Reading Response: Walter Benjamin

After reading Benjamin’s article, I found the word ‘authenticity’ quite inspiring. As Benjamin has defined, the authenticity of an object is the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on. An alternative way to represent ‘authenticity’ is to understand the here and now of the artwork.

From my perspective, the here and now refers to the specific space and time point of the artwork respectively. Such properties will change across time  in that the artist created his/her artwork at certain time and certain location, which enables the artist to cultivate specific emotions and meanings into that piece of work. Although later generations might use various ways, like woodcut and lithography, to reproduce the artwork and even do better in some details, they could hardly reproduce the deep meaning of the work, which underlies the core of it. When admiring the artwork, what it conveys speaks louder than what it demonstrates.

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1 thought on “Reading Response: Walter Benjamin

  1. Putri Santoso says:

    Benjamin also refers to authenticity as “aura”, and he definitely concerned about how it would be affected by modernisation and the reproduction of artworks. Although the reproduction of meaning behind the artwork might not be possible, Benjamin also argues how “… as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it is based on a different practice: politics” (p. 25) and follows on the two values behind the artwork: the cult value and the exhibition value. The artwork’s meaning might fall under the “cult value”, while how it is appreciated by later generation reflects its “exhibition value”.

    From Benjamin’s perspective, technological reproducibility has threatened to devalue the artwork, and hence devalue its relationship with its artist and audience. His point on how the “[Q]uantity has been transformed into quality: the greatly increased mass of participants has produced a different kind of participation” (p.39) was then reinforced by his argument on “distraction and concentration” (p.39-40) where “[A] person who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it; … the distracted masses absorb the work of art into themselves” (p.40).

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