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GARETH GRIFFITHS, ARCHITECTURE THEORY [elliot@kolumbus
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2011

Notes on: Walter Benjamin, “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit),
originally published in 1935
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“The
work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” was written during that period and is clearly
related to it in terms of the historical study placed within the context of the ongoing changes in
art and the city brought about by technology
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Giedion saw the task of the historian in what is nowadays called
“operative terms”, i
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“to lay bare those elements within the enormous complex of a past age
that become the point of departure for the future”
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TRANSLATION OF THE TITLE AND PREFACE: Looking at the original German title of the
essay, the term “Reproduzierbarkeit” would better translate as “reproduceability” – hence “The
artwork in the age of its technological reproducibility”
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There are three known published versions of the essay: the original lengthy German version
(1935), a second French edition (1936) modified (and translated) by Benjamin, and a final version (1939) (which later became the “official” version, from which the English translation was
taken)
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The third version begins with a quote from Paul Valéry
(1931) about the profound changes that are impending in the arts, as affected by modernism its
knowledge and power
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e
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What does that mean? In the very first sentence of the essay Benjamin gets straight into
politics: “When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode
was in its infancy”
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Also the Preface ends with a heavy political statement:
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“The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the
more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of fascism
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Benjamin’s idea seems to be that in raising any question, one
should start with ‘what one is able to’ rather than ‘what one wants’
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His “present” as he saw it in circa 1935-36 was looking calamitous – the Nazis, under Hitler, had already come into power in Germany in 1933 and would
intervene in the Spanish Civil War; the Fascists, under Mussolini, had been in power since 1922
and were claiming a colony for itself in Ethiopia; and while many intellectuals worldwide had
originally been positive towards the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union was in a period of
transition following the death of Lenin in 1924 and the purges and “reign of terror” under Stalin
were just about to begin (1936)
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He certainly speaks negatively about how capitalism exploits people and how it destroys
the aura of traditional art
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But how does mechanical reproduction fit into this? It could be summed
up by: “No revolution without reproducibility!” That is to say, reproducibility lies at the heart of
change
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For the last 2 years neither matter nor space nor
time has been what it was from time immemorial
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” In other words, judging by the
choice of quote, Benjamin would seem to give a positive view of the merits of technology, and
even be rather negative towards the old-fashionedness of “traditional” arts and their “out-of-date”
concepts such as “eternal worth”, “creativity” and “genius”
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In Marx’s theories of capital and society, the main determining structures were the
substructure (or infrastructure or base) and the superstructure
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In Marx’s view, the superstructure was determined
by the substructure: hence the Marxist viewpoint that culture, the arts and so on have a fundamental economic aspect to them
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It was felt that the substructure changes more
quickly than the superstructure; i
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government may change, but people’s ways of life remain
more constant
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Changes to culture were becoming more rapid
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That is to say, rather than looking at art in terms of ideology (i
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that which does not express

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what is going on in society – but simply one’s ideal hopes), one should look to see how it influences on-going society
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g
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) So what concept is “unusable for the purposes of Fascism”?
Universalizing the “CAN” (what one is able to do) – that is, something against reactionary thinking
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FUTURISM: In the Epilogue to the essay Benjamin famously states that Fascism is “the introduction of aesthetics into political life”, referred to since as the “aestheticization of politics”
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Benjamin’s “evidence” for
such a viewpoint comes from Italy, with Marinetti and the Futurists, epitomised in the Futurist
manifestos, which include statements such as: “War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning
villages… Poets and artists of Futurism! Remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so
that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art… may be illuminated by them
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Marinetti’s Futurist Political Party was absorbed into the Fascist party
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Moreover, the Futurists were inspired by both avant-gardist art, such as
Cubism, and intellectuals such as the philosopher Henri Bergson who were aiming to bring
metaphysics and knowledge from the sciences together: e
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the idea that everything in the world
is in continuous motion, and that the arts should accordingly acknowledge it
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Things changed without anything
really fundamental – as enabled by technology – changing
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ARCHITECTURE: However, Benjamin and Fascism had one thing in common; an interest in
glass architecture
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Glass is generally the enemy of secrets
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” For Benjamin, like
architects such as Mies van der Rohe, glass architecture dissolves the distinction between interior
and exterior, replacing it with a single, continuous concept of transparency
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In a sense, the “affirmation of modernism” is stated in disturbing terms
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” A new positive barbarism, he felt, was needed to match the barbaric powers of fascism
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But what Benjamin saw in the avant-garde architecture was not a
model for rationalization and efficiency but the constructive anticipation of a form of social
practice that breaks with bourgeois society
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Italian
Fascist architect Giuseppe Terragni described his Casa del Fascio in Como, Italy, as a metaphor
for fascism, and which he attributed to Mussolini: “’Fascism is a glass house’, the Duce declares;
and the sense of the phrase translated [into architectural form] guides and indicates the qualities
of organic clarity and honesty in the construction
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Without corridors, this was meant to be an “anti-bureaucratic” building
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However, there were two almost contradictory aspects to German Nazism: the spectacle of
the masses and the anti-modernist Volkstum/Volkscharakter of locality
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” Film director Hans Jürgen Syberberg (maker of
“Hitler, a film from Germany”, 1977) even argued that it was not the actual physical presence of
Hitler which historically mobilized the masses, but Hitler as a representation and Nazism as
spectacle
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A summary of the 15 chapters and Epilogue:
I
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Indeed, even the work of masters would be copied by
apprentices, etc
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Benjamin mentions briefly that the Greeks knew of only 2 procedures for reproducing art, funding and stamping
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Hence also
arises the concepts of “uniqueness” and “genius”
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But while lithography gave a medium for mass production of
painterly artworks, the meaning of perception itself was changed with photography and mass
printing
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e
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Accordingly, the artistic tradition was transformed, and so, too, perception
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AUTHENTICITY: The uniqueness of a “physical” artwork has to do with its location in space
and time: “The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity”
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Hence authenticity – a dubious modern concept, he states, because it
depends on the relation to a copy (i
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the word “authentic only has meaning if one understands
that there can also exist something inauthentic) – becomes re-defined as “the essence of all that is
transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the
history which it has experienced (an example could be a Gothic cathedral which has been renovated so many times that a significant part of its fabric is no longer “original”)
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g
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And of course, mechanical reproduction
brought about a colossal expansion in knowledge – be it through reproductions of paintings or
sound recordings of music, etc
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This has to do with the contemporary mass movements – the most powerful agent of which is film
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Legend gets
reborn in film: “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films”
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III
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Benjamin refers to
Alois Riegl and the ‘Viennese school of art history’ and their idea about the change in art and
perception in the later Roman period [However, Riegl’s interests are different: e
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the so-called
Kunstwolen (“the will to art”): i
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art is not the imitation of reality, but the expression of a desired reality, its historical contingency, and its relation to other elements of its “worldview”
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In regard to the destruction of the “aura”,
Benjamin argues that the masses desire to bring things closer spatially and humanly, and moreover, overcome the uniqueness of reality by accepting its reproduction, hence overcoming the
“uniqueness of every reality”
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g
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Space is disrupted by technical reproduction and time
is disrupted in the dissolution of uniqueness-as-permanence
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IV
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” However, “tradition” itself changes (cf
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The contextual integration of art in
tradition found its expression in the “cult”
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Its “authenticity” lies in ritual
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g
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But what of “secular”, modern ritual?
With the displacement of ritual and its “use value”, “authenticity” as uniqueness, the “genius” of
the artist, and monetary value become more important
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But
with the “threat” of technology – simultaneous with the rise of socialism – art retreated into
“autonomy” – “Art for art’s sake” (L’art pour l’art) affirmed that art was valuable as art, that
artistic pursuits were their own justification and that art did not need moral justification, and
indeed, was allowed to be morally subversive
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Indeed, despite its call to “autonomy” from previous powers over art
(e
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church and state), giving an “artistic freedom”, it still relied on the “establishment” of
artistic genius, and authenticity of works
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But he emphasises that as soon as the question of “authenticity” ceases to be applicable, the function of art changes; ritual is replaced by politics! But also consumerism
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CULT VALUE AND EXHIBITION VALUE: Artworks had first cult value and then exhibition
value
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g
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Cult value often relies on place – though even religious
relics can be transported around as part of a ceremony
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g
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With mechanical
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reproduction does the “artistic” element and its “aura” retreat? The exhibition value and mass
distribution of films becomes primary – film is the most serviceable exemplification of the
function of exhibition
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This raises the question,
poised by archaeologist Margaret Conkey that art could be interpreted as an “attempted resolution of the stress arising from new complexity on the eve of domesticated society
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This can also be
related to the thinking of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who argued that “The symbolic world is
the world of the machine” – a viewpoint not in agreement with normal definitions of art! But if
art originally served to adapt humans to nature and nature to humans by means of technology
allied to ritual, now the technology is allied to politics (and capital!)
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PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM: For film, exhibition value supersedes cult value
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But photography also took on an exhibition value – e
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Eugene Atget’s photographs of
the empty streets of Paris
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VII
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g
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The concept of art being defended was the product of an obsolete
stage of technical development
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Mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, its autonomy disappearing
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VIII
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The movement is created mainly by
the film camera
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It is difficult to attach cult values to film
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IX
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The film actor is said to be empty, deprived of reality
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For aura is tied to presence; there can be no replica
of it
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Directors may even really scare an actor in order
to achieve “realism”
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X
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The
aura is replaced by the construction of personality, the creation of “movie star” status, a phoney
commodity
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It’s
only revolutionary role is to change the nature of traditional art
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And filming lends the opportunity of people being caught
on film
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g
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That is, it took centuries in literature for transitions to happen

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between audience and authors
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Benjamin felt the
capitalistic exploitation of film denies people’s right to express themselves, e
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politically
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g
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XI
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The traditional artist is like a magician (with a natural distance) who heals by
the laying on of hands and stands face to face with the patient, while the film maker is like a
surgeon who penetrates the body to cure it and without facing the patient
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By contrast, for the filmmaker the “laws of composition” are unknown, and he presents a reality
of reassembled fragments giving a totality that appears free of all equipment
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He concludes that the opening of such a space within the age
of technology is what “one is entitled to ask from a work of art”
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THE AUDIENCE: The mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses
toward art
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Why? Benjamin sees the “progressive reaction” being due to the direct, intimate
fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert
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The conventional is
uncritically enjoyed, while what is recognised as new and odd (e
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Surrealism) is criticised
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Indeed, the large-scale contemplation of artworks in galleries during the 19th century signalled a crisis
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One
could add that it was only with mechanical reproduction that the modernist artworks that originally had been despised grew on people and became popular; or when artworks started to mimic
the process of mechanical reproduction (e
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Andy Warhol)
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Painting, by contrast, is an obsolete art, irrespective of how radical its form and
content
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MICKEY MOUSE: Benjamin argues that film has enriched our field of perception and
experience – and that psychology and psychoanalysis can explain how that is so, by means of the
“unconscious optics”, analogous to “unconscious impulses”
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g
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And likewise,
film lends itself better than paintings or stage to the analysis of behaviour because it can be better
isolated
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Photography allows access to
record locations previously difficult to access (“out taverns, and metropolitan streets, our offices
and furnished rooms, our railway stations and factories…”)
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g
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[One could argue that there was an intermediate stage between
painting and the cinema, the “panorama”, invented in the late 18th century by painter Robert
Barker
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] Benjamin notes, nevertheless, that painters in the Renaissance
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had to turn to science and mathematics in order to “develop” their art
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Moreover, the “deformations” shown in film can equally be found in psychoses
and dreams
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In the
first version of the essay Benjamin feels that this is epitomised by the films of Walt Disney!
Ironically, film provides a cathartic release from the tensions generated by technology – or
equally has an auratic use as spectacle
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DADAISM: Benjamin claims that any art always establishes demands, aspiring to effects
that are only satisfied later with increased technology and a new art form (however, the history of
“imaginary truth” is perhaps more vital to the genealogy of culture than that of what actually
was)
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That is, it was an anti-art art
movement, celebrating uselessness, an anti-aestheticism, based ultimately on gestures, and
outraging the public – tasting the limits of the definition of art
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It promoted a demand for film – the
distracting element of which is itself tactile, as it is based on changes of location and focus,
which assail the viewer
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This is the “shock effect” of film (cf
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In Benjamin’s footnote: “The film is the art form that is in keeping with
the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face
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”

XV
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g
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The
masses only seek distraction, while true art requires concentration? Benjamin then offers the
example of architecture as an art form consummated by a collectivity in a “state of distraction”
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Other art forms have come
and gone but architecture persists – due to the human need for shelter
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Yet one should disregard architecture from
the viewpoint of the tourist! Tactile appropriation is accomplished by habit
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And the distracted person can also form habits
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The
public is an examiner but an absent-minded one (might one ask whether people only notice
architecture when it displeases them?)
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Technique is integral to architecture and is, in Howard Cargill’s
words, “close to the structure of technological experience”
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EPILOGUE: THE AESTHETICS OF WAR: Benjamin would seem to have outlined a positive
argument for the virtues of film as a new and even revolutionary art form
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This was understandable when one considers the time he was writing
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The result, he argues, is the aestheticization of
politics in a new cult value
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His final words,
“Communism responds by politicizing art” – as would be seen in Stalinist realism, where a
previous “classical art” would be used to promote both the state and the hero-worker
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the work as a site for experimentation and the invention of
new modes of experience; 2
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the work as a form of cathartic inoculation against the psychotic development
of the energies generated by technology
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He lived at a time when a previous generation of intellectuals was attempting to theorise the city, to see it as an object of critical reflection; in particular Max Weber and Georg Simmel
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Simmel, in turn, is more preoccupied with reading the city as a rather
exclusive society of self-reflexive urbanites that constitutes a new historical community with
very much different moral values than traditional society
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In
Marxist terminology, the city is a place of alienation but also of opportunity
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Thus a point
of departure for Benjamin was the poet His viewpoint has been termed “active nihilism”, setting
out to describe not just “how things are” but the presuppositions for why people believe what
they do
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In his early writings, he would strongly identity experience with religion, but under the influence of avant-gardist art (e
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Dadaism and Surrealism) this
would later be replaced by the notion of “the everyday”
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g
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In his
unfinished “Arcades Project”, what he himself termed a “literary montage”, Benjamin included
themes such as “Conveniences and inconveniences”, prostitutes, flâneur, tickets, “ridiculous
souvenirs”, “the Sunday of the poorer classes” and the great and small labyrinths of Paris (i
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the
“arcade” was originally merely one theme in the project)
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He described the new urban typology of the arcade as “the original temple of commodity capitalism”
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“The intoxication to which the flâneur surrenders is the intoxication of the commodity
around which surges the stream of customers
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It is this reality
to which the flâneur, without knowing it devotes himself
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Rather he (and it is always a ‘he’ – it has even been
argued that the female flâneur would have to be a prostitute!) is something closer to a secular
pilgrim, a seeker after the profane truths of a temporal-spatial universe that has been trampled
into the dust by a humanity made dull and inattentive to the hidden wonders of the metropolis
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He is in the crowd but not part of it, where
every face is masked in anonymity
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–
then on the other hand the city can appear to someone walking through it to be without thresholds; a landscape in the round
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Yet
the nostalgic element in Benjamin’s account of the flâneur has to do with the recollection as the
“collection” of impressions of a fragmented and scattered experience and their reconstitution as a
meaningful narrative that seeks in its own imperfect way to assume the dimensions of a social
and psychological totality
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” Benjamin urges us
to confront history not as a site of homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of
the ‘now’
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Perhaps even contradictorily, for Benjamin, the mechanical “reproducibility” of art evinced the changes to human experience and perception
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Another philosopher, a contemporary of Benjamin, Martin
Heidegger (in another classic essay, “The question concerning technology”, [Die Frage nach der
Technik], 1955, portrayed the western world as determined by technological thinking, in the
negative sense of instrumental thinking, but that this was not simply a recent modern phenomena, but built into western metaphysics
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Walter Benjamin Memorial located in Portbou, Spain

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