The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

1. Art's Reproduction Alters Its Essence

Reproductive technology, we might say in general terms, removes the thing reproduced from the realm of tradition.

Loss of Uniqueness. Walter Benjamin argues that mechanical reproduction fundamentally changes the nature of art. The ability to create multiple copies diminishes the "aura" of the original artwork, its unique presence in time and space. This shift detaches the artwork from its traditional context and ritualistic function.

Democratization of Art. While reproduction diminishes the aura, it also democratizes art. Mass production allows art to be accessible to a wider audience, breaking down the barriers of exclusivity. This accessibility transforms the way art is experienced and consumed, shifting from cultic value to display value.

New Forms of Art. The age of mechanical reproduction gives rise to new art forms like photography and film. These mediums inherently embrace reproducibility, challenging traditional notions of originality and authenticity. The focus shifts from the unique object to the experience and impact of the reproduced image.

2. Aura's Decline Reflects Societal Shifts

That fading has to do with two circumstances, both of which are connected with the increasing significance of the masses in present-day life.

Mass Culture. The decline of the aura is linked to the rise of mass culture and the increasing importance of the masses in society. People seek to "get closer to things" both spatially and conceptually, which leads to a desire for reproductions that can be easily accessed and consumed.

Overcoming Uniqueness. The masses tend to overcome the uniqueness of each circumstance by seeing it in reproduction. This reflects a desire for similarity and standardization, which contrasts with the traditional emphasis on the unique and authentic experience of art.

Statistics and Reality. The orientation of reality toward the masses and of the masses toward reality is a process of unbounded consequence not only for thought but also for the way we see things. This shift is reflected in the growing importance of statistics and the desire to understand the world through quantifiable data.

3. Perception Evolves with Technology

Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of being of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception.

Historical Context. The way we perceive the world is not only natural but also historically determined. Changes in technology and social structures lead to changes in the way we experience and understand our surroundings.

Fading of Aura. The changes in the medium of perception occurring in our own day may be understood as a fading of aura. This fading is a result of the increasing significance of the masses in present-day life and the desire to overcome the uniqueness of each circumstance by seeing it in reproduction.

New Technologies. New technologies like photography and film have a profound impact on our perception. They allow us to see the world in new ways, capturing images and sounds that were previously inaccessible. This leads to a deepening of apperception across the whole optical and acoustic segment of the sensory world.

4. From Ritual to Politics: Art's Changing Function

Rather than being underpinned by ritual, it came to be underpinned by a different practice: politics.

Cultic Value. The uniqueness of the work of art is identical with its embeddedness in the context of tradition. The original way in which the work of art was embedded in the context of tradition was through worship. The oldest works of art came into being in the service of some ritual – magical at first, then religious.

Secularization of Art. The advent of photography and other means of mechanical reproduction frees art from its dependence on ritual. As art becomes more accessible and reproducible, its function shifts from cultic to political.

Art for Art's Sake. The theory of "l'art pour l'art" emerges as a response to the crisis facing art in the age of mechanical reproduction. This movement emphasizes the autonomy of art and rejects any kind of social function or prompting by an actual subject.

5. Photography's Impact on Art and Perception

In photography, display value starts to drive cultic value back along the whole line.

Cult of the Human Face. In photography, display value starts to drive cultic value back along the whole line. However, cultic value does not give ground without resistance. It occupies one last ditch, and that is the human face. It is no accident, not at all, that the portrait forms the centrepiece of early photography.

Atget's Significance. Where the human form withdraws from photography, there for the first time display value gets the better of cultic value. And it is having set the scene for this process to occur that gives Atget, the man who captured so many deserted Parisian streets around 1900, his incomparable significance.

New Reception. Atget snaps clues. With Atget, photographs become exhibits in the trial that is history. That is what constitutes their hidden political significance. They already call for a specific type of reception. Free-floating contemplation is no longer an appropriate reaction here.

6. Film's Unique Relationship with Reality

In the film studio the camera has penetrated so deeply into reality that the pure aspect of the latter, uncontaminated by the camera, emerges from a special procedure, namely being shot by a piece of photographic equipment specifically adapted for the purpose and then pasted together with other shots of the same kind.

Camera's Penetration. Film is unique in its ability to penetrate reality so deeply. The camera captures aspects of reality that are not visible to the naked eye, creating a new and artificial representation of the world.

Surgeon and Magician. The cameraman relates to the painter as the surgeon relates to the magician. The painter observes a natural distance from the subject; the cameraman, on the other hand, penetrates deep into the subject’s tissue.

Mass Response. The fact that the work of art can now be reproduced by technological means alters the relationship of the mass to art. From being very backward (faced with a Picasso, for instance), it has become extremely progressive (given Chaplin, for instance).

7. Kafka's World: Authority, Guilt, and the Absurd

The world of chancelleries and registries, of stuffy, shabby, gloomy interiors is Kafka’s world.

Officialdom and Paternal World. For Kafka the world of officialdom and the paternal world are similar. The similarity dishonors both, comprising as it does impassiveness, decrepitude and filth. The father’s uniform is badly stained; his underwear is soiled. Filth is the vital element of officialdom.

Original Sin. The original sin, the ancient wrong that man committed, consists in the reproach that man persistently levels that a wrong has been done him, that the original sin was committed against him. But who stands accused of that original, hereditary sin (the sin of having made an heir) if not the father by the son?

Hopeless Proceedings. One gathers from The Trial that those proceedings are usually hopeless so far as the defendants are concerned – even where acquittal remains a hope for them. It may be that very hopelessness that makes them the only characters in Kafka to exhibit beauty.

8. Kafka's Gestures: A Codex of Human Experience

Each gesture constitutes a process, one might almost say a drama, of its own.

World Theatre. Kafka's world is a world theatre. For him, man is in and of himself onstage, the proof being that everyone is taken on at the Oklahoma Nature Theatre. The criteria governing such admission are unfathomable.

Unpredictable Gestures. The thing that was least predictable so far as Kafka was concerned was gesture. Each gesture constitutes a process, one might almost say a drama, of its own. The stage on which that drama plays out is the world theatre, whose backdrop is the sky.

Animalistic Gestures. Maximum strangeness coupled with maximum simplicity marks this gesture out as animal. It is possible to read quite a long way into Kafka’s animal stories without realizing for one moment that these are not people.

9. Kafka's Longing: A Search for Redemption

I [imitated men] because I was in search of a way out and for no other reason.

Oklahoma Nature Theatre. For K. a glimmering of these things seems to arise before the end of his trial. He turns abruptly to the two men in top hats who have come to take him away and asks: ‘ “At what theatre are you playing?”

Village Air. Kafka’s work has the whiff of village air about it, as is the case with all great founders of religion. Here we are the more entitled to recall Lao-tzu’s portrayal of piety for the fact that Kafka provided the most perfect description of it in ‘The Next Village’.

Hunchback Dwarf. In its profundity Kafka finds contact with the ground that neither ‘mythical foreknowledge’ nor ‘existential theology’ provide him with. It is the ground of German popular culture as much as Jewish.

10. Proust's Remembrance: Weaving Time and Memory

We know that Proust did not, in his work, describe a life as it had been but a life as the person who had lived it remembered that life.

Penelope's Labor. Yet even that is obscure and put far too coarsely. Because here, so far as the reminiscing author is concerned, the chief role is played not by what he experienced but by the weaving together of his memories, Penelope’s labor of bearing things in mind.

Endless Sentences. The laws of remembering affected the very scale of the work. The reason was that, while an event experienced is finally closed, at least in the one sphere of experience, an event remembered is limitless, being simply a key to all that came before and all that came after it.

Will to Bliss. By submitting to their dominion he overcame the hopeless grief inside him (what he once called ‘l’imperfection incurable dans l’essence même du présent’ [‘the incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present’]) and built a house for his swarming thoughts from the honeycomb of remembering.

11. Proust's World: A Subversive Comedy of Society

It was Proust who made the nineteenth century a fit subject for memoirs.

Feudal Milieu. This puts us, of course (the fact cannot be denied) in an extremely feudal milieu, and with such phenomena as Robert de Montesquiou (of whom Princess Clermont-Tonnerre gives a splendid portrayal) in a very particular one at that.

Subversive Problems. These are subversive. If one had to reduce them to a formula, his concern would be to construct the whole edifice of high society in the form of a physiognomy of tittle-tattle. There is nothing in the arsenal of its prejudices and maxims that his scathing comedy does not annihilate.

Humor and Comedy. And here it is not so much humor as comedy that constitutes the core of his strength; he does not hold the world up to ridicule, he hurls it down to ridicule. At the risk of its smashing to pieces, whereupon he alone will shed tears.

Last updated: February 4, 2025