Rather than making something by his own hand exclusively, he relied on something already made and thereby undid the notion of the individual artistic genius. 2 While Benjamin considered the relationship between the perceiving subject and the perceived object in terms of time and space, 3 Duchamp used “readymades” to challenge formulaic methods of art making. They not only reuse the content of the original objects and images, but also make use of the prevalence–their circulation–of those reproductions as well.Īt around the same time Benjamin published his essay, Marcel Duchamp emerged as an artist who took advantage of technological reproductions. Modern artists utilized technological reproductions through multiple methods. However, instead of being diminished, the aura is readdressed and reconsidered when the reproduction is reused in a new context. The aura, defined by Benjamin as the uniqueness of the original, experienced in a single, distinct time and space, is weakened every time a technological reproduction is made.īased upon Benjamin’s definition, it is inevitable that the aura would encounter any change when an object or image is reproduced multiple times. In contrast, traditional methods of reproduction, such as woodcuts or lithographs, retain the same material form as the original print–a form that is quite distinct from technological reproductions that appear in illusionistic forms, like photographs or sound tracks. They not only capture the information of the original objects, but they can also drastically transform our appreciation of the original once it has been reproduced. 1 According to Benjamin, these reproductions are more independent and more active in the way they are received. In his now-canonical essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), Walter Benjamin raised the concern that technological reproductions would diminish or destroy the authenticity of the original objects. Reproductions did not stand by themselves until the early 19th century with the invention of photography-a practice that was further advanced in 20th century with the appearance of technological reproduction. Therefore, it could be argued that any copy is not significantly different from its original. Copies mainly served to transmit the information from the originals that were not otherwise accessible to the public.
Despite this long history and the wide range of copying methods, reproductions depended on the content of the original for their meanings. Woodcut technologies date back to the 3 rd century in Asia, and the printing press was invented in Europe in the 15 th century.
#BENJAMIN AURA DEFINITION MANUAL#
One of the features of mechanical reproduction is that it frees human hands from manual writing and painting. Mechanical reproduction has long existed in human history as a technique enabling mass distribution by multiplying copies of original objects. Art in the age of mechanical reproduction: aura reshaped
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