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Immediate context

This lecture delves into Walter Benjamin's analysis of art in the age of technical reproducibility, focusing on the dichotomy between high and popular culture in modernity. Benjamin explores how the advent of reproducible media changes the experience of art, diminishing aura and challenging traditional notions of artistry. The text delves into Benjamin's views on film's revolutionary and regressive potentials, the impact of reproducibility on sense experience, and the broader societal implications of these shifts. Additionally, it addresses Benjamin's debates with Adorno, emphasizing their common Marxist heritage, critical stance on commodification, and diverging views on technology and art.

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Immediate context

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  1. Walter Benjamin:The Work of Art in the Age of is Technical ReproducibilityLecture, Popular Culture & Medieforskningens klassikere

  2. Immediate context Written in 1936; impending World War II Published in the anthology "Illuminations", mostly on literature Could be considered part of Benjamin's work as an historian of ideas (the experience of urbanity)and as an art critic/historian

  3. The Great Divide • Modernity produces a mass-produced/ distributed/consumed popular culture on the offensive • A high culture rises out of the educated middle classes and bohemia • High culture born through strategies of exclusion, but torn in its relation to popular culture

  4. Modernism I High culture's criticism of conventions of reality Expression of alienation Magritte: "This is not a pipe"

  5. Modernism II Modernism as the construction of an alternative reality Modernism as retreat Mondrian: "Composition"

  6. The avant-garde T • The destruction of • "art" • Reintegration into • (everyday) life • Duchamp: "Fountain"

  7. Benjamin on aura "... the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be” (p. 56-57). Example: the contour of a mountain range or branch; something that vanishes upon closer inspection A way of characterising the characteristic experience (the here-and-now) of art

  8. Aura's historical development Aura is historically accumulated, e.g. Mona Lisa In traditional society: ritual & cult use value In modern society: profane cult of beauty, art for art's sake

  9. How reproducibility changes the experience of art • Art history is a development toward more and more extended reproducibility, ending in original-less media such as photography and film • As reproducibility becomes mechanised it removes art from craft and craft-based tradition • New reproducible media promote immediacy and closeness in relation to the representation

  10. Sense experience as historically determined • Modern technologies of reproduction promote immediate and uniform sense experiences; history and distance recede • This means the freeing up of culture from an art context and its inclusion in everyday life and the political realm • The change in sense experience of culture is symptomatic of a broader tendency in society: reproduction means a break with tradition

  11. The revolutionary potential of film • Film perceives new worlds, penetrates and inquires • While art demands that the viewer come to its place, photo and (in a sense) film comes to where people are • Film furthers a (potentially) progressive mix of enjoyment and inquisition with the audience • Film breaks down the barriers between the professional and the participant

  12. The regressive potential of film/photo • Films/photos reconstruct aura as “stardom” and “personality” • Film/photo emphasise the dreaminess and unreality of film and photo to re-build quasi-religious cult value for a new time • Attempts at reintroducing personality aura tie in with a more general aestheticisation of politics, which culminates in war

  13. The Adorno/Benjamin debates • Central versus peripheral in the Frankfurt School • Common heritage in Marxism • Agreement on a critical stance toward commodification, and on the key role of cultural industries • Strong mutual influence on the conceptual level: “fragment”, “aura” • Disagreement on the role of technology • Disagreement on the role of art

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