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Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction
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 by these changes of perception. The conditions for an analogous
insight are more favourable 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 be 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 branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of
those mountains, of that branch. 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 bring things 'closer' spatially and humanly, which is just as
ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality
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 reproducibility
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. |