4010 Spring08 Questions and Discussion 21
From Studyplace
This week's respondents: Elizabeth, Ting Fang, and Kathryn (Note this page is constantly updated)
The Work of Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish writer from the 1920's and 30's who committed suicide during the reign of Hitler. He writes in this essay about the experience and creation of art works through time and considers present and future changes in light of the ease and speed of reproduction- most significantly through film. He looks back historically on forms of reproduction. He situates the aesthetic appreciation and function of art in time and space historically and proposes that mechanical reproduction takes the experience of art away from its traditions and into a new age in art making and appreciation. Question: What do we demand of this new art and of its function? Do we demand to see (pay attention to) the reality with which it the apparatus penetrates? or Do we demand "distraction" from our own prison like walls?
Contents |
[edit] Summary of the essay
[edit] Preface
Benjamin leads the essay off with Marx's view that Capitalism would destroy itself through the ever increasing exploitation of the proletariat similar to how art has destroyed itself through mechanical reproductions that exploit images (objects of art). The politics of art have assumed power over tradition mediums. He juxtaposes communism's demand for the politics of art to the intent of fascism that aestheticizes politics.
Benjamin wrote the piece because he sensed the transformation in the mode of production, and how the condition of production influenced the conception of art. He wanted to focus on two parts: one, the reproduction of the work of art, and two, the art of the film, and made a contract between the modern form of production and the traditional ones. He thought we entered the age of mechanical production, which brushed aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery. (p.218), and he linked this developmental trends to Fascism, propaganda, and war.
- The question for this essay seems to be: what does "creative destruction" mean in communist terms, capitalist terms, and fascist terms?
[edit] Section I
Benjamin begins his essay with a historical review of the many ways man has reproduced art. He describes the pupil making replicas to learn a craft and merchants selling reproductions for money. Mechanical reproduction is described as becoming easier and easier and faster and faster. First there was foundries and stamps, then woodcuts even before the printing production. Engravings and etchings led to lithography. But Benjamin is most interested in the changes brought on by photography and then film. He suggests that the rapid- real time reproduction with little effort on the part of the producer and the art of film itself has influenced the experience and creation of art in dramatic ways(p.220).
He comments that "around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also captured a place of its own among the artistic processes." (p.220) The repercussions of this standard manifested two new forms of art that destroyed, or at least jeopardized the continuation, traditional forms of art; technical reproductions of works of art and the art of film.
It is important to note also the quote by Valery, "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."(p. 219) This quote sets up the essay for the social implications in the form of demand, unconscious impulses, habit, and tactile appropriation that will resurface later in the text.
- Question: In The Public and its Problems, John Dewey describes the neccesary development of symbol systems that allow a community to connected through elevated communication. Do Film and photography introduce a whole new symbol system?
[edit] Section II
Benjamin throughout the essay describes effortless and widespread reproduction in contrasting language. He describes the “aura” of an original work as essential. Reproduction removes a work of art from its tradition and history and situation in a way that diminishes the authenticity. Yet he also describes how a reproduction in film allows one to look at something in a completely new way through techniques not available to the naked eye. Also in viewing these new works in varying circumstances and situations they “reactivate” the art. These two qualities challenge convention and open up new possibilities in art production and experience. He laments in the loss of unique and original art while marveling at the power of film to create new art.
He compares and contrasts the traditional work of art with the technical reproduction work of art. Authenticity and history no longer matter to the technical reproductions of art since there is no longer an original work of art to reference in space and time. Technical reproductions are not interested in preserving or emanating an aura or autonomy rather it "detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition." (p. 221) Above all, the reproduction meets the beholder half way in his own environment. No longer is the work of art for the elite or the few to contemplate in private rooms but for the masses to consume and carry anywhere.
"These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind." (p. 221) "Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage." (p.221)
[edit] Section III
Benjamin describes in detail the sensory perception of direct experience (p.222) and how the “decay of aura” has led to a change in perception of the masses. The desire for reproduced experience by the masses and bringing objects “closer” (even without most of their sensory input) through film and image has diminished human connections with reality. A witness to actual events has a different experience from the newsreel viewer.
Aura lived in the uniqueness, the singularity, the permanence, the distance, and the authenticity of the original piece in temples or museums, while the plurality, the closeness, the penetration, and the availability of the work of art in mechanical reproduction killed the aura.
- "Question: What are the social implications of technical reproduction (film) in so far as there is no longer a hierarchy of value in art? Does this mean that there is no longer a hierarchical value in humans? In what way? Does this mean that while there are traces of hierarchical values in humans that they are mere illusions? In what way? Are we now, in reality, reduced to statistics and stereotypes? Have we lost our aura, autonomy, and uniqueness as a result? If so how? If not how?"
- Question: Isn't social networking online an experience of establishing relationships without sensory input?
[edit] Section IV
Benjamin considers authentic experience of original art works as tied in the past to ritual and tradition. The beginning of the photograph (during the time of rising socialism) blurs the “original” quality of a work. There is no original from a negative. Every print is indistinguishable from the other. Since art is no longer about authenticity he proposes that the function of art is reversed. Art is based on politics instead of ritual. Art reproduction is no longer derived from an original but the art substance is the production itself. (p.224)
"for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual." (p. 224) "The total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics." (p. 224)
[edit] Section V
Benjamin contrasts two ways art works are appreciated- the ceremonial value of an object versus the exhibition value. Many art works were divine or magic in nature and were tied to their settings (a church, a cave). A portable piece of art, not tied to religious or cult meaning (a painting, a concert) can travel and still have meaning without its original setting. When the emphasis is on the presentation of the art rather than its purpose for the tradition, art comes to serve an increasingly new purpose altogether(p. 225).
It looks like the work of art is walking down the ladder, the work of art descends from the sky, the god’s power, to the museum, and then to every household. To Benjamin, the change of condition of reproduction led a new era while art became humane and down to earth, and became available easily. He said, “For the first time in history, mechanical reproduction releases the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual… Instead of being based on ritual, the work of art begin to based on another practice—politics.” (p.223)
[edit] Section VI
The subject of early photography was cult in nature. Portraits were made to allow owners to retain memories of personal loved ones. Later photography moved away from this ritual and into having an exhibition value through different subjects in photographs (historical and other public subjects). The viewer discerns their own meaning from the image, often influenced by the cameraman (shot angle) or the caption associated with the image. The meaning of an image in a film is influenced by the sequence of the images that came before (p. 226).
As the human figure recedes from the last attempts to preserve the cult of tradition through photographic means, "a hidden political significance" (p. 226) emerges from photographs. "Free-floating contemplation" (p. 226) is no longer appropriate for these new forms of, shhhh, political art. "They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way." (p. 226) One frame prescribes or presupposes the meaning of the next slide and before the mind has time to reflect the next slide is presented. There is the sense of simultaneous distraction and attention.
[edit] Section VII
There has been much wasted time considering whether reproductions serve as art. Instead Benjamin questions whether the development of photography and film has transformed art making. He quotes Abel Gance who describes film as a pictorial language like Hieroglyphics (p.227).
It is suggested that film represents an incomparable form of expression above both photography and painting. It is both "poetical and more real a the same time!"
He points out that theoreticians have attempted to classify film among the "arts" and thus give film contextual significance in the form of ritual or cult like elements.
It seems the documentary of the exterior world in film had "obstructed the elevation of film to the realm of art". (p. 228) This was an attempt to place film in the same category as the traditional work of art that has cult value.
[edit] Section VIII
Comparing the stage and the film actor, Benjamin considers the experience of the audience and the performer. The stage actor can respond to the audience mood, while the film actor is presented to the audience by the camera. The film is focused, shot, and then edited by someone other than the actor. The audience can judge the performance of the actor at a private distance from the performer. But really they are looking at the performance of the cameraman and editor (p.228).
Since the audience of the film takes on the role of a critic or of someone testing and judging the images before him suggests that film does not approach cult values similar to that of painting. It is this role of the viewer or audience that removes film from ritual art mediums.
[edit] Section IX
Benjamin describes the aura of the actor and how it cannot be captured by the camera. The single performance in the studio is a substitute for the public in the theater. He describes how films are shot out of sequence, pieced together, and manipulated by the cameraman and editor. The actor no longer carries the performance. The actor is almost a “prop” manipulated by the director (p.230).
- Question: What are the social implication of this new profession, film actor, if he/she is used like a prop and forgoes his/her aura?" Similar words such as statistics, lack of presence, replaced, or homogeneous come to mind.
[edit] Section X
In the same way everyone has become an author; everyone can be an actor. Writing was once considered a specialty based on training, but beginning with “letters to the editor” in the newspaper, the reader is turning into the writer. Writing is part of being in a community. Actors once developed their craft for public presentation, a specialized skill with a particular audience. Film stars began as a specialized group, marketed by studios. But anyone can be filmed just playing themselves, they do not need to act to be an interesting subject.
Now the actor, human being, senses oppression from this aura-less, fragmented, commodity, and isolated profession. The actor is a commodity like an object to be bought and sold, viewed and criticized, at market.
"The 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 phony spell of commodity." (p. 231)
Western Europe's promotes illusionary spectacles is an attempt to deny its very claim to being reproduced. "Question:What does this mean? What are the implications or consequences of this claim?" Are we at once holding onto the past, to traditions, while at the same time living quite a different existence one that has no regard for tradition? Are we living a double and dubious life? (It is worth reading Note 12.)
- Question: Youtube and blogging now allow everyone to perform and write for their own audience. It is even easier to be a subject but do we now have more performers than audience members?
[edit] Section XI
Benjamin compares the painter and the cameraman to a magician and a surgeon. The painter distances himself from the subject and uses natural processes to present a “reality” to the audience- like a magician. The cameraman uses mechanical processes to manipulate a dissected subject and put it back together to form a new reality without any sign of all of its dismemberment. Benjamin thinks this is the truer art (p.234).
Film, through its mechanical equipment has penetrated reality, offers "an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment."(p. 234) This seems to suggest that while we the machine workers demand, or entitled to ask, to see or experience something unique, "an orchid in the land of technology"(p. 233), from a work of art (film).
[edit] Section XII
The mass viewing of film actually determines its critical response. People are influenced by the group reaction which determines further group reaction. Only an individual or small group of individuals are able to view a painting at once. Very often the reception is one of negative reaction, since individuals influence further exhibition results. Films are seem simultaneously by many, many individuals. Responses tend to be more progressive even if the work is even more radical (p.235).
[edit] Section XIII
The use of film has expanded our optical perception as much as psychoanalysis expanded our consciousness. What was once merely an impulse is now studied and examined in an isolated way. Through the use of camera techniques like close-ups and slow motion, we can examine minute moments in entirely new ways. The rapid speed at which we move through our daily lives doesn’t allow us to break free of the “prison”. Film lets us look more carefully and appreciate the details in ways not previously possible.
"The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses." (p. 237)
- Question: Is a further development in film the use of brain imaging to see how those impulses look in space and time with cameras that can see brain activity?
[edit] Section XIV
Benjamin contrasts the early attention and contemplation of the audience to literary and pictorial art with the assault and degradation of art experience for the audience now. He describes the viewer as shown one image after another with no time to consider his own meaning. This technical structure is montage, or rapid inter-cutting of images.
"One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later." (p. 237)
The Dadaist "hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus (distraction or attention?) which periodically assail the spectator."(p. 238)
- Question: Benjamin’s own archives show how he intercuts ideas and thoughts into a sequence. He diagrams his outline with multiple connections. He collects fragments of papers with his jotted ideas and assembles them into a thematic essay. How is it he describes the finished film as a distraction when it mimics his own process?
[edit] Section XV
The lack of contemplation in new media does not allow the viewer to be absorbed by the work. Audiences are “absent minded”. The only way to grasp their attention is with shock value.
Benjamin draws parallels between the experience before a film and the experience before "Architecture" as a "prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction." They are designed with special consideration to social and economic aspects of the community through touch and sight. "Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit." (p. 240)
Since film does not require attention like painting requires contemplation the public becomes absent minded to meet the "tasks which face the the human apparatus of perception at turning points in history." These tasks are "mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of the tactile appropriation." (p. 240) Or....
"One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later." (p.237)"For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplations alone. They are mastered gradually--by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation." (p. 240) Lets talk about this! "Question: What does this mean exactly?"
- Question: How does film on the one hand render the audience "absent minded" and on the other "shocks" them to grasp their attention?
[edit] Epilogue
In the time of Homer man was the object of contemplation for the Gods. Now man contemplates himself (distractedly) unless he is absorbed with contemplating his own self-destruction. War makes the best subject for an aesthetic and sensory experience.
Benjamin concludes again with juxtaposing Communist intentions to Fascist intentions with regards to technical reproductions. Fascism, he warns, sees the power of the politics of art in so far as it is a medium that communicates to the masses and a medium through which fascism attempts to "render politics aesthetic". War becomes poetry under this guise, for example, films of propaganda. "War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns."(p. 241)"Fascism under the illusion of promoting freedom to the public gives them the opportunity to express themselves while withholding their rights. Communism responds by politicizing art." (p. 242)
[edit] Introduction by Hannah Arendt:
Arendt constructs a mosaic of identities attributed to Walter Benjamin shaped in part by events and circumstances in his life and in part by his own personal interests and goals. He could be at once classified as having several distinct and commonly known identities such as literary critic and collector and at the same time have an unclassifiable identity in so far as when the pieces of these mosaic tiles are assembled together they create a unique object; the sum of his endeavors made him sui generis.
In searching for an identity for Walter Benjamin is he is referenced among the following: The Hunchback, in terms of his passion for the deformations of text, the Angelus Novus, The Flaneur (Flaneur Thinker -The Undialectical Thinker), Sea Diver of Pearls (Collector of literary gems in the form of fragments that most would see as debris), and the Literary Critic (a profession not yet formed and ill-defined).
- Question: Considering the inherent problems of reading a translation, are we interpreting Benjamin's ideas accurately? A different translation of the same essay titles the essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility.
