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schmidtmark56's review
4.0
I loved many of the observations that this essay made, but the prologue and epilogue were lackluster and dated by its (then-justified) marxist fear of fascism. The funniest part about said prologue was that the two main predictions of Marxism in terms of Capitalism were both oppositely wrong:
“The result was that one could expect it [capitalism] not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.”
The actual essay itself opened with noting that works of art have always been reproducable, but it’s never been to this extent. Originally it was printing words which got ahead in the race, but then lithographs caught up, and then photography took the lead, with sound following up afterwards, culminating in movies.
Benjamin then went on to discuss the idea of authenticity, which the process of reproduction directly challenged (first with woodcut blocks). He mentions how reproducibility first re-contextualizes art/photography/music by being able to have it anywhere: in your home, on the go, etc. This is especially evident in memes, where mere contextualization is most of the humor. Benjamin remarks that reproduction has attacked tradition:
“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.”
Despite some people thinking it might be the savior of tradition: “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films . . . all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions . . . await their exposed resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the gate.”
The entirety of Chapter IV was excellent, and it expands on the tradition question:
“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric 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 Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of
them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function.5 In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of ‘pure’ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter.”
This de-ritualization of art (secularization) has allowed politics to enter as the new god. It has also made it much easier to exhibit art, since it's often not tied to specific places. In fact the entire modern idea of art was foreign to premodernists, as they wouldn't have quibbled about the technicality of an object, but instead would have sought its orthodoxy and ritual value.
"This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art.”
“In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face.”
By using this very versitile idea of "cult value" (which is roughly analogous to my idea of "gods"), Benjamin has traced the changes from premodern to modern art in a descriptive instead of prescriptive way, which I appreciate.
It is from here that we turn from general trends in art to the specifics of film vs pre-film. I was surprised that this essay focused so much on film, but due to the time it was written it makes sense. I had first heard of this essay as one dissecting the impact of photography on painting, but it's only tangentially that. Benjamin specifically said that the arguments over photography as art pale in comparison to the arguments over the legitimacy of film (and how much more devastating film is). One early commentator said that film was like a regression to hieroglyphs, which I actually like a lot (Benjamin didn’t). Benjamin points out how early critics continued to react to film as if it was ritually-based instead of being separated from that.
“The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.”
He first delved into the alienation of the actor when performing for film, which is cold and sterile and edited compared to the theater, which is live, in front of the real audience. The audience instead is that: “the sound film did not change anything essential. What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance—in the case of the sound film, for two of them.”
At one point during discussing this idea Benjamin wrote a sentence very similar in structure and content to this famous part of the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech in Macbeth:
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."
...and later on that page he referenced Macbeth, which was either a very spooky coincidence, or I did actually catch his reference. In discussing the alienation and inhumanity of acting for film, he also called the actor a prop, which seems to be very apt. The artificiality of film is one which is artfully hidden from the audience, and the more artfully it is hidden the more eggregious and inhumane it is as an art form. Benjamin remarked about how the movie is a series of partial performances stitched together, so it's many layers removed from reality (of which film’s grandfather, plays, are already artificial)….. Baudrillard would have a hayday with this.
Benjamin correctly anticipated the pseudo-revolutionary progressive hollywood of today who feign wokeness in an effort to distract us from their unhealthy mounds of wealth: “as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today’s film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art.” So the only criticism which film can truly offer is criticisms of traditional representation. Benjamin continued with the prophesying by anticipating the breakdown between creator and consumer which was fully realized in social media:
“Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.”
In discussing the artist and the audience, he also remarks about how very artificial and recent the concept of painting exhibitions is (unlike the public arts of architecture, poetry, and movies):
“Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of
painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses”
With the addition of photography and film as new art forms, the old ones have stretched in unnatural and experimental ways, like that typified in Dadaism, which Benjamin sees as a sort of decadent death throe:
“The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new
art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial—and literary—means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.”
He rightly chided Dadaism (and by extension postmodernism, which is merely a tiredly political Dadaism plus financial support from the establishment:
“Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the centre of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public”
The last topic Benjmain hits on is that of the concentrated vs distracted consumption of art, in which paintings allow one to ruminate and reflect on a single image, whereas film attacks us with one frame after another, one sound after another, one shot/take/scene after another:
“Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed…..The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change”
Critics of his time complained that movies were “a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence” – Benjamin pointed out: “Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace.”
Perhaps so. But is distraction a bad thing? Is disinterested art any less important? Benjamin points out how architecture is one of the most ancient of art forms, and its distracted reception (as opposed to the concentrated reception of most other art forms) is one which we take for granted. Film can be seen as the consummation of the distracted art form in the contemporary world:
“Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one."
The choice of the word "distracted" here is especially hard-hitting nowadays in our ADHD world of myriad notifications, distractions, interruptions, where none of those enrage us anymore, because we can pause things, save images, splice and cut up films/videos ourselves, and overall have unprecedented access both to editing/(re)creation tools and the raw material required.
Ultimately there was no real conclusion to the aesthetic reminisces, which seemed more like a scattered and disjointed series of (quite penetrating) observations. So for that I deduct a star, the packaging and organization were lackluster. But there was attempt at a political resolution in the epilogue. Benjamin claimed that Fascism is the culmination of Art for Art's sake (whereas Tolstoy saw Art for Art's sake as the culmination of the Nietzschian Ubermensch infecting aesthetics, which honestly isn't that different from Benjamin's assessment). He concluded with: "This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art." So that's the eternal game of cat and.... cat, where both think the other is the mouse who started the kerfuffle, while both (fascism and communism) are stupid frenzied cats which both need to be put down, for the safety of mankind.
“The result was that one could expect it [capitalism] not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.”
The actual essay itself opened with noting that works of art have always been reproducable, but it’s never been to this extent. Originally it was printing words which got ahead in the race, but then lithographs caught up, and then photography took the lead, with sound following up afterwards, culminating in movies.
Benjamin then went on to discuss the idea of authenticity, which the process of reproduction directly challenged (first with woodcut blocks). He mentions how reproducibility first re-contextualizes art/photography/music by being able to have it anywhere: in your home, on the go, etc. This is especially evident in memes, where mere contextualization is most of the humor. Benjamin remarks that reproduction has attacked tradition:
“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.”
Despite some people thinking it might be the savior of tradition: “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films . . . all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions . . . await their exposed resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the gate.”
The entirety of Chapter IV was excellent, and it expands on the tradition question:
“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric 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 Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of
them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function.5 In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of ‘pure’ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter.”
This de-ritualization of art (secularization) has allowed politics to enter as the new god. It has also made it much easier to exhibit art, since it's often not tied to specific places. In fact the entire modern idea of art was foreign to premodernists, as they wouldn't have quibbled about the technicality of an object, but instead would have sought its orthodoxy and ritual value.
"This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art.”
“In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face.”
By using this very versitile idea of "cult value" (which is roughly analogous to my idea of "gods"), Benjamin has traced the changes from premodern to modern art in a descriptive instead of prescriptive way, which I appreciate.
It is from here that we turn from general trends in art to the specifics of film vs pre-film. I was surprised that this essay focused so much on film, but due to the time it was written it makes sense. I had first heard of this essay as one dissecting the impact of photography on painting, but it's only tangentially that. Benjamin specifically said that the arguments over photography as art pale in comparison to the arguments over the legitimacy of film (and how much more devastating film is). One early commentator said that film was like a regression to hieroglyphs, which I actually like a lot (Benjamin didn’t). Benjamin points out how early critics continued to react to film as if it was ritually-based instead of being separated from that.
“The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.”
He first delved into the alienation of the actor when performing for film, which is cold and sterile and edited compared to the theater, which is live, in front of the real audience. The audience instead is that: “the sound film did not change anything essential. What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance—in the case of the sound film, for two of them.”
At one point during discussing this idea Benjamin wrote a sentence very similar in structure and content to this famous part of the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech in Macbeth:
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."
...and later on that page he referenced Macbeth, which was either a very spooky coincidence, or I did actually catch his reference. In discussing the alienation and inhumanity of acting for film, he also called the actor a prop, which seems to be very apt. The artificiality of film is one which is artfully hidden from the audience, and the more artfully it is hidden the more eggregious and inhumane it is as an art form. Benjamin remarked about how the movie is a series of partial performances stitched together, so it's many layers removed from reality (of which film’s grandfather, plays, are already artificial)….. Baudrillard would have a hayday with this.
Benjamin correctly anticipated the pseudo-revolutionary progressive hollywood of today who feign wokeness in an effort to distract us from their unhealthy mounds of wealth: “as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today’s film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art.” So the only criticism which film can truly offer is criticisms of traditional representation. Benjamin continued with the prophesying by anticipating the breakdown between creator and consumer which was fully realized in social media:
“Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.”
In discussing the artist and the audience, he also remarks about how very artificial and recent the concept of painting exhibitions is (unlike the public arts of architecture, poetry, and movies):
“Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of
painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses”
With the addition of photography and film as new art forms, the old ones have stretched in unnatural and experimental ways, like that typified in Dadaism, which Benjamin sees as a sort of decadent death throe:
“The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new
art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial—and literary—means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.”
He rightly chided Dadaism (and by extension postmodernism, which is merely a tiredly political Dadaism plus financial support from the establishment:
“Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the centre of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public”
The last topic Benjmain hits on is that of the concentrated vs distracted consumption of art, in which paintings allow one to ruminate and reflect on a single image, whereas film attacks us with one frame after another, one sound after another, one shot/take/scene after another:
“Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed…..The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change”
Critics of his time complained that movies were “a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence” – Benjamin pointed out: “Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace.”
Perhaps so. But is distraction a bad thing? Is disinterested art any less important? Benjamin points out how architecture is one of the most ancient of art forms, and its distracted reception (as opposed to the concentrated reception of most other art forms) is one which we take for granted. Film can be seen as the consummation of the distracted art form in the contemporary world:
“Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one."
The choice of the word "distracted" here is especially hard-hitting nowadays in our ADHD world of myriad notifications, distractions, interruptions, where none of those enrage us anymore, because we can pause things, save images, splice and cut up films/videos ourselves, and overall have unprecedented access both to editing/(re)creation tools and the raw material required.
Ultimately there was no real conclusion to the aesthetic reminisces, which seemed more like a scattered and disjointed series of (quite penetrating) observations. So for that I deduct a star, the packaging and organization were lackluster. But there was attempt at a political resolution in the epilogue. Benjamin claimed that Fascism is the culmination of Art for Art's sake (whereas Tolstoy saw Art for Art's sake as the culmination of the Nietzschian Ubermensch infecting aesthetics, which honestly isn't that different from Benjamin's assessment). He concluded with: "This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art." So that's the eternal game of cat and.... cat, where both think the other is the mouse who started the kerfuffle, while both (fascism and communism) are stupid frenzied cats which both need to be put down, for the safety of mankind.
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