“The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin

In his essay, “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin discusses the changes that took place in the interior of perception and its influence on the way we see the visual work of art. The shift in perception realized by the mechanical revolution is similar to the change done by psychoanalysis fifty years ago. Freud made his point in trying to give meaning to things that normally nobody noticed. On the other hand the whole philosophy of the twentieth century is a revision of the paradigm of communication and a shift towards the phenomenology of body. The Freudian theories situate the paradigm of body of language, whereas the anthropological communication talks about body as language. It is this change of paradigm that theorize Benjamin as well : we move from soul to body in order to explore its capacity to master the space around, and in this perspective the era of mechanical reproduction has its separate role. Benjamin says that just as in psychoanalysis, film theories explore a different spectrum of optical and acoustical dimensions that enlarged human perception. Perception itself has been transformed. And if we consider Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry studies on body and perception, Benjamin theory becomes more clear. What film and photography emphases is a deep relation between the artistic value and the value of science. These revolutionary functions of the mechanics have been able to enrich human perception. While traditional art had what Benjamin calls an aura defined by authenticity and authority, the modern age through film and photography writes it of through the mechanical reproduction of art itself. A painting has an aura, meaning that it always going to have a rest that can not be reproduced, while a photograph does not. Even if potentially any work of art can be reproduced, it remains utterly original. It is not the case of a photograph which is the image of an image. What does this loss mean for contemporary art? Benjamin points out that the loss of aura is similar to the loss of authority within the work of art. The question that rises in this perspective is what is going to replace that concept? It is the role of the cameraman who is able to manipulate the eye of his viewer in ways a painter was never able to. The perception involved in these new forms of art create an esthetics of reception too. And this new eon of reception represents the space of a continuous interdependence between the viewer and the object of art. In that respect the loss of aura is a good thing for Benjamin because it offers a potential toward the politicization of art even if this new perspective can be arguable.