How Does The Work Of Walter Benjamin Help Us To Understand The Impact Of New Technologies On Art?

Glen Campey Cultural Studies DA209

Word Count: 3802

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 This essay looks at the effect that developments in technology have had on the world of art, using the work of Walter Benjamin, and in particular The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, to help understand these developments. Art will be examined from a creative perspective; its development commercially as an industry, and the resulting social implications. I will also touch upon Benjamins Marxist views1, and how these may have shaped his thoughts on this subject, along with other writers offering insight into art and society.

Benjamin begins The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction with a brief history or reproduction in art, stating that whilst art has always been reproduced, technological developments that have lead to mechanical reproduction processes are a very different thing altogether, with wide reaching implications. Before mechanical reproduction was available, a craftsman would imitate the processes carried out by the original artist, perhaps whilst learning from a master. There are historic cases of limited mass production of items, such as in Ancient Greece: Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced.2 Developments in printing became a means for text to be reproduced and distributed en masse, and reproduction of other mediums became available with engraving and etching in the Middle Ages, and then lithography in the early 19th Century, which permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market in large numbers (and) enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life3. Lithography would be replaced by photography a few decades later. These developments in technology brought the ability to reproduce images and distribute them to a far wider range of people; the skills required to take a photograph being far easier to attain than those required in
1 2 3 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p10, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p220, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p221, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 reproducing sketches or paintings. Additionally, the speed at which images could be produced was greatly increased, as the camera takes images far faster than a hand can draw, making for the basis of an industry, where the time taken to produce goods for sale is an important variable. Photography was also the forerunner to cinema: a development of the camera technology that produces moving images, and recording and reproduction of sounds became available from the end of the nineteenth century.

Around 1900, technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact on the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic process.4

Having the ability to mass produce art in short time, easily, and on a large scale has had a profound effect on the way that art has come to work. Instead of being simply a hobby, or a means of expression, art now offers the opportunity to provide a livelihood on the kind of scale not previously available to a manual craftsman, which is only thanks to the technology that makes its reproduction possible. In addition, the fact that a piece of art will eventually be available for consumption informs every stage of the creative process the question What will people like? being a constant distraction from what the piece could originally developed as. In his text Art Works as Commodity, John A Walker identifies this motivation behind art:

It is generally assumed that when artists make art they are motivated by the highest ideals (inner necessity, self-expression, the desire to comment politically, etc), hence they are not expected to admit I did it for the

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p221-222, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 money. Nonetheless, artists have to eat, and therefore making money from art may be one reasonable motive for making it.5

He goes on to say that the products of an artist are commodities on the open market, and that artists resemble small, independent manufacturers supplying luxury goods to a specialist market6. Walker uses Marxs definition for a commodity, which many of the writers I will be looking also touch upon the difference between use-value and exchange-value particularly:

Commodities have a double aspect: (1) they are articles of utility, physical objects existing outside of us possessing properties which satisfy human wants or needs of some sort; in short, they have use-values; and (2), they are depositories of value, that is, they can be exchanged for other commodities of equal value, or they can be exchanged for money; in short, they have exchange value.7

Whilst anything crafted by a human being would be considered to have a usevalue i.e. a specific task that it is purposed for, that art could be produced in order to market as a commodity would be capitalist thinking, especially with art, as there is a tendency for art to be seen as something from within that the artist has put something of himself into his work. Additionally, art as an exchange commodity provides means for profit from its resale in a Marxist worldview, this could be read as the bourgeoisie (or the current equivalent) profiting from the

JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 6 JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 7 JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 (using a definition from Marxs Das Capital)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 work of the proletariat workers. Marx wrote the following in The Communist Manifesto concerning commodities and the proletariat:

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed; a class of labourers who find work only as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.8

That the artist themselves could be seen as the commodity in this light speaks volumes as to the potential perception of the art industry. Theodore W. Adorno wrote extensively on this in The Culture Industry. He speaks as art commodities effecting exchange value in a very different way to non-cultural goods, as they provide the consumer with a different sense of a relationship with, or participation in the commodity. He argues that it is this appearance in turn which alone gives cultural goods their exchange value, although at the same time, having a very real sense of being a commodity, as they are produced for the market, and aimed at the market.9

He goes on to talk specifically about music in this context, stating that commercial and marketing value are overcoming any artistic value that may once have been there:

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p221-222, 1908, (New York Labor News Co., New York, USA) 9 Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p38, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 The more inexorably the principle of exchange value destroys use values for human beings, the more deeply does exchange value disguise itself as the object of enjoyment.10

Baltizis writes on the production of music: Digital technology made possible the use of one and the same machine for composing, writing down, processing, playback, and finally producing a complete musical product, ready to be sold.11 This points to technological developments meeting the demands of producers of music. Within the industry, having a concise equipment setup such as this has the economic benefits of saving on expenditure and space, for example. Conversely however, there is also the rise in demand by independent musicians making music from scratch in their own home and taking it to the point of producing and distributing their own copies. The most likely users of such technology would be amateur artists simply seeking a creative outlet. These are the artists treating their art purely as a hobby, or means to be expressive. However, professional artists seeking to avail themselves of association with a business, preferring to keep their work purely artistic rather than as an instrument for income generation may seek such independence. Such artists would likely subscribe to the following Jean Baudrillard view stated in Frith & Hornes Art Into Pop:

Once artistic autonomy is denied by market forces, then artistic experience is impossible. In becoming part of mass communication, aesthetic goods are drained of their meaning.12

10 11

Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p39, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK)

JSTOR: Alexandros G. Baltizis, Globilisation and Music Culture, Web Page, from the International Musicological Society, 2005 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25071251 12 Simon Frith & Howard Horne, Art Into Pop, p10, 1987, (Methuen & Co., London, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 Frith & Horne expound this assertion as the use-value of a commodity being lost to the aesthetic values that it holds: that is, that consumers are increasingly purchasing unneeded, and meaningless goods due to what happens to be popular or fashionable at any given time. Adorno wrote some particularly cynical views on this subject:

The masochistic mass culture is the necessary manifestation of almighty production itself. When the feelings seize on exchange value it is no mystical transubstantiation. It corresponds to the behaviour of the prisoner who loves his cell because he has been left nothing else to love. The sacrifice of individuality, which accommodates itself to the regularity of the successful, the doing of what everybody does, follows from the basic fact that in broad areas the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods.13

Both the Baudrillard and Adorno positions point to marketing and capitalism influencing society to the extent that the general public simply consume what they are shown, and that art in itself can no longer have any meaning or use so long as it is performed within an industry setting. Walker, however, contests that cultural commodities must meet some needs in the audience or public, otherwise they would not sell, hence, use-values cannot be dispensed with altogether.14

So far, we have seen that art is far easier to market in the age of mechanical reproduction, but it is the very fact that art is mass-produced and marketed which seems to rankle with critics. The differences between use value and exchange value are described by Benjamin as follows:

13 14

Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p40, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK)

JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out: with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of its work.15

Cult value here is the equivalent to the use value described by Marx. It follows that Benjamins argument requires art to have some cult significance in order to have any real function. The following statement suggests that this comes with an air of mysticism or otherness:

The essentially distant object is the unapproachable one. Unapproachability is indeed a major quality of the cult image. True to its nature, it remains distant, however close it may be.16

The suggestion is that a piece of authentic art leaves the consumer recognising something intrinsically other about the piece, whether that is through some prodigious display of talent, superior levels of imagination, or something else entirely. Adorno asserts a Beethoven symphony as a whole, spontaneously experienced, can never be appropriated17, suggesting a reliance upon the authentic experience to properly appreciate what Beethoven created that a recording of the piece cannot replace experiencing a full symphony orchestra in a concert hall. From later in the same chapter of The Culture Industry, he writes:

The tremor lives off the excess power which technology as a whole, along with the capital that stands behind it, exercises over every individual thing. This is what transcendence is in mass culture. The poetic mystery of the product, in which it is more than itself, consists in the fact that it

15 16 17

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p245, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p41, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 participates in the infinite nature of production and the reverential awe inspired by objectivity fits in smoothly with the schema of advertising. It is precisely this stress upon the mere fact of being which is supposed to be so great and strong that no subjective intention can alter it in any way and this stress corresponds to the true impotence of art in relation to society today that conceals the transfiguration against which all sober objectivity gestures.18

Walkers thoughts on authenticity in art as a commodity claim that the commodification of culture inevitably alters its character for the worse, for example, causing a loss of artistic integrity and quality, tending towards standardisation, pseudo-individualism, stereotypes, passive consumerism, etc, etc.19 This suggests that art being sold as a commodity is bereft of any real merit, and will need to be conformist in its nature in order to appeal to the public.

Patrik Wikstrm, in attempting to unravel what makes for authentic art, states:

To achieve authenticity, culture should be created by a symbol creator who is independent of any commercial pressure.20

This would appear initially to uphold the arguments we have already seen, as the suggestion remains that any involvement with commercial dealings lessens the authenticity involved in its creation. However, he goes on to say:

18 19

Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p63, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK)

JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 20 Patrik Wikstrm, The Music Industry: Music In The Cloud, p28, 2009, (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK)

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 A symbol creators primary driver has to be the joy, will or need to create for its own sake, independent of whether the product will be received by good reviews or commercial success.21 (Italics his)

This suggests that it is possible to earn a living from authentic creativity, just that in order for the art for retain its integrity, that commercial success should not be the motivating factor behind it. There is always tension between these two facets to art though: the desire to maintain artistic integrity usually manifested in the fear of selling-out, or the perception of doing so versus earning a living from art. Creative industries all hold this tension, and with the creation of commodities, success is usually judged by how much capital is generated, meaning that the art being produced needs to be well received. Benjamin identified this when saying To an ever greater degree, the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art produced for reproducibility.22 This would suggest a motivation for production that defies Wikstroms rationale for authentic art: art produced specifically to appeal to a market, and therefore be profitable. It is this kind of product which is usually seen as soulless.

Of course, anyone in a full-time creative profession will need to hold all these things in tension, and decide for himself how to approach the issue. One possible approach could be that taken by Andy Warhol, amongst others, where the function of art as a commodity is not shied away from, but embraced as a subject matter (Warhols One Dollar Bills, for example).23

Walker writes about life in the world of art before mechanical reproduction and selling work was a viable option:
21 Patrik Wikstrm, The Music Industry: Music In The Cloud, p29, 2009, (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK) 22 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) 23 JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167

Glen Campey DA209 June 2011

Before the development of a market in fine art objects, artists were retained by royalty and the aristocracy; often they were treated as superior household servants. Alternatively, artists were commissioned by the Church, Kings, Princes, rich merchants, guilds, and so forth such works were executed for particular patrons who wanted to possess and use the works in question, and for particular places (and) did not become commodities for sale in an open market.24

This points to a time of dependence upon ruling classes by artists. The need to survive means reliance on an income of some sort, whether this is through selling work, having income from separate employment (reducing the time available to be creative) or through the kind of patronage talked about by Walker above. The development of mechanical reproduction of art in many ways freed art from the grasp of the bourgeoisie: pieces art previously only available to be seen by a privileged few in galleries are now available to the masses to own in the form of prints and photography, any one can now obtain copies of recorded music where once it was only available to those able to attend live symphony concerts. Art, from having its roots in ritual and spiritual and religious mysticism is now the domain of the public, and the doctrine of art for arts sake25. And most significantly in this light, mechanical reproduction of art provides the means for an independently obtained income although it may still be easier to do so with the financial backing of those with existing capital - investment through corporate sponsorship and branding could be seen as the modern equivalent of aristocratic patronage. Socially though, at least For the first time in world history,

24

JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 25 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

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Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.26

Benjamin also talks through the revolutionary changes bought about as a result of reactionary attitudes in relation to progressive reactions. He differentiates these by the assertion that individual reactions are pre-determined by the mass audience response they are about to produce.27 In other words, works of art that are to be under the scrutiny of the public at large can no longer be received in the same way the individual is not permitted the same level of intimacy with the work in question. He relates that this is most applicable to film in todays culture, where cinema is the subject of much public discussion:

A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today.28

He further expands on this by discussing tension between concentration and absorption:

Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.29

Adorno had some thought on this subject to although they ran along the lines of mass produced commodity art needing to appeal to the lowest common
26 27 28 29 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p236-237, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p241, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

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Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 denominator in order to sell and therefore be successful. He argues that it is popular belief that good art is more about accurately representing an image or other piece of work, and that it is good quality that sets the benchmark. Imagination is devalued in art as an industry, he argues:

Any achievement of imagination, any expectation that imagination might of its own accord gather together the discrete elements of the real into its truth, is repudiated as an improper presumption. Imagination is replaced by a mechanically relentless control mechanism which determines whether the latest imago to be distributed really represents an exact, accurate and reliable reflection of the relevant item of reality.30

Good quality in art is usually regarded to be a purely subjective opinion, and it is this assertion that he answers this problem with that people who appreciate the integrity of art will appreciate imagination more than anything else.

Benjamin also touches on aspects of arts aura: that is, its ability to matter at a particular time and place:

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.31

It is now possible to copy, to a high standard, any pieces of classical visual art, and display it in ones living room. So this argument runs that the value of the work is diminished if not seen in its proper setting: The Mona Lisa doesnt have the same feel if a copy is seen rather than the original in The Louvre, or
30 31

Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, p63-64, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p222, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

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Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 Michaelangelos Sistine Chapel paintings outside of their home: his argument suggests that the sense of wonder associated with such pieces are strongly associated with the place that they are in. Mechanical reproduction simply cannot meet these criteria. The unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.32

Asides from location, there is also a feel of authenticity about original works that is absent from copies. In works from mediums in the age of mechanical reproduction, there is less of an issue with this, as there can seldom be master copies of works:

The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical and of course, not only technical reproducibility. Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis vis technical reproduction.33

Benjamin uses the example of photography to illustrate this point: the closest thing to an original copy on film is the negative, from which all other versions of an image are made. This is even more apparent with digital photography, as the original will simply be a data file, impossible to tell apart from any copies that are ever made. This is entirely at odds with classical paintings, where there can only be one true original, and any further copies will be simply reproductions or forgeries.

There is also the argument that having many copies of a work devalues it artistically, simply because there are many copies. As an analogy, we could
32 33

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p226, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p222, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

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Glen Campey DA209 June 2011 substitute art for money: printing more banknotes devalues the currency as there is so much more to go around. Simple economic principles teach us the relationship between supply, demand and price a commodity in abundant supply is less sought after, and less valued.

That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for unique existence.34

Art has been changed forever with the development of methods of mechanical reproduction. No artistic medium is free from these changes, whether visual painting having photographic prints made, music being mass-produced as MP3s, literature in printing presses, or casting moulds made of sculpture. Art has changed from being purely the domain of high culture, and is now subject to public scrutiny and consumption. It is hard to say whether these changes are for better or worse, as like opinions on art itself, any arguments are subject to personal opinions and definitions of what constitutes a good quality authentic piece of art. On one hand, art being in the public eye due to mass copying provides everyone the opportunity to experience it in one way or another, and this is good from the points of view of equality across classes, and the betterment of societys culture. Purist art fans would however argue that art itself is devalued by being transformed into a marketable force that the definitions of what constitutes good art have shifted from acts of creativity and have become simply an exercise in what can be sold. It is true that today, it is the artists who appeal to the largest sections of society who are most rewarded for their work, whilst those who are being truly authentic struggle to gain the same level of financial success. Theirs instead is the reward of reputation and accolade.
34 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (4th Edition), p223, 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK)

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The only conclusions that can be drawn are to say that each artist operating in the age of mechanical reproduction must consider these points and balance what he or she wishes to achieve, and why.

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Bibliography
Books Adorno, Theodore W., The Culture Industry, 1991, (Routledge, London, UK) Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations, (4th Edition) 1982, (The Chaucer Press, Suffolk, UK) Frith, Simon & Horne, Howard, Art Into Pop, 1987, (Methuen & Co., London, UK) Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manifesto, 1908, (New York Labor News Co., New York, USA) Wikstrm, Patrik, The Music Industry: Music In The Cloud, , 2009, (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK)

Web Pages JSTOR: John A. Walker, Art Works As Commodity, Web Page, from Circa Art Magazine, 1987 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25557167 JSTOR: Alexandros G. Baltizis, Globilisation and Music Culture, Web Page, from the International Musicological Society, 2005 (accessed 7th June 2011), available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25071251

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