Reading: Walter Benjamin's The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction

• "'innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts'"
• "with the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible"
• etching & engraving --> lithography --> photography
• "reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be"
• aura: "unique phenomenon of a distance"

-"urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction"

-"uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition"

-"existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated

from its ritual function"

-"value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value"

• formation of the idea of "pure art": "denied any social function of art" & "any categorizing by subject matter"
• cult value VS. exhibition value

-something made for the spirits & less for others to see; in the present: remain hidden

-"work of art in prehistoric times...instrument of magic... later... to be recognized as a work of art"

-today, "emphasis on its exhibition value...art becomes a creation with entirely new functions"

-"in photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value"

-cult value "retires into...human countenance" (portrait photography)

• human countenance: human behavior
• "age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult"

Film:

-in person, actors can adjust performances according to audience
-on camera, the cameraman controls the angles & what we see

-we become a critic bc we simply are watching & cannot interact
-on film, the actor loses his aura bc aura is tied to his presence & he is not in front of you

-cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality... the phone spell of a commodity"

-"with the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended"

-"camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions"

-"camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses"
-scenes keep changing unlike paintings that stay the same & give you time to think about them. w scenes constantly changing, you already see what's going to happen next

-Duhamel: movies are a "pasttime for helots, a diversion for uneducated...spectable which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence... awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles"

-"putting the public in the position of the critic"

-"movies...requires no attention"

-"public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one"

• Extension of the press:"at any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer"
• "mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses"
• progressive reaction: "direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert"
• crisis of painting: "no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience"
• Psychopathology of Everyday Life: "made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception"

Dadaists:

-"attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion"

-"intended and achieved... relentless destruction of the aura of their creations... branded as reproductions with the very means of production"

-"decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school of asocial behavior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct"

-"outrage the public"

-"it the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality"

Architecture:

-"human need for shelter is lasting"

-"buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception- or rather, by touch and sight"
____________________________
Class discussion:
-Benjamin died young & in Europe w untranslated texts so not until more recently read
-inauthentic relationship to see art on a screen or not in person, Benjamin finds that liberating; his understanding of a piece is just as valid as the original artists' understanding
-agency is lost but we're a shifting world; not universal, dependent on what time we look things at
-things visible to us that aren't to people back then
-Greenberg, however, believes in the universal
-every act of civilization is an act of barbarism; to include, there must be an exclusion