Book report

Author: Walter Benjamin

Title: The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other
Writing on Media.
Publication Information:
Genre: philosophy
The book has six chapters. The first chapter is about the production, reproduction and
reception of art. The others five chapters contemplated the following forms of art:
Script, Image; Painting and Graphics; Photography; Film and Publishing Industry and
Radio. In the last section of the book, we can find some illustrations, mostly paintings
and photography. This report concerns the first chapter.
In the introduction, the editors refer the two major questions in Benjamin’s work:
first, is how artwork encodes information about its historical period, and second is the
way modern media affects the human sensory apparatus.
In order to understand Benjamin’s work, we need to consider two other writers that
are in dialogue with his work. They are Alois Riegl and Laszlo Mohody-Nagy.
In his work, Riegl try to show how art influenced the structure and attitudes of
collectives, such as societies or ethnic groups. This scholar best well know work was
Late Roman Art Industry. He believes that the work of art change according to race,
place and time and that the specifics presents in the work of art are particular to a
historical time.
Benjamin understanding of art is close to Riegl’s. We can see that when he talks about
the aura of the work of art. For Benjamin the aura is the uniqueness of art and its close
connected to the time or period. For Benjamin when a work of art is reproduce it loses
his aura. However, he introduced a political aspect in the reproduction. In a way,
Riegl influenced him when he wrote “Political Tendency”.
Mohody-Nagy published an essay called “Production – Reproduction” in 1922. In this
work, he contributed to a better understanding of these two terms and the differences
between them. For him the automatism of the camera changes human’s visual
apparatus and can reveal new elements of the perceptual world. Benjamin call these
elements “image-worlds”

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Book written in Paris during the 1930 while Walter Benjamin was in exile. In this
book, he put forward the “status” of traditional art while the forms of reproductions
became more popular. In his understanding, art has an important role in the political
struggle. Nonetheless, art can be manipulated in favor of politics.
His main interest is to understand how art reveal to us a relationship between the
historical era and our historical position.
The reproduction of art is not something new. What it is recent in this context is the
technological reproduction, which allows the mass reproduction of almost any kind of
art. However, in a reproduction lacks the here and now of the work of art, there is to
say the existence of a work of art in a particular time and place. This characteristic
gives authenticity to the work of art and it cannot be found in a copy.
Another distinctive trace of the work of art is his physical duration as an historical
testimony. Therefore, Benjamin introduce the concept of aura and for him in the
reproduction, the work of art lose his aura, in other words his connection to a
particular time and space.
Benjamin guides the readers in a temporal sequence, showing haw art in the early age
relates to rituals and then to religion. In this sense, the work of art was unique,
because it was built to serve a purpose and in this resides the uniqueness of the work
of art. Nevertheless, in the age of the technological reproduction, politics replace the
ritual hoots of the work of art.
In this sense, art has a new meaning, the artwork has its value in beauty, there is to
say l’art pour l’art.
In this chapter, photography has an important place in the age of reproduction. For
Benjamin when an image is capture by the camera the uniqueness is lost and therefor
the meaning of the image as well. Not just the meaning, but also the artwork is
fragmented, which lead us to many significance. At the same time, photography is
very significant, because it is how we can preserve the aura of the lost one.
The reproduction of the work of art also changes the impact of the art. However, it is
not possible for one to have the complete experience of an artwork through a
reproduction.
In my understanding, the reproduction of the art makes it available to all people
around the world, and that change the way we see art in different part of the planet. It
allowed artist and writers to know what is being done in other places. This aspect can
be good or bad. Good, for the reason that artist can learn from each other and they can
became innovative in their own way and because if one cannot experience for
example the sight of a monument in other countries one can admire the work even if
one cannot have the whole experience of being in a presence of an authentic art.
Bad, because artist may copy others and we can lose our singularity. In this sense, I
agree with Riegl, art changes according to the place, race and time. Consequently, if
all art became the same, we can lose our identity. In the other hand, the world is more

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and more a globalized and the Media and mass reproduction of art is, in my opinion,
changing human’s behavior, especially in the poor countries where people do not
have access to art. In places like this, it is easy to get access to popular cultural, which
can contribute to increase alienation.