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WALTER BENJAMIN - THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION

The Preface presents Marxist analyses of the construction of society and of the place of art in a capitalist society; and explains the socio-economic conditions to extrapolate future developments of capitalism, which, ultimately, result in the exploitation of the proletariat, and produce the social conditions that would abolish capitalism.
Benjamin reviews the development of the means of the mechanical reproduction of art — an artist manually copying the work of a master artist; the industrial arts of the foundry and the stamp mill in Ancient Greece; woodcut relief-printing, etching, engraving, lithography, and photography — to establish that artistic reproduction is not a modern human activity, and that the modern means of artistic reproduction permit greater accuracy throughout the process of mass production.
Benjamin discusses the concept of authenticity, of being in accordance with fact, noting that “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.” In the artwork proper, Benjamin argues, the “sphere of authenticity is outside the technical [sphere]” of producing the art work; hence, the original work of art is independent of the copy. The action of mechanical reproduction diminishes the original art work by changing the cultural context (original vs. copy); thus, the aura, the unique aesthetic authority, of an artwork is absent from the mechanically produced copy. Benjamin’s concept of the aura of a work of art derived from the work of Ludwig Klages.
That the social value of a work of art changes as society change their value systems, which accounts for the changes in artistic style and in the cultural taste of the public; “the manner in which human sense-perception is organized, the [artistic] medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by Nature, but by historical circumstances as well.”
Despite the socio-cultural effects of reproduction-art upon the original work of art, Benjamin said that “the uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition”, which separates the original work of art from the reproduction.He also discusses the ritualization of art-reproduction and the emancipation of “the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.”That the social-value of the exhibition of art progressed from the private sphere to the public sphere of life; historically, works of art were for the private viewing and aesthetic enjoyment of the owner of the artefacts (usually High Art); contemporarily, works of art are exhibited in a public gallery, to provide the enjoyment of aesthetic pleasure to a greater number of people.

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