Response Paper to Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the

A detailed Summary of Response Paper to Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the

Response Paper to Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin discusses the question how and to what extent art and artist and their role in society changed by the means of mechanical reproduction, particularly by the introduction of film and photography. He introduces the term "aura ", which he defines as a traditional feature of pieces of art as part of the cultural heritage and which he bases, in my opinion, on what he calls the cult value of art, opposed to the exhibition value. He claims that by replacing a unique existence by a plurality of copies the means of mechanical production destroyed a work's uniqueness and thus its aura, which was the obverse of the crisis of his days and the renewal of mankind. He derives the cult value of art from ancient times when art was only a part of rituals first referred to as magic and then to as religious ones. In this respect art was mainly meant to be for the spirits or for God and did its service simply by existing, no matter if it was shown to other men or not. But now the Age of Mechanical Reproduction emancipates the work of art from its dependence on ritual and puts its emphasis on the exhibition value with the significance of art depend

ing on the people's realization of it and provoking as much their response to it as demanding to be discussed, which goes together with a collective reception of a work of art by an increasing number of people at the same time. The same way as a formerly magic instrument was later recognized as a work of art, the artistic function of today's art with the emphasis on its value by being on view may later, as he suggests, be recognized as incidental , i.e. in favor of a social or political function. With the use of new media in the field of art he sees its work in a totally new context which introduces and even requires some more determining components such as captions giving photographs a certain meaning which could be turned into something totally different by a different title the same way as each single picture in a movie seems to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones. That is why he sees, for instance, a painting as a whole picture in which the spectator can abandon himself to his associations and be absorbed by the canvas for hours whereas the movie scenes change before his eye was able to graspe one, so restricting the spectator to a smaller variety of interpretations as he lacks the time to be invited to contemplation. Furthermore he thinks of the movie act

Some common words found in the essay are:
Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction, means mechanical, means mechanical reproduction, age mechanical reproduction, Age Mechanical, cult value art, especially film, cult value, value art, field art, exhibition value, age mechanical,

Approximate Word count = 864
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science

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