Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

Richard Miles

Walter Benjamin – The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Frankfurt School – Critical Theory
University of Columbia New York, 1933-47
University of Frankfurt, 1949
others – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Lowenthal

‘The Ancient Craft of the Beautiful’
‘In Principal the work of Art has always been Reproducible’ – Guttenberg Press
Manual Production/Technical Reproduction
- reproduction results in the demeaning of the value of Art

Technological reproduction of art removes –presence, authenticity, authority – Aura

Taken to another stage by digital reproduction an the internet
- best example – The Mona Lisa – reproduced worldwide in various ways and forms, defaced and even put onto t shirts and tea towels etc
- ruins your impression of it – no longer, ‘look at this piece of artwork’ but more – ‘its that photo I saw on a coffee mug’
Dependant on the copies you have seen and creating your own interpretation of the given art work

Cult Value
essentially putting something onto a pedestal
art galleries – not dissimilar in architectural values to that of religious buildings
large stairs, lifted from ground level, plinths etc
Rothco’s depressing paintings, followed by his suicide, crying ritual in Tate

Louise Lawler – ‘Pollock and Tureen, arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Conneticut’, 1984
Warhol – Marilyns, 1962

To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility

Taking a photograph of a photograph, demeaning the original picture
Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama, 1936
Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1979

the internet changing out interpretations of the world?
The Mongrel Project - hacked the Tate website and replaced artists pictures to that of syphilitic sores, text also replaced

The Cult of the Beautiful

Exhibition Value
The invention of photography meant that painting had to change, it was threatened with irrelevance, thus resulting in a move away from realism in painting and an attempt to revive its aura

Ad Reinhardt
‘Abstract Painting’, 1960-1961

‘Mechanical reproduction changes the reaction of art, the reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into a progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert.’
Collective Experience

Meaning can be produced at the point of consumption, consumption is political?

‘A pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries…, a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence…, which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one…’

‘Communism responds by politicizing art’

Key Points
- Aura
- Originality
- Cult Value
- Exhibition Value
- Auratic Culture to Democratic Culture