Walter Benjamin

We can sum up all these failings by going back to the notion of Aura to say: In the age of techniques of reproduction, what is harmed in the work of art is its aura. This process is symptomatic: its significance goes beyond the artistic domain. We could say, in general, that techniques of reproduction detach the object reproduced from tradition. These techniques, by increasing the number of copies, substitute a phenomenon of mass production for an event that occurred only once. By allowing the reproduction to be seen or heard under any condition, the techniques give the reproduction a current relevance. These two processes lead to a weakening of the transmitted reality, a weakening of tradition, which is the counterpart of the crisis currently affecting humanity: they are closely linked to the mass movements of today.

The uniqueness of the work of art is identical to its integration in the group of relationships called tradition. This tradition is itself undoubtedly a living reality, and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, belonged to another tradition and was, for the Greeks, an object of worship, whereas the clergy of the Middle Age saw it as an evil idol. But there was a common element in these contradictions: Both the Greeks and the medievals saw Venus as unique, and felt her aura. In its beginnings, worship expressed the inclusion of the work of art in the group of traditional relationships. We know that the earliest works of art were made for ritual, magical first, then religious. Now, it is a fact of decisive importance that a work of art can only lose its aura if there remains in it no trace of its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art is based upon this ritual that originally was the basis of its ancient usefulness. However great the number of intermediaries, this fundamental link is still recognizable as a secularized ritual through the cult of beauty, even in its most profane forms. The cult of beauty, born during the Renaissance and predominant over the course of three centuries, still holds today the recognizable mark of its origins, in spite of the first serious threat to its existence. When the first truly revolutionary reproduction technique, photography, contemporary to the beginnings of socialism, appeared, artists felt the approach of a crisis, which no one, one hundred years later, can deny. They reacted by professing "art for art's sake," that is, the theology of art. This doctrine led directly to a negative theology: A "pure" art was created that refused not only to play any essential role, but to subject itself to the conditions that an objective project always imposes . . .

In order to study the work of art in the age of techniques of reproduction, we must remain very aware of this group of relationships. They bring to light a fact that is truly decisive, one appearing for the first time in the history of the world: the emancipation of the work of art in relation to its parasitic existence as a part in ritual. More and more works of art are being made for express purpose of being reproduced.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility