Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin
Preface
When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its
infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back
to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed
what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not
only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which
would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.
The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the
substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in
the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain
prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the
proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less
earing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present
conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the
economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon.
They
ush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value
and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application
would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into
the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely
useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of
evolutionary demands in the politics of art.
I
In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be
imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing
their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a
work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in
leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of
technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, te
a cottas, and coins
were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could
not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically
eproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous
changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has
ought about in literature
are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the
perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case.
During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the beginning of
the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance. With lithography the technique of
eproduction reached an essentially new stage. This much more direct process was distinguished
y the tracing of the design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching
on a copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not
only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic
art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades
after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of
pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which
henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly
than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that
it could keep pace with speech. A film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the
images at the speed of an actor’s speech. Just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated
newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film. The technical reproduction of sound
was tackled at the end of the last century. These convergent endeavors made predictable a
situation which Paul Valery pointed up in this sentence:
“Just as water, gas, and electricity are
ought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in
esponse to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will
appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.”
Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to
eproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact
upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the
study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these
two different manifestations – the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film – have had
on art in its traditional form.
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 the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of
the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its
existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the
years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only
y chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of
ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.
The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. Chemical analyses
of the patina of a
onze can help to establish this, as does the proof that a given manuscript of
the Middle Ages stems from an archive of the fifteenth century. The whole sphere of authenticity
is outside technical – and, of course, not only technical – reproducibility. Confronted with its
manual reproduction, which was usually
anded as a forgery, the original preserved all its
authority; not so vis-à-vis technical reproduction. The reason is twofold. First, process
eproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction. For example, in
photography, process reproduction can
ing out those aspects of the original that are
unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle
at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or
slow motion, can capture images which escape natural vision. Secondly, technical reproduction
can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.
Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph
or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of
art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing
oom.
The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be
ought may not touch
the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. This holds not only
for the art work but also, for instance, for a landscape which passes in review before the
spectator in a movie. In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus – namely, its
authenticity – is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. The
authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from
its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the
historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction
when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical
testimony is affected is the authority of the object.
One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which
withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a
symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by
saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of
tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique
existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own
particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a
tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of
mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements.
Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive
form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the
traditional value of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most palpable in the great
historical films. It extends to ever new positions. In 1927 Abel Gance exclaimed enthusiastically:
“Shakespeare, Rem
andt, Beethoven will make films... all legends, all mythologies and all
myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions... await their exposed resu
ection, and the
heroes crowd each other at the gate.”
Presumably without intending it, he issued an invitation to a far-reaching liquidation.
III
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s
entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the
medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical
circumstances as well. The fifth century, with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the
late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different
from that of antiquity but also a new kind of perception. The scholars of the Viennese school,
Riegl and Wickhoff, who resisted the weight of classical tradition under which these later art
forms had been buried, were the first to draw conclusions from them concerning the organization
of perception at the time. However far-reaching their insight, these scholars limited themselves
to showing the significant, formal hallmark which characterized perception in late Roman times.
They did not attempt – and, perhaps, saw no way – to show the social transformations expressed
y these changes of perception. The conditions for an analogous insight are more favorable in the
present. And if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as
decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes.
The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully
e illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the
unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer
afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a
anch which casts its
shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that
anch. This image makes
it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two
circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in
contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to
ing things “closer” spatially
and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every
eality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object
at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as
offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye.
Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and
eproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a
perception whose “sense of the universal equality of things” has increased to such a degree that it
extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of
perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics.
The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited
scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
IV
The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fa
ic of tradition.
This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus,
for example, stood in a different traditional context with the