THINGS TO THINK ABOUT | Artist

Walter benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): XI

The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): X

The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936):IX

For the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): VIII

The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor,...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): VII

The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): VI

In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance....

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): V

Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out: with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): IV

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): III

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): II

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): I

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artefacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils...

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936): Preface

'Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of...