Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction


A screenshot of the website where you can purchase Benjamin's essay as an NFT, (Zak Loyd, 2021) https://foundation.app/@zakloyd/foundation/54893 

    This week, we read Walter Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1936. In the essay, Benjamin discusses how modern technology was affecting how art was being made, replicated, seen, and perceived. In particular, he was comparing photography and film to more traditional media like painting and live theater. Benjamin uses the concept of an art's "aura"¹ - the qualities that Benjamin has assigned importance, including the cultural significance, connection to the artist and audience, history, and uniqueness of the piece - to explain why he believed art produced using the new mechanical processes of the time were not only bad for art, but bad for humanity as a whole.

    For example, he believed the reproducibility of the photograph diminished its aura by allowing more copies to be seen by more people, and perhaps even being distributed so that those people didn't have to travel as far to view it. A single painting, on the other hand, that could only be reproduced as a fraud, could only be viewed by those with privilege enough to be able to go view it.² This "uniqueness" of experience is the "aura" Benjamin references, and is what makes art worthy to him.

    This also goes for the difference between a live and filmed performance. A film is made in a studio void of audience, and can use multiple takes spliced together to get the final shot. It's filmed from a particular point-of-view that every viewer will experience the same way. There is no aura. In contrast, a live theater performance is a unique experience for every audience member, every time. The actors and audience will connect and interact. The show will look slightly different from each seat in the theater. This is another example of Benjamin's aura.³

    The Big Deal of the essay is that moving as a society away from valuing culturally significant art and towards valuing aesthetic art, is allowing Fascism to keep us distracted. While I think there are issues with his definition of aura, I definitely understand his perspective, especially at the time, and I do feel like we've continued to see some of the effects he was warning against. In a time where everyone has a digital camera in their pocket (or their hand) at all times, there are significantly more photographs and videos being made today than paintings, and most of them are not culturally, socially, politically, or even aesthetically significant.

    Even more, whether it's the ones we're making or the ones we're consuming, more of them are going to be distracting us from what's going on in the world than making us ask questions about it. But most of us today wouldn't call Bachelor in Paradise art - we'd call it entertainment. That doesn't mean there aren't films or photographs out there that aren't; film and photography belong in the art sphere also. But most of us are able to identify whether what we are seeing is meant to say or mean something, versus just being for fun or personal expression. 

    What is positive about this age of mechanical mass reproduction, is that now all of the media - yes, the "unimportant" and "insignificant", but also all the art and all the context - can be consumed by all. We can all be distracted and informed equally. We can (almost) all be privileged enough to create equally. And this is never good for Fascism.



¹ Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 4-5.
² Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 7-8.
³ Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 9-10.




Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

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