The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reprductin by Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin, brn in a burgeis Berlin Jewish family in 1892, was nt nly a brilliant literary critic and scilgist f culture, but als ne f the mst creative mdem Marxist thinkers. Benjamin wrte his first bks n the cncept f art criticism in German rmanticism, and n German barque drama. A sympathizer f the cmmunist mvement, he visited the Sviet Unin in 1 92 7 and 1 928 but never jined the German Cmmunist Party. Frced int exile by the Nazis in 1933, he lived precariusly in France with a stipend frm the Frankfurt Schl, which published in its Jurnal fr Scial Research sme f his mst imprtant essays (n Baudelaire and n the wrk f art in the age f mechanical reprductin).
Trying t escape the Nazi ccupatin f France by crssing the Pyrenees in September 1940, he was arrested by the Spanish (Franc) plice. Threatened with being turned ver t the Gestap, he preferred t cmmit suicide. His last writing, the Theses n the Cncept f Histry, is ne f the mst imprtant dcuments f revlutinary thery in ur times.
Knwn nly t a small circle f peple during his life, he became, after the 1960s, an increasingly influential thinker fr a new generatin f radical students and intellectuals in Eurpe and America. In 1936 the Marxist critic Walter Benjamin published his celebrated essay The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reprductin. It is the mst ften read f Benjamin’s texts and althugh it is cmmnly referred t as “The Wrk f Art in the Age f Mechanical Reprductin”, a better translatin f the title wuld be “The Wrk f Art in the Age f its Technlgical Reprducibility”. It remains ne f the mst incisive and thught-prvking analyses f the way appreciatin f the uniqueness f a wrk f art was transfrmed by the inventin f new prcesses f reprductin, in particular phtgraphy and film. Fr Benjamin, such inventins had plitical cnsequences: art was thereby liberated fr the enjyment f the masses and freed frm the pssessin f elites. Nearly seventy years n, ne central argument f Benjamin’s essay seems dated.
The Essay on The Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction
Works of art have always been reproducible, through imitation. Mechanical reproduction characterizes a new period in reproduction, with new limits and repercussions. Each new technology employed in the production or reproduction of art increased the speed with which they could be done so. Lithography allowed for multiple images from one original, keeping up with the happenings of everyday life, ...
He believed that what he called the ‘aura’ pssessed by a unique wrk f art wuld inevitably be diminished by the ease with which such wrks culd be reprduced and that media where there was n true ‘riginal’, such as phtgraphy, wuld displace thse where there was, such as painting. Walter Benjamin used the term “aura” t refer t the feeling f awe created by unique r remarkable bjects such as wrks f art r relics f the past. Accrding t Benjamin lder cultures can generate auras arund particular bjects f veneratin, while capitalist culture has the ppsite effect, causing the decay f the aura due t the prliferatin f mass prductin and reprductin technlgies. It is pssible t argue that entirely the reverse has happened, and that Benjamin failed t fresee that the very accessibility f mass-prduced images wuld prduce a craving fr the unique. Seventy years n, painting remains the mst highly valued f all art frms, and there is a near-universal recgnitin that althugh phtgraphy is indeed an art, it is a minr ne. Benjamin believed that the new mass media wuld liberate art frm its traditinal functin, the service f religin r hierarchical elites. Tw develpments in particular undermined that prgnsis. ne that Benjamin culd nt have freseen was the rise f art histry as a discipline that has bestwed immense prestige n unique wrks f art.
It is dd, hwever, that he says nthing abut the secnd develpment–the grwth f the art market. Here Benjamin was perhaps naive. He believed that ne phtgraph r lithgraph was exactly the same as anther, and was blivius t such aspects as prvenance, cnditin, date and the crucial questin f whether a print r phtgraph was prduced under an artist’s direct supervisin. Mrever, the steep rise in the price f wrks f art ver the past generatin is cnvincing evidence f hw uniqueness cntinues t be imprtant if nly because it has majr cmmercial implicatins. Benjamin cnsiders and rejects that the prpsitin that cultural histry can claim t have surmunted existing divisins f academic labr. N such interdisciplinary venture can, t use Engels’s term, “vercme” these divisins.
The Term Paper on The Tragedy Of War In Art
The Tragedy of war. Two armies organize and prepare for battle; soldiers, armed to the teeth and equipped with the most modern of equipment embark on a journey of death and destruction. Both sides intoxicated with nationalistic pride conjured up by propaganda with ideologies and doctrines etched in stone where men would sacrifice life and everything they cherish for mere words. Sound familiar? ...
If cultural histry is itself already s thrughly prblematic as t be in sme sense nnexistent (“I take it fr granted that there is n such thing . . .”) n new, imprved mdels will d. A dialectical-materialist mdel, t name but ne, wuld merely incrprate critical elements int the existing mld. Such cntainment is in Benjamin’s eyes ultimately plitical in nature, and he finds evidence f it everywhere he lks. New wine is everywhere being pured int ld bttles because new frces f prductin have nt engendered new relatins f prductin.
This surely remains a clear and present danger, hwever chimerical a prspect the revlutin may freseeably be. ne can easily imagine Benjamin’s critique f cultural histry being incrprated int a new cann f cultural histry which wuld thereby cnjure up yet anther deceptive mirage f the ld and the new. The grwing prletarianizatin f mdern man and the increasing frmatin f masses are tw aspects f the same prcess. Fascism attempts t rganize the newly created prletarian masses withut affecting the prperty structure which the masses strive t eliminate. Fascism sees its salvatin in giving these masses nt their right, but instead a chance t express themselves. The masses have a right t change prperty relatins; Fascism seeks t give them an expressin while preserving prperty.
The lgical result f Fascism is the intrductin f aesthetics int plitical life. The vilatin f the masses, whm Fascism, with its Fuhrer cult, frces t their knees, has its cunterpart in the vilatin f an apparatus which is pressed int the prductin f ritual values. All effrts t render plitics aesthetic culminate in ne thing: war. War and war nly can set a gal fr mass mvements n the largest scale while respecting the traditinal prperty system. This is the plitical frmula fr the situatin. The technlgical frmula may be stated as fllws: nly war makes it pssible t mbilize all f tdays technical resurces while maintaining the prperty system.
The Term Paper on Adolf Hitler and the Story of World War II
Hitler, leader of the German Nazi party and, from 1933 until his death, dictator of Germany. He rose from the bottom of society to conquer first Germany and then most of Europe. Riding on a wave of European fascism after World War I and favored by traditional defects in German society, especially its lack of cohesion, he built a Fascist regime unparalleled for barbarism and terror. His rule ...
It ges withut saying that the Fascist apthesis f war des nt emply such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifest n the Ethipian clnial war: Fr twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding f war as anti-aesthetic … Accrdingly we state:… War is beautiful because it establishes mans dminin ver the subjugated machinery by means f gas masks, terrifying megaphnes, flame thrwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-f metalizatin f the human bdy. War is beautiful because it enriches a flwering meadw with the fiery rchids f machine guns.
War is beautiful because it cmbines the gunfire, the cannnades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench f putrefactin int a symphny. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that f the big tanks, the gemetrical frmatin flights, the smke spirals frm burning villages, and many thers … Pets and artists f Futurism! … remember these principles f an aesthetics f war s that yur struggle fr a new literature and a new graphic art … may be illumined by them! This manifest has the virtue f clarity. Its frmulatins deserve t be accepted by dialecticians.
T the latter, the aesthetics f tdays war appears as fllws: If the natural utilizatin f prductive frces is impeded by the prperty system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the surces f energy will press fr an unnatural utilizatin, and this is fund in war. The destructiveness f war furnishes prf that sciety has nt been mature enugh t incrprate technlgy as its rgan, that technlgy has nt been sufficiently develped t cpe with the elemental frces f sciety. The hrrible features f imperialistic warfare are attributable t the discrepancy between the tremendus means f prductin and their inadequate utilizatin in the prcess f prductin in ther wrds, t unemplyment and the lack f markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellin f technlgy which cllects, in the frm f human material, the claims t which sciety has denied its natural materrial. Instead f draining rivers, sciety directs a human stream int a bed f trenches; instead f drpping seeds frm airplanes, it drps incendiary bmbs ver cities; and thrugh gas warfare the aura is ablished in a new way. Fiat ars pereat mundus, says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war t supply the artistic gratificatin f a sense perceptin that has been changed by technlgy.
The Essay on Events Of World War Ii
Events of World War II Wrld War II was fught acrss mre land and invlved mre men than any ther war in the histry f human civilizatin. Never befre r since has there been a war f such vast imprtance and f such a large scale. Frm 1939-1941, at the dawn f Adlf Hitlers war machine in Eurpe, the United States seemed abve the rest f the wrld. Separated by the vast Atlantic cean, the U.S. enjyed an ...
This is evidently the cnsummatin f lart pur lart. Mankind, which in Hmers time was an bject f cntemplatin fr the lympian gds, nw is ne fr itself. Its self-alienatin has reached such a degree that it can experience its wn destructin as an aesthetic pleasure f the first rder. This is the situatin f plitics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Cmmunism respnds by pliticizing art.
Bibliography:
Walter Benjamin: A Biography Transl. Malcolm R. Green and Ingrida Ligers Verso, London, 1996. pp.352, 100 illustr.
Walter Benjamin (1936): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction..
