A summary of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art’ essay, and its relevance today.
Despite his life being cut short in an attempt to flee Nazi-Germany, Walter Benjamin remains today one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century and an instrumental figure in critical and cultural theory. Benjamin was writing at a time when new media technologies were radically transforming the cultural sphere, and thus society. This was a primary concern for the members of the Frankfurt School, who viewed cultural commodities as a way to control the working class and reinforce capitalist ideologies. Though this is the basis for much of Benjamin’s work, his theories often contrast with his fellow writers at the institute. With reference to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in particular, Benjamin’s beliefs align more with traditional Marxist thinking in that he looks towards the transformative nature of new media for the working class. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), for instance, he praises how reproducibility can transform the way one consumes art, but also that ‘technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself’ (Benjamin 1935: 4). This liberates the artwork, which, as Benjamin envisions, gives rises to the masses; the drawback is that the rise of a ‘democratic’ culture emerges from the loss of an ‘auratic’ one.
The discussion of aura is one of the defining features of this essay and marks it as a highly important text in the discussion of critical theory. Aura is defined in Benjamin’s 1931 text A Short History of Photography as a ‘strange weave of time and place’ (Benjamin 2005: 518). It is a physical and temporal sensation that emanates from the artwork, a unique existence that enhances the aesthetic. Yet it is confined to the original;
“Even the most perfect 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.” (1935: 3).
Hence the ‘auratic experience’ is liquidated through the rise of mechanical reproduction, and though Benjamin laments this loss, he turns his attention to the way in which art can be transformed into a revolutionary tool for the proletariat.
Benjamin puts forth this argument by presenting the didactics of new media, namely photography and film. With regards to the photographic camera, he foregrounds the technical features over the artistic form, writing that the lens can ‘bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye’ (ibid). This echoes the ideas put forth in his previous work Theatre and Radio, where he wrote that radio possesses a ‘technological dimension’ (2005: 584) that traditional art did not. This means that ‘the masses it grips are much larger’ (ibid), but also it is a form that requires an active and engaged audience, with the ability to transform the proletariat into a critic. Likewise, the reproducibility and close proximity of a photograph gives way to a new mode of viewing, and as such, analysing the artwork. This is demonstrated through the work of Eugene Atget, who Benjamin praises for liberating the photographic form from the imitation of traditional painting. The painting — or even the portrait photograph — emanated an auratic experience, whereas Atget’s photographs of the deserted Parisian streets instead ‘acquire a hidden political significance’. He goes on to write that these photographs ‘stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way’ (1935: 8). This, therefore, is the transformative nature of photography — the ability to unmask that which is hidden from the naked eye.
The better part of the essay focuses on what Benjamin believes could be ‘man’s most powerful agent’ — film (1935: 4). Like photography, film is a form that is dependent on exhibition value, given that it ‘substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence’ (ibid). Benjamin arrives at a rather ground-breaking connection between the camera and psychoanalysis, doing so through the use of three powerful analogies. Firstly, the comparison between the ‘stage’ and the ‘screen’ actor highlights how the audiences’ identification with the actor changes with mechanical reproduction (1935: 9). In the theatre one is responding solely to the stage actor, a performance which exudes aura. Through the medium of film, however, we no longer identify with the actor but instead the camera, given that the camera controls what we see. The importance of this is that the camera is able to penetrate further into reality rather than just observe from a distance, which is explained through the analogy:
“Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.” (1935: 13)
Benjamin compares the role of the cameraman to that of the surgeon, who penetrates into the patients’ body to heal them, as opposed to the magician who practices from a natural distance. The cameraman is able to close the distance between man and reality, thereby offering the masses a vision that the painting never could. This leads to the discussion of unconscious optics, of which the camera introduces us to ‘as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses’ (1935: 16). Herein lies the crux of the argument, that new media can lead to a change in perception and the awakening of the masses to their everyday surroundings, which is summed up most elegantly through this passage:
“Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go travelling.” (1935: 15)
Strengthening his approach, Benjamin argues that film rejects the immersion of the viewer because ‘no sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed’ (Benjamin 1935: 17). It is this structure which leads to the shock effect of the cinematic form, which contrasts with Adorno’s views on distraction. For Adorno, he saw the ‘absorptive spectacle of Hollywood film’ as a capitalist tool to dupe and distract the masses (Costello 2005: 176). Benjamin’s theory of distraction, on the other hand, is a ‘positive force that emerges in the wake of the liquidation of aura’ (Taylor and Harris 2008: 34). Benjamin states that ‘reception in a state of distraction’ (1935: 19) is what allows the viewer to absorb the artwork, not be absorbed by it; only through distraction that emancipation can be located. Therefore this new mode of participation gives way to a change in interpretation, which is what ‘changes the reaction of the masses toward art’ (1935: 14).
As a result, this leads to Benjamin’s argument that reproducibility is a good thing as it leads to the politicization of art. He states that photography and film — in their absence of auratic and ritual value — reverse the function of art in society. Whilst Adorno’s theories locate meaning in the process of production, Benjamin argues that meaning is constructed through the mode of consumption; thus consumption becomes a political act. The masses can create meaning that was not otherwise suggested by the creator of the image. This is the politicization of aesthetics, a way for the proletartiat to use art and culture in the same way that Fascists were aestheticizing politics.
Throughout the essay, Benjamin situates mechanical reproduction in between two stark political forces; on the one hand it is a dangerous force that allows for the aestheticization of politics, on the other it is a revolutionary tool that can lead to the politicization of aesthetics. Though erring on the side of optimism, Benjamin himself recognises that mechanical reproduction in the context of Fascism and modern warfare is ‘proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ’ (1935: 20). So where does that leave us today? Slyvère Lotringer writes that ‘the aesthetization of politics isn’t a sign of fascism anymore, nor is the politicization of aesthetics a sign of radicalism’ (2005: 11). Today, art is not confined to the realm of politics but is something that has transcended into all aspects of modern life.
The mediascape of Benjamin’s era was radically different to today; the advent of the camera has been superseded by cyberspace, virtual technologies and social media platforms. Yet few would argue that Benjamin’s theories remain irrelevant to today’s studies. Benjamin was able to project a number of empowering outcomes for the use of new media, and whilst today’s society may not be what he envisioned, a reading of his work nevertheless awakens the reader to those possibilites.
In Walter Benjamin and the Media, Jaeho Kang writes that ‘Benjamin’s media critique is not just a theory but a practise that is constantly reconfigured according to the conditions of the contemporary mediascape’ (2014: 214). In a postmodern era, ties can be linked closely to the work of Marshall McLuhan and, thereafter, Jean Baudrillard, to the extent that Benjamin anticipated the theory of simulacra and hyperreality with the demise of aura and the notion of reproducibility. Returning to Benjamin’s analogy of the cameraman and the surgeon, the ability to penetrate deep into the web of reality is interesting when coupled with the argument that meaning is constructed through consumption. It seems Benjamin is suggesting that technological development is constructing a new reality for the masses, something that Baudrillard will later go on to define as our simulation of reality.
Works Cited
Benjamin, W. 1935. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Available at: https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf
Benjamin, W. 2005. ‘Little History of Photography’, pp. 507–530 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2, 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, W. 2005. ‘Theater and Radio’, pp. 583–586 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2, 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Costello, D. 2005. ‘Aura, Face, Photography: Re-reading Benjamin Today’, pp. 164–184 in Walter Benjamin and Art, ed. Andrew Benjamin. London: Continuum
Gilloch, G. 2002. Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations. Cambridge: Polity.
Kang, J. 2014. Walter Benjamin and the Media. Cambridge: Polity.
Lotringer, S. 2005. Introduction. In: Baudrillard, J. The Conspiracy of Art. Lotringer, S. ed. New York: Semiotext(e), pp 9–21.
Taylor, P. A. and Harris, J.L. 2008. Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
