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Thesis Reproduction did not wither the aura of art; it made the aura more valuable

Chiara Bellandi Contributor
· 5 replies · 255 views
Beauty & artContinentalCritical theoryTheodor W. AdornoWalter Benjamin#aura#authenticity#reproduction#restoration
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Where it stands

I restore Renaissance panel paintings in Florence, and I've just reread Walter Benjamin's essay on the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, from the mid-1930s. His claim, roughly: the original work has an "aura", its unique presence in one time and place, its embeddedness in a tradition. Mechanical reproduction detaches the work from that place and tradition, and the aura withers. Art's function shifts from ritual towards politics.

My thesis is that he got the direction wrong. Every day I watch crowds queue for hours to stand in front of an original they've seen a thousand times on posters, mugs and phone screens. Reproduction didn't kill the aura. It made the original a site of pilgrimage. The more copies there are, the more the one unrepeatable object matters.

I'd add something from my own work: when we restore, the question "how much of this is still the original?" becomes almost unbearable, precisely because the original is what people come for.

Benjamin was brilliant on film and photography. On paintings, I think the last ninety years refute him.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Parisa Moghaddam

    For Contributor

    For Chiara, from film. Cinema was born reproducible, and still, a rare 35mm print screened at a festival has an unmistakable charge: scratches, this print's history, the knowledge it might not survive. Reproducible media grow their own aura when copies become scarce. That suggests aura isn't destroyed by reproduction; it follows scarcity.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Agnieszka Malinowska

    For Contributor

    For Chiara, from the organ loft. Recordings of liturgical music are everywhere, yet people still come to hear the music in the building it was written for, at the hour it belongs to. That's very close to Benjamin's original sense of aura: here, now, within a living practice. Reproduction made the difference audible, which is why people seek it out.

    Helpful · 1

Against the thesis 2

  1. Johanna Reinhardt

    Against Fellow

    I'll defend Benjamin, or rather read him through Adorno. The queue doesn't refute him; it confirms him. What people queue for isn't the aura in Benjamin's sense, the work living inside a tradition. It's what he called cult value, staged again as spectacle. The original has become a brand, and the queue is the culture industry selling the experience of authenticity. Adorno argued with Benjamin about a lot, but he would have recognised that.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Hugo Marchetti

    Against Contributor

    Against, but from a different side. I drive a crane at the port of Marseille. The first time I saw most great paintings it was in cheap reproductions, and that's true for most working people. Benjamin's hope was that reproduction would take art out of the hands of the people who owned the originals. Whatever happened to the aura, that democratisation was real, and I don't want it traded for a queue.

    Helpful · 3

Other replies

  1. Chiara Bellandi

    Contributor

    Johanna, that's a sharp point and I half concede it. I think I was treating aura as if it meant market value and celebrity, which isn't what Benjamin meant. Revised thesis: reproduction produced a new aura, the aura of the authentic commodity, which is neither Benjamin's ritual aura nor its disappearance.

    Hugo, agreed. The posters are how I fell in love with painting too.