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1) Read the Walter Benjamin article again, focussing especially on his ideas of Aura, Authenticity, Reproducibility, Exhibitability, etc. Pay special attention to the section in which he describes the original relationship between art and religion and art and magic.
2) Then choose an article about a work of art which is connected to religion. Try to find access on the Internet to an image of the work of art itself (if you can’t, look for a different one).
3) Then, discern what you can about the character of the art piece, using Benjamin’s concepts in your analysis.
4) When you write your 3-5 page essay, describe what your analysis has revealed about the art piece. In addition, you MUST address whether you think ANY authenticity in art is possible today, in an age of museums (where art is exhibited apart from its original production) and the Internet (where EVERYTHING is a reproduced image, without any “aura” at all). Finally, state how you think religion and art are related in the piece you chose, and how Benjamin’s ideas on this shape your thoughts and conclusions.
Do not sumarize !!!!!!!!!!
Grey Room 39, Spring 2010, pp. 11–37. © 2010 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 11
The Work of Art in the Age of
Its Technological Reproducibility
[First Version]
WALTER BENJAMIN
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL W. JENNINGS
The true is what he can; the false is what he wants.
—Madame de Duras
[Contents]
1. Foreword
2. Technological Reproducibility
3. Authenticity
4. Destruction of the Aura
5. Ritual and Politics
6. Cult Value and Exhibition Value
7. Photography
8. Eternal Value
9. Photography and Film as Art
10. Film and Test Performance
11. The Film Actor
12. Exhibition in Front of a Mass
13. The Aspiration to Be Filmed
14. Painter and Cameraman
15. Reception of Paintings
16. Mickey Mouse
17. Dadaism
18. Tactile and Optical Reception
19. Aesthetics of War
[1.]
When Marx undertook his analysis of the capitalist mode of production, that
mode was in its infancy. Marx adopted an approach that gave his investigations
prognostic value. Going back to the basic conditions of capitalist production,
he presented them in a way that showed what could be expected of capitalism
in the future. What could be expected, it emerged, was not only an increasingly
harsh exploitation of the proletariat but, ultimately, the creation of conditions
which would make it possible for capitalism to abolish itself.
Since the transformation of the superstructure proceeds far more slowly than
that of the base, it has taken more than half a century for the change in the con-
ditions of production to be manifested in all areas of culture. How this process
has affected culture can only now be assessed, and these assessments justify
certain prognostic demands. These demands correspond less to theses on the
art of the proletariat after its seizure of power, and still less to any theses on the art
of the classless society, than to theses on the developmental tendencies of art
under the present conditions of production. The dialectic of these conditions of
production is evident in the superstructure no less than in the economy. It would
therefore be a mistake to underestimate the combat value of such theses. They
neutralize a number of traditional concepts—such as creativity and genius, eternal
value and style, form and content—which, used in an unchecked way (and
monitoring them is difficult today), allow factual material to be manipulated in
the interests of fascism. In what follows, the concepts which are introduced into
the theory of art differ from others in that they are completely useless for the
purposes of fascism. On the other hand, they are useful for the formulation of
revolutionary demands in the politics of art [Kunstpolitik].
[2.]
In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. Objects made by
humans could always be copied by humans. Replicas were made by pupils in
practicing for their craft, by masters in disseminating their works, and, finally,
by third parties in pursuit of profit. But the technological reproduction of
artworks is something new. Having appeared intermittently in history, at widely
spaced intervals, it is now being adopted with ever-increasing intensity. Graphic
art was first made technologically reproducible by the woodcut, long before
written language became reproducible by movable type. The enormous changes
brought about in literature by movable type, the technological reproduction of
writing, are well known. But they are only a special case, though an important
one, of the phenomenon considered here from the perspective of world history.
In the course of the Middle Ages the woodcut was supplemented by engraving
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and etching, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century by lithography.
Lithography marked a fundamentally new stage in the technology of repro-
duction. This much more direct process—distinguished by the fact that the
drawing is traced on a stone rather than incised on a block of wood or etched on
a copper plate—first made it possible for graphic art to market its products not
only in large numbers, as previously, but in designs [Gestaltungen] that changed
daily. Graphic art was thus enabled to accompany everyday life illustratively. It
began to keep pace with movable-type printing. But only a few decades after its
invention, graphic art was surpassed by photography. For the first time, photo-
graphy freed the hand from the most important artistic tasks in the process of
pictorial reproduction—tasks that now devolved upon the eye alone. And since
the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial
reproduction was enormously accelerated, so that it could now keep pace with
speech. Just as the illustrated newspaper virtually lay hidden within lithogra-
phy, so the sound film was latent in photography. The technological reproduc-
tion of sound was tackled at the end of the last century. With that, technological
reproduction had not only reached a standard that permitted it to turn all tradi-
tional works of art into its objects, subjecting their effects to profound changes,
but had also captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. Nothing
is so illuminating for the study of this standard as the recognition of how its
two differing functions—reproduction of the work of art and the art of film—
interpenetrate one another.
[3.]
In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of
the work of art—its unique existence at the place at which it is to be found. The
history to which the work of art has been subjected as it persists over time
occurs in regard to this unique existence—and to nothing else. The changes to the
physical structure of the work over time, as well as the changes in the condi-
tions of ownership into which it might have entered, are to be attributed to this
history. Traces of the former can be detected only by chemical or physical analyses
(which cannot be performed on a reproduction), while traces of the latter are
part of a tradition that can be followed only from the standpoint of the original.
The here and now of the original constitutes the concept of its authenticity,
and on the latter in turn is founded the idea of a tradition which has, to the pre-
sent day, passed this object down as the same, identical thing. The whole sphere
of authenticity eludes technological—and of course not only technological—
reproduction. But whereas the authentic work retains its full authority in the
face of a reproduction made by hand, which it generally brands a forgery, this is
not the case with technological reproduction. The reason is twofold. First, tech-
nological reproduction is more independent of the original than is manual
reproduction. For example, in photography technological reproduction can
bring out aspects of the original that are accessible only to the lens (which is
adjustable and chooses its viewpoint arbitrarily) but not to the human eye; or it
can use certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, to record images
which escape natural optics altogether. This is the first reason. Second, techno-
logical reproduction can place the copy of the original in situations to which
the original itself cannot attain. Above all, it enables the original to meet the
recipient halfway, whether in the form of a photograph or in that of a gramo-
phone record. The cathedral leaves its site to be received in the studio of an art
lover; the choral work performed in an auditorium or in the open air is enjoyed
in a private room.
These changed circumstances may leave the artwork’s other properties
untouched, but they certainly devalue its here and now. And although this can
apply not only to the work of art but, for example, to a landscape moving past
the spectator in a film, in the work of art this process touches on a highly sensi-
tive core that no natural object exhibits in this manner. That core is its authen-
ticity. The authenticity of a thing is the quintessence of all that is transmissible
in it from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the history to
which it testifies. Since the historical testimony is based on the physical dura-
tion, the historical testimony of the thing, too, is jeopardized by reproduction, in
which physical duration has been withdrawn from human activity. Admittedly, it
is only the historical testimony that is jeopardized; yet what is really jeopar-
dized thereby is the authority of the thing, the weight it derives from tradition.
One might summarize these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura,
and say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work
of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends
far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the
technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of
tradition. By replicating that which has been reproduced many times over, the
technology of reproduction substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence.
And in permitting the reproduction to reach the viewer in his or her own situa-
tion, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a
massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shat-
tering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of
humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our
day. Their most massive agent is film. The social significance of film, even—and
especially—in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive,
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cathartic side: the liquidation of the value of tradition in the cultural heritage.
This phenomenon is most apparent in the great historical films—from Cleopatra
and Ben Hur through Frederick the Great and Napoleon. It is assimilating ever
more advanced positions into its realm. When Abel Gance fervently proclaimed
in 1927, “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films. . . . All legends,
all mythologies, and all myths, all the founders of religions, indeed, all reli-
gions, . . . await their celluloid resurrection, and the heroes are pressing at the
gates” (A[bel] G[ance], Le temps de l’image est venu. L’art cinématogr[aphique] II,
Paris 1927, pp. 94–96), he was inviting the reader, no doubt unawares, to witness
this comprehensive liquidation.
[4.]
Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long
historical periods, so too does their perception. The way in which human per-
ception is organized—the medium in which it occurs—is conditioned not only
by nature but by history. The era of the migration of peoples, an era which saw
the rise of the late-Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, developed not
only an art different from that of the classical era but also a different perception.
The great scholars of the Viennese school Riegl and Wickhoff, resisting the
weight of the classical tradition beneath which this art had been buried, were
the first to think of using such art to draw conclusions about the organization of
perception at the historical moment in which the art was produced. However
far-reaching their insight, it was limited by the fact that these scholars were
content to highlight the formal signature which characterized perception in
late-Roman times. They did not attempt to show the social upheavals that came
to expression in these changes in perception—and perhaps could not have
hoped to do so at that time. Today, the conditions for an analogous insight are
more favorable. And if changes in the medium of present-day perception can
be understood as a decay of the aura, it is possible to demonstrate the social
determinants of that decay.
What, then, is the aura? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique appear-
ance of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye while resting
on a summer afternoon a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts
its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that
branch. In the light of this definition, it is easy to grasp the particular social
determination of the aura’s present decay. It rests on two circumstances, both
intimately linked to the increasing spread and intensity of the mass movements.
Namely: the desire of the present-day masses to “bring things closer” and their
equally passionate concern, the tendency to overcome the uniqueness of every
reality through its reproducibility. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold
of an object at close range in an image [Bild], or, better, in a facsimile [Abbild], in
reproduction. And the reproduction as offered by illustrated magazines and
newsreels differs unmistakably from the image. Uniqueness and permanence are
as closely entwined in the latter as are transitoriness and repeatability in the
former. The shelling of the object from its hull, the destruction of the aura, is the
signature of a perception whose “sense for sameness in the world” (Joh[annes] V
Jensen) has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even
from what is unique. The increasing significance of statistics that is becoming
noticeable in the realm of theory is now repeating itself in the realm of observa-
tion. The alignment of reality with the masses and of the masses with reality is
a process of immeasurable importance for both thinking and perception.
[5.]
The uniqueness of the work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the con-
text of tradition. Of course, this tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely
changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for instance, existed in a rather differ-
ent traditional context for the Greeks (who made it an object of worship) than
that in which it existed for the medieval church fathers (who viewed it as a
sinister idol). But what was equally evident to both was its uniqueness—that is,
its aura. The most originary manner in which an artwork was embedded in the
context of tradition found expression in the cult. As we know, the earliest art-
works originated in the service of rituals—first magical, then religious. And it
is highly significant that the artwork’s auratic mode of existence is never
entirely severed from its ritual function. In other words: the unique value of the
“authentic” work of art is always founded on theology. This foundation, how-
ever mediated it may be, is still recognizable as secularized ritual in even the
most profane forms of the cult of beauty. These profane forms of the cult of
beauty, which developed during the Renaissance and prevailed for three cen-
turies, clearly displayed these foundations after the passing of this period—in
the first severe crisis that befell it. For when, with the advent of the first truly
revolutionary means of reproduction (namely photography, which emerged at
the same time as socialism), art felt the approach of that crisis, which a century
later has become unmistakable, it reacted to that which was to come with the
doctrine of l’art pour l’art, which is a theology of art. This in turn gave rise to a
negative theology of art, in the form of an idea of pure art, which rejects not only
any social function but any definition in terms of an objective purpose. (In
poetry, Mallarmé was the first to achieve this standpoint.) No investigation
of art in the age of its technological reproducibility can overlook these connec-
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tions. For they lead to a crucial insight: for the first time in world history, the
technological reproducibility of the work of art emancipates the work from its
parasitic subservience to ritual. To an ever-increasing degree, the work repro-
duced becomes the reproduction of a work designed for reproducibility. From
a photographic plate, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask
for the authentic print makes no sense. But at the moment at which the criterion
of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social func-
tion of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it is based on a
different practice: politics.
In films, the technological reproducibility of the product is not an externally
imposed condition of its mass dissemination, as it is, say, in literature or painting.
The technological reproducibility of films is based directly on the technology of
their production. This not only makes possible the mass dissemination of films
in the most direct way, but actually compels it. It compels it because producing
a film is so costly that an individual who could afford to buy a painting, for
example, could not afford to buy a film. Film is an acquisition of the collective.
It was calculated in 1927 that, in order to make a profit, a major film needed to
reach an audience of nine million. Of course, the advent of sound film initially
caused a movement in the opposite direction: its audience was restricted by
language boundaries, and that coincided with the emphasis placed on national
interests by fascism. But it is less important to note this setback (which in any
case was soon mitigated by dubbing) than to observe its connection with fas-
cism. The simultaneity of the two phenomena results from the economic crisis.
The same disorders which led, in the world at large, to an attempt to maintain
existing property relations by brute force—that is, in fascist form—induced film
capital, under the threat of crisis, to speed up the development of sound film. Its
introduction brought temporary relief from the crisis, not only because sound
film mobilized the masses for the visit to the cinema but also because it consoli-
dated new monopoly capital from the electricity industry with that of film. Thus,
considered from the outside, sound film promoted national interests; but seen
from the inside, it helped internationalize film production even more than before.
[6.]
One could portray art history as the working out of a tension between two polar-
ities within the artwork itself and see the course of its history in the shifts in
balance between one pole of the artwork and the other. These two poles are the
artwork’s cult value and its exhibition value. Artistic production begins with
constructs [Gebilde] that stand in the service of magic. What is solely important
for these constructs is that they are present, not that they are seen. The elk
depicted by Stone Age man on the walls of his cave is an instrument of magic
and is exhibited to others only coincidentally; what matters is that the spirits
see it. Cult value as such even tends to keep the artwork hidden: certain statues
of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain images of the Madonna
remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals
are not visible to the viewer at ground level. With the emancipation of specific
artistic practices from the womb of the cult, the opportunities for exhibiting
their products increase. The exhibitability [Ausstellbarkeit]1 of a portrait bust
that can be sent here and there is greater than that of a statue of a divinity that
has a fixed place in the interior of a temple. The exhibitability of a painting
is greater than that of the mosaic or fresco which preceded it. And if the
exhibitability of a mass may perhaps in and of itself have been no less than that
of a symphony, the symphony came into being at a time when its exhibitability
promised to be greater than that of the mass. With the various methods for the
technological reproduction of the artwork, its exhibitability has increased so
enormously that, as happened in prehistoric times, a quantitative shift in accent
between its two poles has led to a qualitative transformation in its nature. Just as
the work of art in prehistoric times, through the exclusive emphasis placed on
its cult value, became first and foremost an instrument of magic—which only
later came to be recognized as a work of art—so today, through the exclusive
emphasis placed on its exhibition value, the work of art becomes a construct
with quite new functions. Among these, the one we are conscious of—the “artistic
function”—may subsequently be seen as rudimentary. This much is certain:
today, film is the most serviceable vehicle of this understanding. Certain, as
well, is the fact that the historical scope of this functional transformation of
art—which appears as most advanced in film—allows for the methodological
as well as the material confrontation with the primeval era of art. This era made
use of certain fixed notations in the service of magical practice. These notations,
to be sure, probably served not just as the execution of magical procedures, or
as instructions for them, but also as objects for contemplative observation to
which were ascribed magical effects. The subjects for these notations were
humans and their environment, which were depicted according to the demands
of a society whose technology existed only in fusion with ritual. This society
stood as the counterpoint to contemporary society, whose technology is the
most emancipated. This emancipated technology now, however, stands opposed
to contemporary society as a second nature and, to be sure, as economic crises
and wars prove, as one that is no less elemental than that given to primeval society.
Humans of course invented, but no longer by any means master this second
nature which they now confront; they are thus just as compelled to undertake
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an apprenticeship as they were once when confronted with first nature. And art
once again places itself at the service of such an apprenticeship—and in partic-
ular film. Film serves to train human beings in those new apperceptions and
reactions demanded by interaction with an apparatus whose role in their lives
is expanding almost daily. To make the enormous technological apparatus of
our time an object of human innervation—that is the historical task in whose
service film finds its true meaning.
[7.]
In photography, exhibition value begins to drive back cult value on all fronts. But
cult value does not give way without resistance. It falls back instead to a last
entrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait is cen-
tral to early photography. In the cult of remembrance of dead or distant loved
ones, the cult value of the image finds its last refuge. In the fleeting expression
of a human face, the aura beckons from early photographs for the last time. This
is what gives them their melancholy and incomparable beauty. But as the
human being withdraws from the photographic image, exhibition value now for
the first time shows its superiority to cult value. To have given this development
its place constitutes the unique significance of Atget, who captured an impor-
tant aspect of the Paris streets around 1900: they are devoid of humans. It has
justly been said that he photographed them like scenes of crimes. A crime scene,
too, is devoid of humans; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing
evidence. With Atget, photographic records begin to be evidence in the historical
trial [Prozess]. This constitutes their hidden political significance. They demand
a specific kind of reception. Free-floating contemplation is no longer appropri-
ate to them. They unsettle the viewer; he feels challenged to find a particular
way to approach them. At the same time, illustrated magazines begin to put up
signposts for him. Whether these are right or wrong is irrelevant. In the illus-
trated magazines, captions [Beschriftung] for the first time become obligatory.
And it is clear that they have a character altogether different from the titles
of paintings. The directives given by captions to those looking at images in
illustrated magazines soon become even more precise and commanding in films,
where the way each single image is understood appears prescribed by the sequence
of all the preceding images.
[8.]
The Greeks had only two processes for the technological reproduction of works
of art: casting and stamping. Coins and terra cottas were the only artworks
they could produce in large numbers. All others were unique and could not be
technologically reproduced. That is why they had to be made for all eternity.
The state of their technology compelled the Greeks to produce eternal values in
their art. To this they owe their preeminent position in art history—the standard
for subsequent generations. Undoubtedly, our position now lies at the opposite
pole from that of the Greeks. Never before have artworks been technologically
reproducible to such a degree and in such quantities as today. Film is the first
art form whose artistic character is entirely determined by its reproducibility. It
would be idle to compare this form in all its provisions with Greek art. But on
one precise point such a comparison would be possible. For in film one quality
of the artwork has become crucial, a quality which would have been the last
to find approval among the Greeks, or which they would have dismissed as mar-
ginal. This quality is its capacity for improvement. The finished film is the exact
antithesis of a work created at a single stroke. It is assembled from a very large
number of individual images and image sequences that offer an array of choices
to the editor; these images, moreover, can be improved in any desired way in the
process leading from the initial take to the final cut. To produce A Woman of
Paris, which is 3,000 meters long, Chaplin shot 125,000 meters of film. The film
is therefore the artwork most capable of improvement. And this capability is
linked to its radical renunciation of eternal value. This is corroborated by the
fact that for the Greeks, whose art depended on the production of eternal values,
the pinnacle of all the arts was the form least capable of improvement—namely
sculpture, whose products are literally all of one piece. In the age of the assem-
bled [montierbar] artwork, the decline of sculpture is inevitable.
[9.]
The nineteenth-century dispute over the relative artistic merits of painting and
photography seems misguided and confused today. But this does not diminish
its importance, and may even underscore it. The dispute was in fact an expres-
sion of a world-historical upheaval whose true nature was concealed from both
parties. Insofar as the age of technological reproducibility separated art from its
basis in cult, all semblance of art’s autonomy disappeared forever. But the result-
ing change in the function of art lay beyond the horizon of the nineteenth century.
And even the twentieth, which saw the development of film, was slow to per-
ceive it. Though commentators had earlier expended much fruitless ingenuity
on the question of whether photography was an art—without asking the more
fundamental question of whether the invention of photography had not trans-
formed art itself—film theorists quickly adopted the same ill-considered set
of questions. But the difficulties which photography caused for traditional aes-
thetics were child’s play compared to those presented by film. Hence the blind
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violence of early film theory. Abel Gance, for example, compares film to hiero-
glyphs: “By a remarkable regression, we are transported back to the expressive
level of the Egyptians. . . . Pictorial language has not matured because our eyes
are not yet adapted to it. There is not yet enough respect, not enough cult, for
what it expresses.”2 Or, in the words of Séverin-Mars: “What other art has been
granted a dream . . . at once more poetic and more real? Seen in this light, film
might represent an incomparable means of expression, and only the noblest
minds should move within its atmosphere; in the most perfect and mysterious
moments of their lives” (L’art cinématographique II, Paris 1927, pp. 101, 100).3 It
is instructive to see how the desire to annex film to “art” impels these theoreti-
cians to attribute elements of cult to film—with a singular boldness. Yet when
these speculations were published, works like A Woman of Paris and The Gold
Rush had already appeared. Abel Gance speaks of sacred script and Séverin-Mars
speaks of film as one might speak of pictures by Fra Angelico. It is revealing that
even today especially reactionary authors look in the same direction for the sig-
nificance of film, if not actually in the sacred, then at least in the supernatural.
In connection with Max Reinhardt’s film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Werfel comments that it was undoubtedly the sterile copying of the external
world—with its streets, interiors, railway stations, restaurants, automobiles,
and beaches—that had thus far prevented this film from ascending to the realm
of art. “Film has not yet realized its true meaning, its real possibilities. . . . These
consist in its unique ability to use natural means to give incomparably con-
vincing expression to the fairylike, the marvelous, the supernatural” (Franz
Werfel, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Film by Shakespeare and Reinhardt”
in Neues Wiener Journal, cited in Lu, November 15, 1935).
[10.]
To photograph a painting is one kind of reproduction, but it is quite another that
allows photography to take part in a process in a film studio. In the first case,
what is reproduced is a work of art, while the reproduction itself is not. The
cameraman’s performance with the lens is no more an artwork than is the con-
ductor’s with a symphony orchestra; at most, it is an artistic performance. This
is unlike the shoot in a film studio. Here, what is reproduced is not an artwork,
and the reproduction is naturally no more an artwork than is a photograph of a
painting. The work of art is ideally produced only by means of montage. The
work of art is based on a montage, of which each individual component is a
reproduction of a process that is an artwork neither in itself nor produces one
through photography. What, then, are these processes reproduced in film, since
they are certainly not works of art?
To answer this, we must start from the peculiar nature of the artistic perfor-
mance of the film actor. He is distinguished from the stage actor in that his
performance in its original form, which is the basis of the reproduction, is not
carried out in front of a randomly composed audience but before a group of
specialists—executive producer, director, cinematographer, sound recordist,
lighting designer, and so on—who could find themselves in a position to inter-
vene in his performance at any time. This aspect of filmmaking is highly signif-
icant in social terms. For the intervention in a performance by a body of experts
is also characteristic of sporting performances and, in a wider sense, of all test
performances. The entire process of film production is determined, though, by
such intervention. As we know, many shots are filmed in a number of versions.
A single cry for help, for example, can be recorded in several different takes.
The editor then makes a selection from these; he establishes one of them as the
record, as it were. An action performed in the film studio therefore differs from
the corresponding real action the way the throwing of a discus in a sporting
competition would differ from the throwing of the same discus from the same
spot in the same direction in order to kill someone. The first is a test perfor-
mance, while the second is not.
The test performance of the film actor is, however, entirely unique in kind.
In what does this performance consist? It consists in crossing a certain barrier
which confines the social value of test performances within narrow limits. It is
not a matter of a performance in the world of sports, but of a performance pro-
duced in a mechanized test. In a sense, the athlete is confronted only by natural
tests. He measures himself against tasks set by nature, not by those of an appa-
ratus—apart from exceptional cases like Nurmi, who was said to run against the
clock. Meanwhile the work process, especially since it has been standardized
by the assembly line, daily generates countless mechanized tests. These tests are
performed unawares, and those who fail are excluded from the work process.
But they are also conducted with permission, in agencies for testing profes-
sional aptitude. In so doing, one encounters the barrier mentioned above.
These tests, unlike those in the world of sports, are not exhibitable to the
degree one would desire. And this is precisely where film comes into play. Film
makes test performances capable of being exhibited, by turning the exhibitabil-
ity of the performance itself into a test. The film actor performs not in front of
an audience but in front of an apparatus. The film director occupies exactly the
same position as the examiner in an aptitude test. To perform in the glare of arc
lamps while simultaneously meeting the demands of the microphone is a test
requirement of the highest order. To meet it is to preserve one’s humanity in the
face of the apparatus. Interest in this performance is enormous. For the majority of
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city dwellers, throughout the workday in offices and factories, have to relin-
quish their humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening these same
masses fill the cinemas to experience the film actor taking revenge on their
behalf not only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such)
against the apparatus but by placing that apparatus in the service of his triumph.
[11.]
In the case of film, the fact that the actor represents someone else before the
audience matters much less than the fact that he represents himself before the
apparatus. One of the first to sense this transformation of the actor by the test
performance was Pirandello. That his remarks on the subject in his novel Si gira
(Shoot!) are confined to the negative aspects of this process, and to silent film
only, does little to diminish their relevance. For in this respect, the sound film
changed nothing essential. What matters is that the actor is performing for a
piece of equipment—or rather, in the case of the sound film, for two pieces of
equipment. “The film actor,” Pirandello writes, “feels as if exiled. Exiled not
only from the stage but from his own person. With a vague unease, he senses an
inexplicable void, stemming from the fact that his body has lost its substance,
that he has been volatilized, stripped of his reality, his life, his voice, the noises
he makes when moving about, and has been turned into a mute image that flick-
ers for a moment on the screen, then vanishes into silence. . . . The little appa-
ratus will play with his shadow before the audience, and he himself must be
content to play before the apparatus” (cited in Léon Pierre-Quint, Signification
du cinéma. L’art cinématographique II, Paris, 1927, pp. 14–15).
The representation of human beings by means of an apparatus has made pos-
sible a highly productive use of the human being’s self-alienation. The nature of
this use can be grasped through the fact that the film actor’s estrangement in the
face of the apparatus, as Pirandello describes this experience, is basically of the
same kind as the estrangement of the Romantic before his mirror image—as is
well known, a favorite motif in Jean Paul. But now the mirror image has become
detachable from the person mirrored and has become transportable. And where
is it transported? Before the masses. Naturally, the screen actor never for a
moment ceases to be aware of this. While he stands before the apparatus, he
knows that in the end he is confronting the masses. These masses will be check-
ing on him. And precisely these masses are not visible, not even present while
he completes the artistic performance that they will monitor. This invisibility
heightens the authority of their monitoring. It should not be forgotten, of course,
that there can be no political advantage derived from this monitoring until film
has liberated itself from the fetters of capitalist exploitation. For film capital
uses the revolutionary opportunities implied by this monitoring for counter-
revolutionary purposes. Not only does the cult of the movie star that it fosters
preserve that magic of the personality which has long been no more than the
putrid glimmer of its own commodity character, but its counterpart, the cult of
the audience, reinforces the corrupt composition of the masses, with which
fascism seeks to supplant their class consciousness.
The art of the present day can count on a correspondingly greater effective-
ness as it increases its reliance on reproducibility, and thus as it displaces the
original work from its central position. If drama has, of all the arts, most clearly
suffered the effects of the crisis, that lies in the nature of the crisis itself. Indeed,
nothing contrasts more starkly with a work of art completely subject to (or, like
film, founded in) technological reproduction than a stage play with its deploy-
ment of the actor that is new and originary every single time. Any thorough
consideration will confirm this. Expert observers have long recognized that,
in film, “the best effects are almost always achieved by ‘acting’ as little as
possible. . . . The development,” according to Rudolf Arnheim, writing in 1932,
has been toward “using the actor as a prop; chosen for his typicalness and . . .
introduced at the proper place” (Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art, Berlin 1932,
pp. 176–177). Closely bound up with this development is something else. The
stage actor puts himself into a role. The film actor very often is denied this
opportunity. His performance is by no means a unified whole, but is assembled
from many individual performances whose here and now is determined by inci-
dental concerns about studio rental, availability of other actors, scenery, and so
on. A leap from a window, for example, can be shot in the studio as a leap from
a scaffold, while the ensuing flight might be filmed weeks later at an outdoor
location. And far more paradoxical edits can easily be imagined. An actor is
supposed to be startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory,
the director can resort to an expedient: he could have a shot fired without warning
behind the actor’s back on some other occasion when he happens to be in the
studio. The actor’s frightened reaction at that moment could be recorded and then
edited into the film. Nothing shows more graphically that art has escaped
the realm of “beautiful semblance,” whose climate was regarded for so long as the
only one in which it could thrive.
This directorial technique that experimentally evokes an actual frightened
reaction by the actor in order to shoot the frightened reaction of the person
portrayed is quite appropriate to film. No actor can demand, during the shoot,
to have an overview of the context in which his own performance stands. The
demand that a performance be delivered without direct experiential contact
to a situation that is not subject to the rules of the game is common to all tests,
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athletic as well as cinematic. Asta Nielsen occasionally demonstrated this in an
impressive way. During a break at the studio—a film based on Dostoevsky’s
Idiot was being shot—Asta Nielsen, who was playing Aglaya, stood in conver-
sation with a friend. They were about to start one of the main scenes: Aglaya
sees Prince Myshkin passing by with Nastassya Filippovna, and her eyes fill
with tears. Asta Nielsen, who had rejected all her friend’s compliments during
their conversation, suddenly saw the actress playing Nastassya walking back
and forth, devouring her breakfast at the back of the studio. “Look, that’s what I
call movie acting,” said Nielsen to her visitor, looking at him with eyes that had
filled with tears at the sight of her colleague, as the coming scene called for—
without so much as bending a brow.
The technological demands made on the film actor are different from those
made on the stage actor. Movie stars are almost never outstanding stage actors.
It is mostly second- or third-class actors for whom film has opened the way to a
great career. And, conversely, it has seldom been the best movie actors who have
attempted to move from film to stage—an attempt, moreover, that has usually
failed. (These circumstances lie in the particular nature of film, in which it is
much less important that the actor represents someone else before the audience
than that he represents himself in front of the apparatus.) The typical film actor
plays only himself. He stands in contrast to the mime as a type. This circum-
stance limits his usefulness on stage, but increases it to an extraordinary degree
in film. For the film star addresses his audience above all in that he appears to
open to them out of himself the possibility of “joining the filming.” The notion
that one could be reproduced by the apparatus is an enormous attraction for
today’s humans. Bobby-soxers, to be sure, used to dream of going on stage. The
dream of being filmed, however, has two great advantages. First, the dream is
more likely to be fulfilled because film consumes many more actors than does
the stage, because, in film, every actor plays only himself. And second, the
dream is bolder because the idea of seeing one’s own appearance and one’s own
voice disseminated on a mass basis makes the glow of the great stage actor pale
by comparison.
[12.]
The change in the mode of exhibition brought about by reproduction technology
also makes itself noticeable in politics. The crisis of democracies can be under-
stood as a crisis in the conditions governing the exhibition of politicians.
Democracies exhibit the politician directly, in person, before elected represen-
tatives. The parliament is his public. But innovations in recording equipment
now enable the speaker to be heard by an unlimited number of people while he
is speaking and to be seen by an unlimited number shortly afterward. This means
that priority is given to the engagement of the politician before the recording
equipment. Parliaments are becoming depopulated at the same time as theaters.
Radio and film are changing not only the function of the professional actor but,
equally, the function of those who, like the politician, represent themselves in
front of them. The direction of this change is the same for the film actor and the
politician, regardless of their different specialized tasks. It seeks to attain the
exhibitability of testable, readily comprehensible performances under certain
social conditions, just as sports first called for such exhibition under certain nat-
ural conditions. This demands a new form of selection—selection before an appa-
ratus—from which the champion, the star, and the dictator emerge as victors.
[13.]
It is inherent in the technology of film, as of sports, that everyone who witnesses
these exhibited performances does so as a quasi-expert. Anyone who has
listened to a group of newspaper boys leaning on their bicycles and discussing
the outcome of a bicycle race will have an inkling of this. In the case of film, the
newsreel demonstrates unequivocally that any individual can be in a position
to be filmed. But that possibility is not enough. Any person today can lay c l a i m
to being filmed. This claim can best be clarified by considering the historical sit-
uation of writing today. For centuries it was in the nature of writing that a small
number of writers confronted many thousands of readers. This began to change
toward the end of the past century. With the enormous extension of the press,
which constantly made new political, religious, scientific, professional, and
local journals available to readers, an increasing number of readers—in isolated
cases, at first—turned into writers. It began with the space set aside for “letters
to the editor” in the daily press and has now reached a point where there is
hardly a European engaged in the work process who could not, in principle,
find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other an account of a work expe-
rience, a complaint, a report, or something of the kind. Thus, the distinction
between author and public is about to lose its fundamental character. The dif-
ference becomes functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment, the
reader is ready to become a writer. As an expert—which he has had to become
in any case in a highly specialized work process, even if only in some minor
capacity—the reader gains access to authorship. Work itself is given a voice.
And the ability to describe a job in words now forms part of the expertise
needed to carry it out. Literary competence is no longer founded on specialized
higher education but on polytechnic training, and thus is common property.
All this can readily be applied to film, where shifts that in writing took place
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over centuries have occurred in a decade. In cinematic practice—above all, in
Russia—this shift has already been occasionally realized. Some of the actors
taking part in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray
themselves—and primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe today,
the capitalist exploitation of film obstructs the human being’s legitimate claim
to being reproduced. The claim is also obstructed, incidentally, by unemploy-
ment, which excludes large masses from production—the process in which
their primary entitlement to be reproduced would lie. Under these circum-
stances, the film industry has an overriding interest in stimulating the involve-
ment of the masses through illusionary displays and ambiguous speculations.
This has been particularly successful with women. To this end it has set in
motion an immense publicity machine, in the service of which it has placed the
careers and love lives of the stars; it has organized polls; it has held beauty con-
tests. All this in order to distort in a corrupt manner the original and justified
interest of the masses in film—an interest in understanding themselves and
therefore their class. Thus, the same is true of film capital in particular as of
fascism in general: an irrefutable urge toward new social opportunities is
being clandestinely exploited in the interests of a property-owning minority. For
this reason alone, the expropriation of film capital is an urgent demand for the
proletariat.
Every highly developed art form stands at the intersection of three lines of.
development. First, technology is working toward a particular form of art.
Before film appeared, there were little books of photos that could be made to flit
past the viewer under the pressure of the thumb, presenting a boxing match or
a tennis match; then there were coin-operated peep boxes in the arcades, with
image sequences kept in motion by the turning of a handle. Second, traditional
art forms, at certain stages in their development, strain laboriously for effects
that later are effortlessly achieved by new art forms. Before film became estab-
lished, dadaist performances sought to stir in their audiences reactions which
Chaplin then elicited more naturally. Third, inconspicuous social changes often
foster a change in reception that benefits only the new art form. Before film had
started to create its public, images (which were no longer motionless) were
received by an assembled audience in the Kaiserpanorama.4 Such a public
existed of course even at the painting salons, yet their interior furnishings were
not capable—like those in a theater—of organizing it. In the Kaiserpanorama,
on the other hand, seats were provided whose distribution before the various
stereoscopes promised to organize a multiplicity of viewers of images. In a
painting salon, emptiness can be pleasant; in a Kaiserpanorama, this is no longer
the case, and in the cinema not for all the money in the world. And yet in the
Kaiserpanorama each individual has his own image—as is usually the case in
the painting salon. The dialectic of this matter finds expression precisely here:
shortly before the viewing of an image experiences its dialectical reversal
[Umschlag] in film and becomes a collective viewing, the principle of the view-
ing of an image by an individual emerges with a new clarity, much as had the
observation of the divine image by the priest in the holy of holies.
[14.]
The shooting of a film, especially a sound film, offers a hitherto unimaginable
spectacle. It presents a process in which it is impossible to assign a single view-
point from which the film apparatus that is not part of the action being filmed—
the lighting units, the technical crew, and so forth—would not fall in the field
of vision of the spectator (unless the alignment of the spectator’s pupil coin-
cided with that of the camera, which, as it were, encroaches upon the actors).
This circumstance, more than any other, makes any resemblance between a
scene in a film studio and one onstage superficial and irrelevant. In principle,
the theater includes a position from which the action on the stage cannot easily
be detected as an illusion. There is no such position where a film is being shot.
The illusory nature of film is of the second degree; it is the result of editing. That
is to say: In the film studio the apparatus has penetrated so deeply into reality
that a pure view of that reality, free of the foreign body of the apparatus, is the
result of a technological procedure peculiar to it—namely, the shooting by
the specially adjusted camera and the assembly of that shot with others of the
same kind. The apparatus-free aspect of reality has here become artifice, and
the vision of unmediated reality the Blue Flower in the land of technology.
This state of affairs, which contrasts so sharply with that which obtains in
the theater, can be compared even more instructively to the situation in painting.
Here we have to pose the question: How does the camera operator compare with
the painter? In answer to this, it will be helpful to consider the concept of the
operator as it is familiar to us from surgery. The surgeon represents one pole
in an order; at the other stands the magician. The attitude of the magician, who
heals a sick person by a laying-on of hands, differs from that of the surgeon,
who makes an intervention in the patient. The magician maintains the natural
distance between himself and the person treated; more precisely, he reduces it
only slightly by laying on his hands, but increases it greatly by his authority. The
surgeon proceeds in the reverse manner: he greatly diminishes the distance
from the patient by penetrating the patient’s body and increases it only slightly
by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs. In short: unlike the
magician (traces of whom are still found in the general practitioner), the surgeon
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abstains at the decisive moment from confronting his patient person to person;
instead, he penetrates the patient by operating. —Magician is to surgeon as
painter is to cinematographer. The painter observes in his work a natural dis-
tance from the given [Gegebenen], whereas the cinematographer penetrates
deeply into the tissue of reality [Gegebenheit]. The images that each of them
carry away differ enormously. The painter’s is a total image, whereas that of the
cinematographer is fragmentary, its manifold parts being assembled according
to a new law. Hence, the presentation of reality in film is incomparably the more
significant for people of today since it provides the equipment-free aspect of
reality they are entitled to demand from art and does so precisely on the basis
of the most intensive interpenetration of reality with the apparatus.
[15.]
The technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses
to art. The extremely backward attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into
a highly progressive reaction to Chaplin. The progressive attitude is character-
ized by an immediate, intimate fusion of pleasure in seeing and experiencing
with an attitude of expert appraisal. Such a fusion is an important social index.
As is clearly seen in the case of painting, the more reduced the social impact of
an art form, the more widely criticism and enjoyment of it diverge in the pub-
lic. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, while the truly new is criticized
with aversion. Not so in the cinema. The decisive reason for this is that nowhere
more than in the cinema are the reactions of individuals, which together make
up the massive reaction of the audience, determined by the imminent concen-
tration of reactions into a mass. No sooner are these reactions manifest than they
regulate one another. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting
has always exerted a valid claim to be viewed primarily by a single person or by
a few. The simultaneous viewing of paintings by a large audience, as happens
in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis in painting, a crisis
triggered not only by photography but, in a relatively independent way, by the
artwork’s claim to the attention of the masses.
Painting cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception, as
architecture has always been able to do, as the epic poem could do at one time,
and as film is able to do today. And although direct conclusions about the social
role of painting cannot be drawn from this fact alone, it does have a strongly
adverse social effect whenever painting is led by special circumstances,
as if against its nature, to confront the masses directly. In the churches and
monasteries of the Middle Ages, and at the princely courts of the sixteenth, sev-
enteenth, and eighteenth centuries, the collective reception of paintings took
place not simultaneously but in a manifoldly mediated way. If that has changed,
the change testifies to the special conflict in which painting has become enmeshed
in the course of the previous century by the technological reproducibility of the
image. And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses
in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of
organizing and regulating their response. It would certainly have required a
scandal in order for the public to manifest its judgment openly. In other words:
the open manifestation of the judgment of the public would have produced a
scandal. Thus, the same public that reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy
inevitably displays a backward attitude toward surrealism.
[16.]
Among the social functions of film, the most important is to establish equilib-
rium between human beings and the apparatus. Film achieves this goal not only
in terms of man’s presentation of himself to the camera but also in terms of his
representation of his environment by means of this apparatus. On the one hand,
film furthers insight into the inevitabilities governing our lives by its use of
close-ups from their inventory, by its accentuation of hidden details in familiar
objects, and by its exploration of commonplace milieus through the ingenious
guidance of the camera; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of a vast and
unsuspected field of play [Spielraum]. Our bars and city streets, our offices and
furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories seemed to close relent-
lessly around us. Then came film and exploded this prison-world with the
dynamite of the split second, so that now we can set off calmly on journeys of
adventure among its far-flung debris. With the close-up, space expands; with
slow motion, movement is extended. Clearly, it is another nature which speaks
to the camera as compared to the eye. Different above all in the sense that a
space informed by human consciousness gives way to a space informed by the
unconscious. Whereas it is a commonplace that, for example, we have some
idea what is involved in the act of walking (if only in general terms), we have no
idea at all what happens during the split second when a person actually takes a
step. We are familiar with the movement of picking up a cigarette lighter or a
spoon but know almost nothing of what really goes on between hand and metal,
and still less how this varies with different moods. This is where the camera
comes into play, with its many resources for swooping and rising, disrupting
and isolating, stretching or compressing a sequence, enlarging or reducing an
object. It is through the camera that we first discover the optical unconscious,
just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis.
Moreover, these two types of unconscious are intimately linked. For in most
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cases the diverse aspects of reality captured by the film camera lie outside only
the normal spectrum of sense impressions. Many of the deformations and
stereotypes, transformations and catastrophes that can assail the world of opti-
cal perception [Gesichtswahrnehmung]5 in films afflict the actual world in
psychoses, hallucinations, and dreams. Thanks to these capacities of the cam-
era, therefore, the individual perceptions of the psychotic or the dreamer can be
appropriated by the collective perception of the audience. The ancient truth
expressed by Heraclitus, that those who are awake have a world in common
while each sleeper has a world of his own, has been invalidated by film—and, to
be sure, less by depicting the dream world itself than by creating figures of col-
lective dream, such as the globe-encircling Mickey Mouse. If one considers the
dangerous tensions which technology and its consequences have engendered
in the masses—tensions that at critical stages take on a psychotic character—
one also has to recognize that this same technologization [Technisierung] has
created the possibility of psychic immunization against such mass psychoses.
It does so by means of certain films in which the forced development of sadistic
fantasies or masochistic delusions can prevent their natural and dangerous mat-
uration in the masses. Collective laughter is one such preemptive and healing
outbreak of mass psychosis. The enormous number of grotesque events con-
sumed in films today is a graphic indication of the dangers threatening mankind
from the repressions implicit in civilization. American slapstick comedies and
Disney films trigger a therapeutic demolition of the unconscious. Their fore-
runner was the eccentric. He was the first to be at home in the new fields of play
opened up by film—the first occupant of the newly built house. This is the con-
text in which Chaplin takes on historical significance.
[17.]
It has always been one of the primary tasks of art to create a demand whose hour
of full satisfaction has not yet come. The history of every art form has critical
periods in which the particular form strains after effects which can be easily
achieved only with a changed technical standard—that is to say, in a new art form.
The excesses and crudities of art which thus result, particularly in the so-called
periods of decadence, actually emerge from the core of its richest historical
energies. In recent years, dadaism has amused itself with such barbarisms. Only
now is its impulse recognizable: Dadaism attempted to produce with the means
of painting (or literature) the effects which the public today seeks in film.
Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demand will overshoot its
target. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values so char-
acteristic of film in favor of more significant aspirations—of which, to be sure,
it was unaware in the form described here. The dadaists attached much less
importance to the commercial usefulness of their artworks than to the useless-
ness of those works as objects of contemplative immersion. They sought to
achieve this uselessness not least by the thorough degradation of their material.
Their poems are “word-salad” containing obscene exclamations and every
imaginable kind of linguistic refuse. Exactly the same is true of their paintings,
on which they mounted buttons or train tickets. What they achieved by such
means was a ruthless annihilation of the aura in every object they produced,
which they branded as a reproduction through the very means of its production.
Before a painting by Arp or a poem by August Stramm, it is impossible to take
time for concentration and evaluation, as one can before a painting by Derain or
a poem by Rilke. Contemplative immersion—which, as the bourgeoisie degen-
erated, became a breeding ground for asocial behavior—is here opposed by dis-
traction [Ablenkung] as a variant of social behavior. The form of social behavior
provoked by dada is: to take offense. Dadaist manifestations actually guaranteed
a quite vehement distraction by making artworks the center of scandal. One
demand had above all to be satisfied: to outrage the public. From an alluring
visual composition or an enchanting fabric of sound, the dadaists turned the art-
work into a projectile. It jolted the viewer and was thus ready to win back for
the present day the tactical [taktisch]6 quality that is indispensable for art in the
great periods of historical change.
Dadaism gave new life to the notion that everything perceived and present to
the senses is something that jabs out at us—which is the formula of dream
perception and, at the same time, the tactical side of artistic perception.
Dadaism thereby fostered the demand for film, since the distracting element in
film is also primarily tactical, being based on successive changes of scene and
focus which have a jerking effect on the spectator. Film has freed the physical
shock effect—which dadaism had kept wrapped, as it were, inside the moral
shock effect—from this wrapping. In its most progressive works, above all in
Chaplin, film united both shock effects on a new level.
Let us compare the screen [Leinwand ] on which a film unfolds with the
canvas [Leinwand ] on which a painting is to be found. The image on the film
screen changes, whereas the image on the canvas does not. The painting invites
the viewer to contemplation: before it, he can give himself up to his train of
associations. Before a film image, he cannot do so. No sooner has he seen it than
it has already changed. It cannot be fixed on, neither as we fix on a painting nor
on something real. The train of associations in the person contemplating it is
immediately interrupted by changing images. This constitutes the shock effect
of film, which, like all shock effects, seeks to be absorbed through heightened
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presence of mind. Film is the art form corresponding to the pronounced threat
to life in which people live today. It corresponds to profound changes in the
apparatus of apperception—changes that are experienced on the scale of private
existence by each passerby in big city traffic, and on the scale of world history
by each fighter against the present social order.
[18.]
The masses are a matrix from which all customary behavior toward works of art
is today emerging newborn. Quantity has been transformed into quality: the
greatly increased mass of participants has produced a different kind of partici-
pation. The fact that this new mode of participation first appeared in a disrep-
utable form should not mislead the observer. The masses are criticized for
seeking distraction [Zerstreuung] in the work of art, whereas the art lover sup-
posedly approaches it with concentration. In the case of the masses, the artwork
is seen as an occasion for entertainment; in the case of the art lover, it is con-
sidered an object of devotion. This calls for closer examination. Distraction and
concentration form an antithesis, which may be formulated as follows. A person
who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it; he enters into the work,
just as, according to legend, a Chinese painter entered his completed painting
while beholding it. By contrast, the distracted masses absorb the work of art into
themselves. Their waves lap around it; they encompass it with their tide. This
is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always offered the
prototype of an artwork that is received in a state of distraction and through the
collective. The laws of architecture’s reception are highly instructive.
Buildings have accompanied human existence since primeval times. Many
art forms have come into being and passed away. Tragedy begins with the
Greeks, is extinguished along with them, and is revived centuries later.
The epic, whose origin lies in the early days of the tribes, dies out in Europe at
the end of the Renaissance. Easel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and
nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter
is permanent. Architecture has never had fallow periods. Its history is longer
than that of any other art, and its effect ought to be made present in any attempt
to account for the relationship of the masses to the work of art according to its
historical function.
Buildings are received in a twofold manner: by use and by perception. Or,
better: tactilely [taktisch] and optically. There is at present no concept for such
reception so long as one imagines it according to the kind of aggregate reception
that is typical, for example, of a traveler before a famous building. On the tac-
tile side, there is no counterpart to what contemplation is on the optical side.
Tactile reception comes about not only by way of attention but also by way of
habit. The latter largely determines even the optical reception of architecture,
which originally takes the form less of an attentive observation than of a casual
noticing. Under certain circumstances, this form of reception shaped by archi-
tecture acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus
of perception at historical turning points cannot be accomplished solely by
optical means—that is, by way of contemplation. They are mastered gradually—
guided by tactile reception—through habit.
Even the distracted person can form habits. What is more, the ability to master
certain tasks in a state of distraction first proves that their accomplishment has
become habitual. The sort of distraction that is provided by art represents a
covert measure of the extent to which it has become possible to perform new
tasks of apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to evade such
tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important tasks wherever it is
able to mobilize the masses. It does so currently in film. Reception in distrac-
tion—the sort of reception which is increasingly noticeable in all areas of art
and is a symptom of profound changes in perception—finds in the cinemas its
central place. And there, where the collective seeks distraction, the tactically
[taktisch] dominant element that rules over the regrouping of apperception is
by no means lacking. It finds its more originary form in architecture. Yet noth-
ing more clearly betrays the violent tensions of our time than the fact that this
tactically dominant element asserts itself in optics itself. And precisely this
occurs in film through the shock effect of its image sequences. In this respect,
too, film proves to be the most important subject matter, at present, for the theory
of perception that the Greeks called aesthetics.
[19.]
The increasing proletarianization of present-day man and the increasing for-
mation of masses are two sides of the same process. Fascism attempts to orga-
nize the newly arisen proletarian masses while leaving intact the production
and property relations which they strive to abolish. It sees its salvation in granting
expression to the masses—but on no account granting them rights. One should
note here, especially with regard to the newsreel, whose significance for propa-
ganda purposes can hardly be overstated, that mass reproduction is especially
suited to the reproduction of the masses. In great ceremonial processions, giant
rallies and mass sporting events, and in war, all of which are now fed into the
recording apparatus, the masses come face to face with themselves. This process,
whose significance need hardly be emphasized, is closely bound up with the
development of reproduction, or as the case may be, recording technologies. In
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general, mass movements are more clearly apprehended by the camera than by
the eye. A bird’s-eye view best captures assemblies of hundreds of thousands.
And even when this perspective is no less accessible to the human eye than to
the camera, the image formed by the eye cannot be enlarged in the same way as
a photograph. This is to say that mass movements, and above all war, are a form of
human behavior especially suited to the apparatus. The masses have a r i g h t
to changed property relations; fascism seeks to give them e x p r e s s i o n
in keeping these relations unchanged. The logical outcome of fascism is an aes-
theticizing of political life. With D’Annunzio, decadence made its entry into
political life: with Marinetti, futurism; and with Hitler, the Schwabing tradition.7
All efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in o n e point. That one point is
war. War, and only war, makes it possible to set a goal for mass movements on
the grandest scale while preserving traditional property relations. That is how
the situation presents itself in political terms. In technological terms it can be
formulated as follows: only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s tech-
nological resources while maintaining property relations. It goes without saying
that the fascist glorification of war does not make use of these arguments.
Nevertheless, a glance at such glorification is instructive. In Marinetti’s mani-
festo for the colonial war in Ethiopia, we read: “For twenty-seven years, we
Futurists have rebelled against the idea that war is anti-aesthetic. . . . We there-
fore state: . . . War is beautiful because—thanks to its gas masks, its terrifying
megaphones, its flame throwers, and light tanks—it establishes man’s domin-
ion over the subjugated machine. War is beautiful because it inaugurates the
dreamed-of metallization of the human body. War is beautiful because it
enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is
beautiful because it combines gunfire, barrages, cease-fires, scents, and the fra-
grance of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new
architectures, like those of armored tanks, geometric squadrons of aircraft,
spirals of smoke from burning villages, and much more. . . . Poets and artists of
Futurism, . . . remember these principles of an aesthetic of war, that they may
illuminate . . . your struggles for a new poetry and a new sculpture!”
This manifesto has the merit of clarity. Consideration of the question it poses
deserves to pass from the aesthete to the dialectician. To the dialectician, the
aesthetic of modern warfare appears as follows: if the natural use of productive
forces is impeded by the property system, then the increase in technological
means, in speed, in sources of energy will press toward an unnatural use. This is
found in war, and the destruction caused by war furnishes proof that society was
not mature enough to make technology its organ, that technology was not suffi-
ciently developed to master the elemental forces of society. The most horrifying
features of imperialist war are determined by the discrepancy between the enor-
mous means of production and their inadequate use in the process of production
(in other words, by unemployment and the lack of markets). Imperialist war is a
slave revolt on the part of technology, which demands repayment in “human
material” for the natural material society has denied it. Instead of deploying
power stations across the land, society deploys manpower in the form of armies.
Instead of promoting air traffic, it promotes traffic in shells. And in gas warfare
it has found a new means of abolishing the aura.
“Fiat ars—pereat mundus,” says fascism, expecting from war, as Marinetti
admits, the artistic gratification of a sense perception altered by technology. This
is evidently the consummation of l’art pour l’art. Humankind, which once, in
Homer, was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become
one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience
its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing
of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art.
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Benjamin | The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility [First Version] 37
Notes
Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), 431–469. © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 2009. Translated by Michael
W. Jennings based on earlier versions translated by Edmund Jephcott and Harry Zohn and edited
by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Editorial insertions are marked by brackets. All end-
notes are those of the editors.
1. This neologism is necessary; without it, two things are lost: first, the link to the idea of the
exhibition value of the artwork; second, the link to the suffix of the titular term “reproducibility.”
See Samuel Weber, Benjamin’s -abilities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
2. In French in the original.
3. In French in the original.
4. The Kaiserpanorama (Imperial Panorama) was located in a Berlin arcade. It consisted of a
dome-like apparatus that presented stereoscopic views to customers seated around it. See the sec-
tion titled “Kaiserpanorama” in Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood around 1900, in Selected Writings,
vol. 3, 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press,
2002), 346–347.
5. With the term Gesichtswahrnehmung—analogous to expressions like Tastwahrnehmung
(tactile perception) and Gehörswahrnehmung (acoustic perception)—Benjamin appropriates a
concept widely used in the field of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century “physiological
psychology.”
6. The German word taktisch, employed here and throughout sections 17 and 18 of the essay’s
first version, poses an irresolvable crux for the translation of Benjamin’s text because it contains
a semantic ambiguity that cannot be reproduced by any single English term. Seen in light of the
essay’s historical contexts, the word taktisch can be read as referring (1) to the field of military
“tactics” and the related avant-garde idea of a “tactically” reoriented aesthetics, and (2) to art
historian Alois Riegl’s (1858–1905) notion of a taktische form of artistic composition, which
represents the “tactile” qualities of objects by optical means. Unlike previous translations of
Benjamin’s artwork essay, which exclusively render the word taktisch as “tactile,” the translation
presented here shifts between the two English terms tactical and tactile, depending on which of
the two meanings takes relative precedence at any given point in Benjamin’s text. For a more
detailed discussion of the word taktisch and its particular significance in the artwork essay, see
the paper by Tobias Wilke in this issue of the journal.
7. Schwabing is a district in Munich; it became famous as a bohemian quarter during the reign
of Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria (1886–1912), when artists, writers, and intellectuals such as
Hugo Ball, Stefan George, Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas Mann, Gabriele Münter, and Rainer Maria
Rilke lived and worked there.
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