Abstract

In 1936, Walter Benjamin published two important essays. The first and certainly the most celebrated is “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which considers the place of art in contemporary mass society.1 In this essay, Benjamin offers an account of art that emphasizes its origin in religion and ritual. We may think of the magnificent cave paintings that were discovered in Lascaux, the frescoes that filled churches in Renaissance Italy, and the correlative sense of art as an aspect of the sacred. Indeed, Benjamin argues that, until quite recently, the individual artwork has always possessed an “aura” insofar as it is unique and commands the viewer with its own aesthetic authority or status....