The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

[Anonymous No.13960064]

Guys, please, help me out. I'm reading The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction and I still have not idea what does he mean by mechanical reproduction. Can someone enlighten me

[Anonymous No.13960089]

>>13960064
>mechanical reproduction
what part do you not get?

[Anonymous No.13960210]

bump

[Anonymous No.13960811]

bump for hope

[Anonymous No.13960828]

A photograph, a film, a color image printed in a book, I mean what don't you get?

[Anonymous No.13960877]

>>13960064
"By changing the cultural context, the mechanical reproduction diminishes the original art work (original vs. copy)"

A movie that's being produced is the same for everyone, there's no original that's distinguishable from a copy.
Same with a photo, you can print it a billion times and it will be the same.
Paintings nowadays cane be slowly reproduced, henceforth the value is being taken away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=198&v=IuygOYZ1Ngo

[Anonymous No.13961125]

>>13960064

I love knowing that this man died pathetically at a national border after he was obliged to flee his rightful persecutors.

[Anonymous No.13961287]

>>13960064
>"For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free", for lacking the aura of the original work of art.[7]
So fine art came to the masses, wasn't longer exclusively for the bourgeoisie. Can these cretins make up their mind?

[Anonymous No.13961722]

>>13960089
What he means is:
technical reproducibility

[Anonymous No.13961737]

>>13960064
It's not a metaphor, it literally means what you think it means.

[Anonymous No.13961854]

>>13960064
When art is rooted in “the fabric of tradition” (meaning the development of tradition or traditions that retain some relation between the original substance of a work and its substance in the present) it is sovereign and untouchable, meaning only what tradition permits and therefore changing only as tradition itself changes ; because this root cannot be manufactured, reproduced art can never have the kind of substance or meaning, the same sovereignty, as an original.

An artwork that is sovereign possesses an “aura”, a substance or meaning that does not depend on subjective apprehension; the substance or meaning of such an artwork precedes apprehension; it does not depend on an audience; it is a kind of art that demands that its audience adapts to itself, unlike in reproduced art, which, lacking roots, adapts to its audience for lack of anything else.

Originals become like reproductions for those ignorant of its traditions, or more accurately, those ignorant of the category of tradition and therefore do not notice its absence.

With the processes of reproduction severing the ties between an original and its origins, therefore making it as flat and democratic as reproduced art, the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ emerged, "which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter."

Because ritual cannot be changed by ‘fiat’, any art that is grounded in ritual (and therefore tradition) can never be political, because politics (in the modern sense) is the defiance of ‘fiat’, perhaps even the rejection of ‘fiat’ as a valid source of legitimacy; for this reason Benjamin sees a positive potential in reproduction, because it severs once and for all the dependence of art on ritual , for in the age of reproduction it can be rooted in the people.