* A Note on the Texts * Editors' Introduction I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art * The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version * Theory of Distraction * To the Planetarium * Garlanded Entrance * The Rigorous Study of Art * Imperial Panorama * The Telephone * The Author as Producer * Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century * Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian * Review of Sternberger's Panorama II. Script, Image, Script-Image * Attested Auditor of Books * This Space for Rent * The Antinomies of Allegorical Exegesis * The Ruin * Dismemberment of Language * Graphology Old and New III. Painting and Graphics * Painting and the Graphic Arts * On Painting, or Sign and Mark * A Glimpse into the World of Children's Books * Dream Kitsch * Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boetie * Chambermaids' Romances of the Past Century * Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head * Some Remarks on Folk Art * Chinese Paintings at the Bibliotheque Nationale IV. Photography * News about Flowers * Little History of Photography * Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography * Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle V. Film * On the Present Situation of Russian Film * Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz * Chaplin * Chaplin in Retrospect * Mickey Mouse * The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio * Journalism * A Critique of the Publishing Industry * The Newspaper * Karl Kraus * Reflections on Radio * Theater and Radio * Conversation with Ernst Schoen * Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio Play * On the Minute * Index
In wanting to be a great literary critic [Benjamin] discovered that he could only be the last great literary critic. ... He explained certain aspects of the modern with an authority that seventy years of unpredictable change have not vitiated. -- Frank Kermode Walter Benjamin's work, fragmentary and partly esoteric as it is, fully withstands a comparative measure, and surpasses any of its rivals in philosophic consequences. There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George Steiner In recent decades, Benjamin's essay on the work of art may have been quoted more often than any other single source in an astonishing range of areas -- from new-left media theory to cultural studies, from film and art history to visual culture, from the postmodern art scene to debates on the future of art, especially film, in the digital age. The antinomies and ambivalences in Benjamin's thinking, his efforts to explore the most extreme implications of opposing stances, are still invaluable for illuminating the contradictions in today's media environment. Anyone interested in the fate of art, perception, and culture in the industrialized world must welcome this collection of Benjamin's writings on media. -- Miriam Hansen This one-volume gathering of Benjamin's dialectical writing on media of all kinds, ranging from children's literature to cinema, has at its heart the second, most expansive version of his path-breaking essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.' Readers familiar only with partial versions of this piece, where Benjamin began to record the melancholy loss of aesthetic presence at the turn of the twentieth century, will find their understanding transformed-- for this second version, like all the essays and supplemental texts included here, explores a set of latent, utopian possibilities inherent in mechanical means of art-making. Benjamin, the visionary magus of particulars, reveals profoundly, and repeatedly, both the grounds and the consequences of our ever-changing image of the made world. -- Susan Stewart
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis. Michael W. Jennings is Professor of German, Princeton University. *Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Thomas Y. Levin is Associate Professor of German at , Princeton University.
Until recently, Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, The Work of Art in
the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, was available to
English-speaking readers only in the version that appeared in the
1968 collection Illuminations. Harvard’s new volume of the German
cultural critic’s writings on media offers as its title-piece an
earlier, edgier incarnation—the second of three composed between
1935 and 1939—in a superior translation… Throughout The Work of Art
in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, Benjamin’s
startling, often oblique language reveals his subjects from
unexpected angles… This volume amply demonstrates the keenness and
ingenuity of Benjamin’s intuitions at the dawn of modern media
culture.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Freshly translated (it used to be called ‘The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ which, although more lumberingly
Teutonic, has the virtue of evoking an image of robot sex) and
newly packaged with an assortment of his other ‘writings on media’
in a hipster-friendly paperback, Benjamin’s best-known work
is…well, as they say on Facebook, it’s complicated. Man, is it ever
complicated. The essay begins by describing the ways film and
photography have changed human perception. Benjamin argues that
because such exact simulacra of reality can be mass-distributed and
mass-consumed, we have a new, more distant relationship to
authentic reality—and he concludes that these changes in perception
clear a path for fascism. Not exactly cheerleadery, then. And while
it’s easy to be distracted by Benjamin’s dusty examples—Chaplin’s
films and Picasso’s paintings—and therefore lulled into thinking
he’s describing a different world…well, don’t be. Substitute blogs
and social-networking platforms and Twitter and YouTube and
Wikipedia for film and photography, and the nearly century-old
essay becomes a relevant, piercing alarm.
*Technology Review*
The editors and publisher of this volume deserve credit for
organizing its contents thematically rather than chronologically.
Such a format encourages readers to approach Benjamin’s work
discursively, thereby fostering a superior sense of the recurrent
ideas, themes, motifs and concepts that Benjamin employed time and
again.
*The Nation*
A juicy selection of [Benjamin’s] many short pieces on pop
culture.
*Seven Oaks*
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and
Other Writings on Media reflects Benjamin’s most salient thoughts
on media and on culture in general in their most realized form,
still maintaining an edge under the skin of everyone who reads it.
The visual arts morph into literature and theory and then back to
images, gestures and thought. Here the editors have situated this
essay as the cornerstone of a vast collection of writings that
demonstrates what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations
on media. He was so prescient, and mind you, Virginia, he was alive
only until 1940. We are now talking about 2008 and his work is not
just timely, but powerful, important, clairvoyant, and necessary.
This is the second and most daring version of the ‘Work of Art’
essay which tracks Benjamin’s observations on the production and
reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; on the
telephone, on children’s books, on Charlie Chaplin and so much
more. He was not a critic for the 20th century, he was a
theoretician for all time. This volume will probably become a text
for some classes, but it is an introduction, a force that must be
dealt with by anyone interested in culture, in the media, in the
arts, to debates on the digital age. He could explore implications
of these themes and be so prescient about what we are experiencing
today. Oh, if he were alive today, he would tell us about the
future, I am sure. This is a must for anyone who wants to be
introduced to Benjamin, or one who wants more and more of what he
has to say—and this one is thankfully in English.
*Umbrella*
In recent decades, Benjamin’s essay on the work of art may have
been quoted more often than any other single source in an
astonishing range of areas—from new-left media theory to cultural
studies, from film and art history to visual culture, from the
postmodern art scene to debates on the future of art, especially
film, in the digital age. The antinomies and ambivalences in
Benjamin’s thinking, his efforts to explore the most extreme
implications of opposing stances, are still invaluable for
illuminating the contradictions in today’s media environment.
Anyone interested in the fate of art, perception, and culture in
the industrialized world must welcome this collection of Benjamin’s
writings on media.
*Miriam Hansen*
In wanting to be a great literary critic [Benjamin] discovered that
he could only be the last great literary critic… He explained
certain aspects of the modern with an authority that seventy years
of unpredictable change have not vitiated.
*Frank Kermode*
Walter Benjamin’s work, fragmentary and partly esoteric as it is,
fully withstands a comparative measure, and surpasses any of its
rivals in philosophic consequences. There has been no more
original, no more serious critic and reader in our time.
*George Steiner*
This one-volume gathering of Benjamin’s dialectical writing on
media of all kinds, ranging from children’s literature to cinema,
has at its heart the second, most expansive version of his
path-breaking essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility.’ Readers familiar only with partial
versions of this piece, where Benjamin began to record the
melancholy loss of aesthetic presence at the turn of the twentieth
century, will find their understanding transformed—for this second
version, like all the essays and supplemental texts included here,
explores a set of latent, utopian possibilities inherent in
mechanical means of art-making. Benjamin, the visionary magus of
particulars, reveals profoundly, and repeatedly, both the grounds
and the consequences of our ever-changing image of the made
world.
*Susan Stewart*
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