The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Content Warning: This section references Fascist violence and antisemitism.

Benjamin’s essay is written as a series of 15 “theses” or short sections, along with a preface and an epilogue, that combine persuasion, sociohistorical arguments, imagery, and analogy. In these theses, he uses a dialectical historical material analysis to persuade the reader of his point. Dialectics is a mode of analysis closely associated with the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel. Dialectics involves the observation of a thesis, or primary event or development; an antithesis, which develops in reaction to the thesis; and a synthesis, which resolves the tension between the thesis and antithesis by combining elements of both. The material element of this analysis is seen in Benjamin’s focus on social, economic, and historical realities rather than abstract ideas. While the essay does not follow a formal structure, each of the theses has elements of dialectical historical material analysis that builds to an overall argument about the complex role of technological advances in artistic creation in contemporary politics.

In this dialectical analysis, the thesis of Benjamin’s essay is past modes of artistic production that are not reproducible and have an “aura.” The antithesis of these modes of production are highly reproducible modes of artistic production, namely photography and film, which do not have an “aura.” The synthesis of these two poles is found in the development of a mode of production where the cult of the aura, such as found in painting and sculpture, is replaced with a cult of “art for art’s sake,” as can be found in photography and film.

The intended audience for this essay is Benjamin’s colleagues at the Frankfurt School for Social Research and other literary critics. One of the earliest editions of this essay was published in its official revue, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which was edited by Max Horkheimer. This school, which was disbanded after the rise of the Nazi Party since many of its members were Jewish and forced to leave Germany, was focused on creating a social theory that would explain the turbulent historical and social contexts of modernity, particularly in Weimar and later Nazi Germany. In the essay, Benjamin is implicitly critiquing orthodox Marxism for its inability to explain the cultural production of the 1930s. He notes that Marx typically describes art as being part of the “superstructure” (218) and therefore not related to “conditions of production” (218). Instead, Benjamin argues in the Prologue that you can apply material dialectics to art and proceeds to use this method of argumentation in his essay.

The major theme, therefore, of this essay is Technology and Artistic Production. At the time Benjamin was writing, photography and film technology had made major advances. For instance, the introduction of the Kodak Brownie in 1900 for the price of only $1 (about $35 in 2022 USD) made photography widely available to the middle class. More notably, the film industry underwent a massive change between 1926 and 1930 in the shift from silent films to “talkies,” which used audio and enabled the telling of a story in real time rather than through segments of moving images interspersed with title cards. In this context, Benjamin’s cultural analysis focuses on both the expanding accessibility of art and the increasing invisibility of the labor needed to create art. In seeing both the democratic and consumerist potential of art that arises from changes in technology, Benjamin recognized the importance of looking at the use of art in the contemporary politics of the day. For example, he describes the passage from lithography to photography as “free[ing] the hand of the most important artistic functions” (219), in essence giving people an opportunity to create art without specifically trained skills. Yet, he also discusses in detail the technology of film production, such as how “lighting and its installation require presentation of an event that, on the screen, unfolds as a rapid and unified scene, in a sequence of separate shootings which may take hours at the studio” (230), which effectively blinded audiences to the labor involved in art, and instead, like mass consumer products, made the art appear as if of magic.  

Benjamin uses photography and film to illustrate how technological advances alter the public’s understanding of Depictions of Reality in Art. Because mechanical elements such as the camera, lighting, and editing process enable images to appear as they do in “reality” rather than as they do in the material of paint on canvas or clay in a sculpture, audiences come to have difficulty distinguishing the art of the screen from the real world as they experience and embody it. Further, because the technology that enables these realistic representations is hidden (audiences do not see the film camera when they watch the movie), viewers lose a sense of the artifice involved. Even the subjects of documentary films are mediated through the camera, directorial choices, and editing. The realistic-looking image on the screen comes to be reality. Benjamin contrasts this experience of photography and film with older modes of artistic production, such as painting and theater, in which the elements that indicate the artifice, such as brushstrokes and theatre curtains, remain visible in their presentation.

The aura of an artwork, as described by Benjamin, is everything that connects it to the historical moment it was created, the literal work that went in to making the piece of artwork, and the “distance” (222) between the viewer and the work. For example, Benjamin describes the “ancient statue of Venus” (223). This handmade artwork was worshipped by the Greeks and in the Middle Ages, it was seen as “an ominous idol” (223). But whether loved or feared, the statue had to be reckoned with as a unique, man-made thing. Only a few people had access to it, and so it was held at a distance from the public. In contrast, in modernity, anyone can have a copy or photograph of the statue, but it does not inspire either love or fear. In this sense, even though the work is closer to the viewer, it has lost its aura by being mechanically reproduced.

Despite his implicit critique of Marx for not applying material dialectics to art, Benjamin reiterates a Marxist position against “l’art pour l’art” throughout his essay. That is to say, while he critiques one element of orthodox Marxism, he upholds another. Benjamin argues that art that purports to be apolitical and simply for “entertainment” in itself can convey Fascist elements, perhaps unthinkingly, because it does not engage with the way its very mode of production is alienating. Benjamin concludes his essay with a discussion of how the new modes of production in art can lend themselves to Fascist politics. For example, as he notes in the final footnote of the essay, “Mass movements are usually discerned more clearly by a camera than by the naked eye…[and] mass movements, including war, constitute a form of human behavior which particularly favors mechanical equipment” (251). Under Fascism, politics are aesthetic, meaning that it is about the images that are created (such as that of war) rather than material concerns. In contrast, Benjamin ends with an exhortation to his readers, also Communists, to “politiciz[e] art” (242), meaning to explicitly use Art as a Political Form of engagement.