WEEK 4: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - The Visually Impaired

The reading have risen many arguments in our group, we agreed that sometimes the writer makes perfect sense but he can also be wrong at some points. First, he talks about the reproduction of the work of art, which was very compelling with all forms of reproduction such as the Greek’s founding and stamping, pupils replicating artworks, the woodcut graphic, lithography, etc. In addition, the fact that “a work of art has always been reproducible” is very much controversial, we could get a poster of the Mona Lisa and it would be an exact replica or man-made crafts are built to look alike but there would still be some differences in details.

The work of art shifted greatly when the technique of reproduction entered, any original piece lost its history and value, it can be understood that the unique existence of one’s work of art is evaluated by its presence in time and space in history. However, the writer pointed out the lack of the reproduction is “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”, a replica or a copy could never have those features, simply because they are reproduced, they are made after the time of the original. This leads us to the term “aura”, as defined in the text, means “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be”, like a shadow of something in nature. Benjamin is talking about the loss of aura which means that mechanical work is replacing authentic work and devaluating traditional art work. The aura is the original and authentic art such as painting that is not reproduced by machine. For example, painting is an aura and photography is not because the image has been captured by a mechanical invention.

 Moreover, when he's specifically talking about architecture and stage, there's something incredibly true about that, maybe it's due to the placement of it, more than anything else. A stage play has an aura, because there's a distinct connection between the audience and the players, there's this sense of realism, which we don't have with film, because the actors can't see us, and we only see them and architecture has an aura because of the size and grandeur.

Furthermore, while talking about film on the last section, he says "the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one" as though there can't be any sort of deep thought or commentary put into film. He is entitled to the assumption that film is merely for the sake of distraction and art demands a sort of concentration, which seems redundant because art can also be viewed as a "distraction" while film takes "concentration". However, there are lots of frames that are going by so fast that the viewer don’t have enough time to think about each frame. The idea is that with machines everything gets easy, we don’t have to reflect on art, to think about it, or to paint.