somehow related to what sells?
Walter Benjamin isn't just being grumpy, however. He chronicles art from the earliest human stage with cave paintings made for their 'cult' value, then through to the beginnings of mechanical reproducibility. Wood blocks, lithography, the printing press for the written word. And then to photography, of which he asks, 'whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art.'
Much of the rest of the essay deals with photography and film, with actors acting not for humans in a linear manner, but for lenses and in a most-convenient-to-film scene-by-scene order. He asserts that there is something essential lost in this transmutation, and yet he also seems to exalt film over past art for their ability to represent reality to the viewer. '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.'
There's something to be said for the political bent of this essay (something about the line, 'All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.') but I'll leave others to say it.
It was another line of this essay that sparked my mind. Speaking of publishing writing, Walter Benjamin says at one point, 'today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character.' If only Walter Benjamin could see us now! What I'm trying to interrogate in my mind is the value of aesthetic gatekeeping in art and literature. There's no new insight in saying that most anyone can make and 'publish' on what is a reproducible scale unknown in human history. It's the SoundCloudization of music, the Tumblerization of publishing, Instagramization of graphics and photography. But the irony seems to be that for all this 'democratization', perhaps BECAUSE of this democratization, we seem to continue to look to our curators to do the work of evaluation for us and then to point and say, 'Here, here,' or 'there, there! Listen to this, read that, follow them, wear this.' As the 'basic character' between author and public dissipates, I find myself falling into the pattern of trusting the industry leaders. I read what Random House and Hachette print on their mega-presses instead of self-published laserjet or Reddit offerings. I listen to artists on major labels instead of independent creators. And perhaps I'm getting back full circle to the politics that I said I'd let others comment on, because it seems to me that my patronage of the big gatekeepers of art is a symptom of a sort of capitalist fervor or at least a mental model that believes that quality is somehow related to what sells?