The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction

In the past few years the definition of art has evolved. With that said there a lot people would consider art to be a unique form of expression with a certain meaning attached to it. What the author in this reading is trying to explain is the fact that over the years art has been losing its “uniqueness”. Walter Benjamin explains that the reproduction of something that is “unique” can make that object loose its aura, its meaning. The details that you would see on the original version may be lost or omitted in the process of reproduction. As an example we have a painting that may be reproduced in order to be able to “share it”. Walter Benjamin writes: ”The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction”. He explains that details made during the making process of a certain object, certain details may be intentionally or unintentionally created and that those details could be altered and omitted just for the sake of reproducing it and therefore loosing what made this item special and unique in the first place. Another example that he talks about is film and how it differs from a painting. He uses a metaphor between a magician and a surgeon to explain the difference between painting and film. He says: “The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web”. He goes on further to say that the painter paints a whole picture that represents reality but from a certain point of view/distance, and on the opposite side we have the cameraman who uses multiple pictures that are assembled into a complex idea taking a very deep look into the reality it wants to capture. The way film work is another way to describe what the author is describing as the “aura”. We have actors that on the set who are playing some character in a scene, people don’t know how that scene felt like because that same scene is later edited and put into film. At the end of the reproduction process we find that when you compare it its original version, it has lost some details that perhaps made it feel different.