Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - (Full Translation with Color Illustrations)

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features:
Frederic Jameson, contemporary American literary critic: From today's perspective, Walter Benjamin is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most erudite literary theorists and critics of the 20th century.
Hannah Arendt: I would like to describe him as a poetic thinker, but he was not a poet. Nor was he a philosopher.
Susan Sontag: Benjamin's writing seems inherently unable to follow conventional norms. His every sentence lacks tight connection with the context, and his style of thinking and writing is often referred to as aphoristic. He always tries to make every sentence convey all possible meanings. As the "last free intellectual in Europe," Walter Benjamin's delicate, sensitive, and fragile inner self was shaped by continuous wandering. In 1940, before his suicide at the age of 48, his footsteps had traversed the entire continent, making him one of the rare geniuses of the 20th century in the world.
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is Benjamin's most disruptive work. In it, he discusses the new artistic forms—mechanical reproduction art—that the technological revolution has incubated in the contemporary era. Starting from the theory of art production, he analyzes the differences between classical and modern art from the perspective of manufacturing technology. Mechanical reproduction technology creates the "sense of the same in all things," dissolving the distance and uniqueness of classical art. It leads to the disappearance of the "aura" of classical art, i.e., the loss of the realm of artistic beauty. In the age of mechanical reproduction, art no longer bases itself on ritual but is built upon politics. In this book, his surrealist and Jewish mystical style leaves a vast space for contemplation for the 20th century.