Work · Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The loss of the aura – and the politicization of art.
Introduction
Benjamin wrote the essay in exile in Paris in 1935 and revised it several times. It first appeared in 1936 in a French translation by Pierre Klossowski in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, the journal of the exiled Institute for Social Research; the German versions were published only after his death. Benjamin argues that photography and film change the way art is perceived: reproduction detaches the work from tradition, and the cinema audience becomes an absent-minded examiner. The famous ending contrasts fascism’s aestheticisation of politics with communism’s politicisation of art. Adorno questioned the essay’s hopes for mass art in a letter to Benjamin; it became a key text of media theory.
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