Facing the Age of the Vanishing Aura: Walter Benjamin on Art: Walter Benjamin on Art

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: This text is the work of Benjamin, W. titled Illuminations (1970). The entire piece discusses "art" and its products, how they undergo qualitative and quantitative changes within the historical context due to the invention of artistic production tools, and how this process permeates the cultural field, redefining power within it. Through the introduction of Benjamin, W.'s sharp insights, we can glimpse the origins and evolution of various arts in modern times, as well as their often hidden connection with technology.
What is the "aura"? The strange entanglement of time and space: the unique manifestation of distant objects, though far away, still appear as if they are at rest before us in the midday sun, following the curve of a distant mountain along the horizon or along a branch cast upon the viewer, until the "here and now" becomes part of the image—this is the aura of breathing the distant mountain, the branch.
In principle, artworks have always been reproducible. Whatever humans create, others can recreate. We know that since ancient times, apprentices have copied artworks to learn the craft, masters have reproduced works to spread them widely, and even those who have stolen and imitated them for material gain. However, the mechanical reproduction of artworks is a recent phenomenon, born from historical evolution, gradually developing over long intervals, with the pace of jumps accelerating ever faster.
The ancient Greeks knew only two methods of replication: casting and stamping. They could serially replicate only bronze, pottery, and coins. Other types of works could exist only as single pieces, without any form of replication technology. With the advent of woodcut technology, sketches werefinally successfully replicated, long before the mass reproduction of texts by printing.
As is well known, printing, the technology of copying texts, brought a significant transformation to literature. Despite how extraordinary its importance is, from the perspective of world history we are focusing on here,