Walter Benjamin

In response to Walter Benjamin's essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” I felt like I had to wade through a lot of philosophical ramblings to discover his point or as Susan Sonntag pointed out; he had a "freeze-frame baroque" style of writing and cogitation which was difficult. "His major essays seem to end just in time, before they self-destruct". Although the essay was a bit hard for me to decipher at times, Benjamin, being the philosopher that he was, made some interesting observations in regards to art works having a soul (or “aura” as he called it) of their own. His reasoning that “the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual”, Part IV) tells us a lot about how far we've come in today's digital realm. Not as far as we might think! As I am writing this and staring at a computer screen (ritual?), I am not feeling any sense of aura as I see this blog post materialize before my eyes, not to say that it's a piece of fine art. But if I add my own text, design and pictures to my blog post does it then develop a sense of aura, uniqueness and originality for the author, or has it moved toward a piece being produced or designed for the soul purpose of reproducibility and therefore lost its aura? We have new rituals now…think texting and imaginary farms or PS/2 (or whatever version). That old tired argument is as fresh now as it was when Benjamin wrote this essay; what makes this piece original, what is unique about that one, why did the artist do it that way? Terry Barrett reminds us in his book “Why Is That Art”, defining art is a major enterprise in aesthetics, historically and recently. I believe that our sensibilities have changed but deep down our idea of aesthetics hasn’t. That’s to say that we constantly have to define what art “is” before we can determine if the impact of mechanical reproduction or technology even matters. Take the Shredder for example; there is to some degree an aesthetic to the work and we can’t deny its originality. This is a piece that embodies technology yet is still a work of “art” BECAUSE of mechanical reproduction not in spite of it. All this talk of originality and authenticity got me to thinking about the commercials I see on television where they provide you with a “certificate of authenticity” on something they're trying to sell you - whether it's a copy or not. In Walter Benjamin's time we can be sure that there weren't as many copies as there are today but the original will always be the original (no matter then or now) and will always have its own innate value no matter how many copies of it are made. How does that translate in today's culture of limitless copies of just about anything? Does the original even matter anymore? Like he said its pointless to ask for the authentic print of a photo negative. On page 9 the author writes, “With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers—at first, occasional ones”. In the previous sentence you can easily replace the word readers with subjects and the word writers with photographers to represent today's visual culture. With everyone and their brother and sister being picture takers these days where does art fit in the conversation? In Donald Kuspit’s book “The End of Art”, Kuspit writes that “works of art no longer have any important human use: they will no longer further personal autonomy and critical freedom. A commodity identity has overtaken aesthetic identity and they have become everyday artifacts. Almost a century apart these two authors basically agree, Benjamin talking about film and a mobilizing of the masses by distraction and therefore forming a habit; think texting again. Regardless of whether a piece of art is unique, original, authentic or seems to have some type of “aura”, technology continues to move us in directions we can't even fathom and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Benjamin mentioned that our sensibilities change with the times and it's just human nature to look backward. The sudden interest in outdated photography processes leads me to believe that the discussion will keep coming around every time a new technology takes hold.