"A work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility"(Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit) is an essay written in 1936 by Walter Benjamin.

In his work, Benjamin analyzes the transformation of works of art as physical objects in the context of the development of technologies for creating cultural phenomena. In his opinion, works of art began to lose their special aura. The cultural and ritual functions of a work of art have been replaced by political, practical and exhibition functions. Modern art entertains, while earlier art required concentration and immersion from the viewer.

Even the most perfect reproduction lacks the “here and now” of the original. An example is the theater. Previously, in order to see a performance, the viewer had to come to the theater and immerse himself in the surroundings. Reproduction allows you to transfer works of art beyond the scope of the situation accessible to the original. The same performance is now available not only in the theater, but also in the cinema. This, in turn, allows you to make movements to meet the public. Benjamin wrote: “The artistic skill of the stage actor is conveyed to the public by the actor himself; at the same time, the artistic skill of the film actor is conveyed to the public by the appropriate equipment.”

The actors' actions go through a number of tests. First, it is a movie camera that allows you to capture only successful takes. The movie camera itself allows you to choose better angles, showing the actor in a favorable light. Then, at the editing table, the material that is considered successful is edited into the finished film. Thus, unlike an actor on stage, a film actor has some significant concessions. But at the same time, the film actor does not have contact with the public and does not have the opportunity to adjust his performance depending on the public's reaction. The authenticity of a work of art is the totality of everything that a thing is capable of carrying in itself from the moment of creation, from its material age to its historical value.

In the perception of a work of art, various aspects are possible, among which two poles stand out:

1. Focus on works of art.

2. Emphasis on exhibition value

According to Benjamin, the greater the loss of value of any art, the less it is criticized by viewers and critics. Conversely, the newer the art, the more disgust it is criticized.

Benjamin believed that fascism tries to organize the proletarianized masses without affecting property relations, while seeking to provide the opportunity for self-expression, which leads to the aestheticization of political life. The aestheticization of politics reaches its peak in war. It is precisely this that makes it possible to direct mass movements towards a common goal and mobilize all technical resources while maintaining property relations. According to Walter Benjamin

Theoretical research Walter Benjamin“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility” (1892–1940) has become more famous over time than during the philosopher’s lifetime. Moreover, its first publication encountered difficulties. W. Benjamin's intention to publish it in an emigrant magazine in German did not come true. One of the members of the editorial board, namely B. Brecht, whose opinions V. Benjamin often quotes, not only did not support the philosopher, but also accused him of being partial to a mystical interpretation of history. The article was first published in German only in 1955. The difficulties with its publication are also explained by the fact that V. Benjamin was one of the first to begin to reflect on the processes provoked by the invasion of technology, or, as N. Berdyaev puts it, machines, into the sphere of art. The subject of his reflections is changes in the social functions of art under the influence of new technologies and, as a consequence, the emergence of a new aesthetics. It is no coincidence that the epigraph of the article is a quote from P. Valeria, who claims that new technologies are changing the very concept of art. Most of all, the formation of a new aesthetics can be traced through the example of photography and cinema, to which the philosopher pays considerable attention.

However, the reason for the radical changes in aesthetics is connected not only with the invasion of technology into art and, accordingly, with its consequences. These changes, in turn, are prepared by social and even economic factors, more precisely by what J. Ortega y Gasset will call the “revolt of the masses.” This motivation cannot be surprising, since W. Benjamin often refers to K. Marx and is close to neo-Marxism. It is no coincidence that his ideas were close to the philosophy of the Frankfurt School. However, since 1935, V. Benjamin was an employee of the Paris branch of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which continued its activities in exile. Representatives of this institute were such famous philosophers as M. Horkheimer, T. Adorno, G. Marcuse and others. However, it would be incorrect to say that the Marxist approach exhausts Benjamin’s reflection. His writings show the influence of psychoanalysis. Thus, S. Freud allows the philosopher to identify in the visual reality recorded by the camera and film camera that which deserves attention not only from the artist, but also from the scientist. Actually, W. Benjamin’s new aesthetics is represented by photography and cinema, which are constantly in his field of vision. In other words, the new aesthetics, represented by V. Benjamin’s photography and cinema, alienated art from traditional aesthetics and at the same time brought it closer to science. This is an important nuance in the new aesthetics, as it appears to Benjamin. Based on psychoanalysis, W. Benjamin records how the visual content of the film resembles what S. Freud called the “slip of the tongue,” to which the founder of psychoanalysis was so attentive, because it was the slip that was the door that was ajar in order to enter the sphere of the unconscious . It is this accumulation of physical reality in photography and cinema that makes them, in comparison with theater and painting, unusually attractive for psychoanalysis.

Perhaps the most famous position expressed by W. Benjamin in this article was the statement about the loss in the art of our time of what the philosopher denotes by the concept of “aura”. In the history of art theory, there are many well-known concepts that remain somewhat unclear, even mysterious. For example, the concept of “artistic will” by A. Riegl or the concept of “photogeny” by L. Delluc. Such mysterious concepts include the concept of aura, which does not prevent it from being one of the most popular today. In the article “A Brief History of Photography,” W. Benjamin asks the question: “What, strictly speaking, is an aura?” - and answers it completely poetically: this is “a strange interweaving of place and time” (p. 81). More precisely, aura is what makes a work of art unique and authentic, but which is completely lost in modern art. This is the attachment of a work of art to a specific geographical space and historical time, its inclusion in these phenomena. In other words, it is inclusion in a unique cultural context. If we keep in mind contemporary art, then an aura is something that it no longer possesses. It does not have an aura because technology brought a revolution to art. With the help of technology, unique works can be reproduced, that is, replicated in any quantities and thus brought closer to a mass audience. These are copies or reproductions of unique phenomena. Their functioning in society makes the existence of originals unnecessary.

If we agree with this, then, in essence, W. Benjamin is already discovering one of the key phenomena of postmodernism, denoted by the concept of “simulacrum”, the meaning of which, as is known, is associated with the absence of the original, the original, the real signified. In other words, a simulacrum is an image or sign of an absent reality. True, W. Benjamin speaks of an absent context, and not of reality. But perhaps he records only one of the first phases in the history of the formation of the simulacrum. And the expression of such a phase is the break of the functioning work with the cultural and historical context, or rather, the break of the work with the unique historical and geographical context that gave birth to it, namely traditions. The decay of the aura is the other side of the loss of tradition. Thanks to technical reproducibility, architectural structures and art galleries turn out to be close to the masses. The reproduction functions according to a logic that is inaccessible to the original itself. However, a break with tradition, which has spatio-temporal characteristics, essentially means a break with cult, and, accordingly, with the loss of art of its cult or ritual function, which has accompanied art for centuries and is one of its main functions. Such a gap is especially obvious in photography and cinema, which already arise in a secular culture that affirms the gap between art and cult.

Nevertheless, taking into account the laws of secular culture, photography and cinema are still trying to preserve the aura, albeit in modified, i.e. secular, forms, or to compensate for it in cases where it is impossible to preserve it. This is especially noticeable in daguerreotype, that is, in photography. Here the ritual function still takes place, responding to the need to preserve the faces of deceased loved ones and relatives, and ancestors in general. Therefore, although photography contributes to the extinction of the sacred in art, on the other hand, with its specific means it tries to create it on a new basis. As for cinema, the radical loss of aura here resulted in the emergence of an entire institution that replaces aura in its classical form with compensation. In cinema, the Institute of Stars turned out to be such a compensatory institution. An actor who, with the help of the mass public, is transformed into a star is endowed with sacred and mythological connotations. The latter create a context whose meaning far exceeds the semantic boundaries of a particular work. However, despite the need to maintain a connection with the aura even in the most radical, i.e. technical, arts, nevertheless, new arts can no longer correspond to classical aesthetics, and their cult meaning, i.e. ritual function, is inferior to the expositional essence of art , corresponding to the era of massification.

The change from the ritual function to the exhibition function as a response to the process of massification of art in the modern world also concerns qualitative changes in its perception. Perhaps, this circumstance is felt most acutely not so much by W. Benjamin himself, but by his great compatriot M. Heidegger, who in his work touches on the strengthening of its expositional essence in modern art. M. Heidegger more accurately and deeply represents the process of fading of the aura in connection with the expansion of the exhibition value of art, and by context he no longer understands just the spatio-temporal features of the existence of a work, but its sacred meaning. The more its ritual meaning fades in art, the more obvious its entertainment function becomes, corresponding to mass tastes and needs in secular culture. So, if we keep in mind the plastic complex of arts, then the optical side of these arts, which has developed so much since the Renaissance that G. Wölfflin so fundamentally analyzed, is inferior to the explosion in modern art of the phenomenon of tactility. Later, this thesis will be developed in his books by M. McLuen. This is the logic of critical historical epochs with their inherent crisis of contemplation and established optical forms. In such eras, classical painting loses the cultivation of the principle of contemplation, which distinguishes the eras of its masterpieces, and is included in the processes of mass functioning with the inherent cultivation of a collective way of perception. From the point of view of this latter, even masterpieces created by great individuals are perceived in accordance with folklore stereotypes. Thus, a change in the social environment of the functioning of art radically changes the process of its perception.

However, no matter how deep the process of extinction of the aura deepens in the culture of the 20th century, history testifies to the desire of art to constantly recreate it, albeit on a new basis. But the discrepancy between the artistic and the sacred, that is, between art and religion, gave rise to a paradoxical phenomenon in the culture of the 20th century, which W. Benjamin states. His study ends with a thesis about the politicization of art in Russia and the aestheticization of politics in Germany. In essence, he is talking about recreating the aura of art, its social meaning, but no longer on a religious, but on a political basis. This undoubtedly makes sense, because in totalitarian states there was a sacralization and ritualization of politics, which became the starting point for restoring the aura of art on a new basis.

ON THE. Khrenov

I

(...) A work of art, in principle, has always been reproducible. What was created by people could always be repeated by others. Such copying was done by students to improve their skills, by masters to distribute their works more widely, and finally by third parties for the purpose of profit. Compared to this activity, the technical reproduction of a work of art is a new phenomenon, which, although not continuously, but in spurts separated by large time intervals, is acquiring increasing historical significance. The Greeks knew only two methods of technical reproduction of works of art: casting and stamping. Bronze statues, terracotta figurines and coins were the only works of art they could reproduce. All others were unique and could not be technically reproduced. With the advent of woodcuts, graphics became technically reproducible for the first time; Quite a long time passed before the advent of printing made the same thing possible for texts. The enormous changes that printing brought about in literature, that is, the technical ability to reproduce text, are known. However, they constitute only one particular, although especially important, case of the phenomenon that is being considered here on a world-historical scale. Copper engraving and etching were added to woodcut during the Middle Ages, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century - lithography.

With the advent of lithography, reproduction technology rises to a fundamentally new level. A much simpler method of transferring a design onto stone, which distinguishes lithography from carving an image on wood or etching it on a metal plate, for the first time gave graphics the opportunity to enter the market not only in fairly large editions (as before), but also by varying the image daily. Thanks to lithography, graphics were able to become an illustrative companion to everyday events. She began to keep up with printing technology. In this regard, lithography was already surpassed by photography several decades later. Photography for the first time freed the hand in the process of artistic reproduction from the most important creative duties, which henceforth passed on to the eye directed at the lens. Since the eye grasps faster than the hand draws, the process of reproduction received such a powerful acceleration that it could already keep up with oral speech. During filming in the studio, the cameraman records events at the same speed with which the actor speaks. If lithography carried the potential of an illustrated newspaper, then the advent of photography meant the possibility of sound cinema. The solution to the problem of technical sound reproduction began at the end of the last century. These converging efforts made it possible to predict a situation that Valéry characterized with the phrase: “Just as water, gas and electricity, obeying an almost imperceptible movement of the hand, come from afar to our house to serve us, so visual and sound images will be delivered to us, appearing and disappearing at the behest of an insignificant movement, almost a sign” 1. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the means of technical reproduction reached a level at which they not only began to transform the entire totality of existing works of art into their object and seriously change their impact on the public, but also took an independent place among the types of artistic activity. To study the level reached, nothing is more fruitful than an analysis of how two characteristic phenomena of it - artistic reproduction and cinematography - have a reverse effect on art in its traditional form.

II

Even the most perfect reproduction lacks one point: here and now a work of art - its unique existence in the place in which it is located. The story in which the work was involved in its existence was based on this uniqueness and nothing else. This includes both the changes that its physical structure has undergone over time, as well as the change in property relations in which it was involved. Traces of physical changes can only be detected by chemical or physical analysis, which cannot be applied to reproduction; As for traces of the second kind, they are the subject of tradition, in the study of which the location of the original should be taken as the starting point.

The here and now of the original determines the concept of its authenticity. Chemical analysis of a bronze sculpture's patina can be useful in determining its authenticity; accordingly, evidence that a particular medieval manuscript comes from a fifteenth-century collection may be useful in determining its authenticity. Everything related to authenticity is inaccessible to technical – and, of course, not only technical – reproduction. But if in relation to a manual reproduction - which in this case qualifies as a fake - authenticity retains its authority, then in relation to a technical reproduction this does not happen. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, technical reproduction turns out to be more independent in relation to the original than manual reproduction. If we are talking, for example, about photography, then it is able to highlight such optical aspects of the original that are accessible only to a lens that arbitrarily changes its position in space, but not to the human eye, or can, using certain methods, such as enlargement or accelerated shooting, record images that are simply inaccessible to the ordinary eye. This is the first. And, besides, and this is secondly, it can transfer the likeness of the original into a situation that is inaccessible to the original itself. First of all, it allows the original to make a movement towards the public, whether in the form of a photograph, or in the form of a gramophone record. The cathedral leaves the square on which it is located to enter the office of an art connoisseur; A choral work performed in a hall or in the open air can be listened to in the room.

The circumstances in which a technical reproduction of a work of art can be placed, even if they do not otherwise affect the qualities of the work, in any case they devalue it here and now. Although this applies not only to works of art, but also, for example, to a landscape that floats in front of the viewer’s eyes in a movie, in an object of art this process affects its most sensitive core; natural objects have nothing similar in vulnerability. This is his authenticity. The authenticity of a thing is the totality of everything that it is capable of carrying within itself from the moment of its origin, from its material age to its historical value. Since the first forms the basis of the second, then in reproduction, where material age becomes elusive, historical value is also shaken. And although only she is affected, the authority of the thing is also shaken.

What disappears can be summed up by the concept of aura: in the era of technical reproducibility, a work of art loses its aura. This process is symptomatic, its significance goes beyond the realm of art. Reproductive technology, as one could express it in general terms, removes the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the reproduction, it replaces its unique manifestation with a mass one. And by allowing the reproduction to approach the person who perceives it, no matter where he is, it actualizes the reproduced object. Both of these processes cause a deep shock to traditional values ​​- a shock to tradition itself, representing the opposite side of the crisis and renewal that humanity is currently experiencing. They are in close connection with the mass movements of our day. Their most powerful representative is cinema. Its social significance, even in its most positive manifestation, and precisely in it, is unthinkable without this destructive, catharsis-causing component: the elimination of traditional value as part of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most obvious in large historical films. It is increasingly expanding its scope. And when Abel Gance enthusiastically exclaimed in 1927: “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films... All legends, all mythologies, all religious figures and all religions... are waiting for the screen resurrection, and heroes are impatiently crowding at the doors” 2, he - obviously, without realizing it, he invited mass liquidation.

III

Over significant periods of time, along with the general way of life of the human community, the sensory perception of man also changes. The method and image of organizing human sensory perception - the means by which it is ensured - are determined not only by natural, but also by historical factors. The era of the great migration of peoples, in which the late Roman art industry and the miniatures of the Viennese Book of Genesis arose, gave rise not only to an art different from that of antiquity, but also to a different perception. The scientists of the Viennese school, Riegl and Wickhof, who moved the colossus of the classical tradition under which this art was buried, first came up with the idea of ​​​​reconstructing the structure of human perception of that time based on it. No matter how great the significance of their research was, their limitation lay in the fact that scientists considered it sufficient to identify the formal features characteristic of perception in the late Roman era. They did not try - and perhaps could not consider it possible - to show the social transformations that found expression in this change in perception. As for modern times, here the conditions for such a discovery are more favorable. And if the changes in the modes of perception that we witness can be understood as the disintegration of the aura, then it is possible to identify the social conditions of this process.

It would be useful to illustrate the concept of aura proposed above for historical objects with the help of the concept of aura of natural objects. This aura can be defined as a unique sensation of distance, no matter how close the object may be. During a summer afternoon rest, glancing along the line of a mountain range on the horizon or a branch, under the shadow of which the rest takes place, means inhaling the aura of these mountains, this branch. With the help of this picture it is not difficult to see the social conditioning of the disintegration of the aura that is taking place in our time. It is based on two circumstances, both related to the ever-increasing importance of the masses in modern life. Namely: the passionate desire to “bring things closer” to oneself, both spatially and humanly, is as characteristic of the modern masses as the tendency to overcome the uniqueness of any given thing through the acceptance of its reproduction. Day after day, an irresistible need to master an object in close proximity through its image, or more precisely, display, reproduction, manifests itself. At the same time, the reproduction in the form in which it can be found in an illustrated magazine or newsreel is quite obviously different from the painting. Uniqueness and permanence are fused in the picture as closely as fleetingness and repetition in reproduction. The liberation of an object from its shell, the destruction of the aura, is a characteristic feature of perception, whose “taste for the same type in the world” has intensified so much that with the help of reproduction it squeezes out this sameness even from unique phenomena. Thus, in the field of visual perception, what is reflected in the field of theory is the increasing importance of statistics. The orientation of reality towards the masses and the masses towards reality is a process whose influence on both thinking and perception is limitless.

IV

The uniqueness of a work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the continuity of tradition. At the same time, this tradition itself is a very living and extremely mobile phenomenon. For example, the ancient statue of Venus existed for the Greeks, for whom it was an object of worship, in a different traditional context than for the medieval clerics, who saw it as a terrible idol. What was equally significant for both was her uniqueness, in other words: her aura. The original way of placing a work of art in a traditional context found expression in cult. The most ancient works of art arose, as we know, to serve a ritual, first magical, and then religious. Of decisive importance is the fact that this aura-evoking image of the existence of a work of art is never completely freed from the ritual function of the work. In other words: the unique value of an “authentic” work of art is based on the ritual in which it found its original and first use. This basis can be mediated many times, however, even in the most profane forms of serving beauty, it is visible as a secularized ritual. The profane cult of serving the beautiful, which arose in the Renaissance and lasted for three centuries, clearly revealed, after experiencing the first serious shocks, its ritual foundations. Namely, when, with the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography (simultaneously with the emergence of socialism), art begins to feel the approach of a crisis, which a century later becomes completely obvious, it, as a response, puts forward the doctrine of l'art pour l'art, which is theology of art. From it then emerged a downright negative theology in the form of the idea of ​​“pure” art, which rejected not only any social function, but also any dependence on any material basis. (In poetry, Mallarmé was the first to achieve this position.)

In the perception of works of art, various accents are possible, among which two poles stand out. One of these emphasis is on the work of art, the other on its exhibition value. The artist's activity begins with works in the service of the cult. For these works, one might assume, it is more important that they are present than that they are seen. The elk that Stone Age man depicted on the walls of his cave was a magical instrument. Although it is accessible to the gaze of his fellow tribesmen, it is primarily intended for spirits. Cult value as such directly forces, as it seems today, to hide a work of art: some statues of ancient deities were in the sanctuary and were accessible only to the priest, some images of the Mother of God remain curtained almost all year round, some sculptural images of medieval cathedrals are not visible to an observer located on the ground. With the liberation of certain types of artistic practice from the womb of ritual, the opportunities to exhibit its results in public increase. The exhibition possibilities of a portrait bust, which can be placed in different places, are much greater than that of a statue of a deity, which should be located inside the temple. The exhibition possibilities of easel painting are greater than those of mosaics and frescoes that preceded it. And if the expositional possibilities of the mass are, in principle, no lower than those of the symphony, then nevertheless the symphony arose at the moment when its expositional possibilities seemed more promising than those of the mass.

With the advent of various methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its exhibition capabilities have grown to such a huge extent that the quantitative shift in the balance of its poles turns, as in the primitive era, into a qualitative change in its nature. Just as in the primitive era a work of art, due to the absolute predominance of its cult function, was primarily an instrument of magic, which was only later, so to speak, recognized as a work of art, so today a work of art becomes, due to the absolute predominance of its expositional function values, a new phenomenon with completely new functions, of which the aesthetic one perceived by our consciousness stands out as one that can subsequently be recognized as accompanying. In any case, it is clear that at the present time photography, and then cinema, provide the most significant information for understanding the situation.

VI

With the advent of photography, expositional meaning begins to crowd out cult meaning along the entire line. However, the iconic significance does not go down without a fight. It is fixed at the last boundary, which turns out to be the human face. It is no coincidence that the portrait occupies a central place in early photography. The cult function of the image finds its last refuge in the cult of memory of absent or deceased loved ones. In the facial expression captured on the fly in the early photographs, the aura reminds itself of itself for the last time. This is precisely their melancholic and incomparable charm. In the same place where a person leaves the photograph, the exhibition function for the first time overpowers the cult function. This process was recorded by Atget, which is the unique significance of this photographer, who captured the deserted streets of Paris at the turn of the century in his photographs. They rightfully said about him that he filmed them like a crime scene. After all, the crime scene is deserted. He is being removed for evidence. With Atget, photographs begin to turn into evidence presented at the trial of history. This is their hidden political significance. They already require perception in a certain sense. A freely moving contemplating gaze is inappropriate here. They throw the viewer off balance; he feels that a certain approach needs to be found to them. Signs - how to find him - are immediately given to him by illustrated newspapers. True or false, it doesn’t matter. For the first time, texts for photographs became mandatory. And it is clear that their character is completely different from the names of the paintings. The directives that those who view them receive from captions on photographs in an illustrated publication soon take on an even more precise and imperative character in cinema, where the perception of each frame is predetermined by the sequence of all the previous ones.

VII

The debate that painting and photography waged throughout the nineteenth century about the aesthetic value of their works today gives the impression of being confused and distracting from the essence of the matter. This, however, does not deny its significance, rather emphasizes it. In reality, this dispute was an expression of a world-historical revolution, which, however, was not realized by either side. While the era of technical reproducibility deprived art of its cult basis, the illusion of its autonomy was forever dispelled. However, the change in the function of art, which was thereby set, fell out of sight of the century. And the twentieth century, which experienced the development of cinema, did not have it for a long time.

If they had previously wasted a lot of mental energy trying to solve the question of whether photography is art - without first asking themselves whether the invention of photography had changed the entire nature of art - then film theorists soon picked up the same hastily raised dilemma. However, the difficulties that photography created for traditional aesthetics were child's play compared to those that cinema had in store for it. Hence the blind violence characteristic of the emerging film theory. Thus, Abel Gans compares cinema with hieroglyphs: “And here we are again, as a result of an extremely strange return to what had already happened once, at the level of self-expression of the ancient Egyptians... The language of images has not yet reached its maturity, because our eyes have not yet become accustomed to him. There is not yet sufficient respect, sufficient cultic reverence for what he expresses” 3. Or the words of Severin-Mars: “Which of the arts was destined for a dream... which could be so poetic and real at the same time! From this point of view, cinema is an incomparable means of expression, in the atmosphere of which only persons of the noblest way of thinking in the most mysterious moments of their highest perfection are worthy.” 4 And Alexandre Arnoux directly concludes his fantasy of silent cinema with the question: “Do not all the bold descriptions that we have used reduce to the definition of prayer?” 5 It is extremely instructive to observe how the desire to classify cinema as “art” forces these theorists to attribute cult elements to it with incomparable impudence. And this despite the fact that at the time when these arguments were published, films such as “The Woman of Paris” and “The Gold Rush” already existed. This does not prevent Abel Gance from using the comparison with hieroglyphs, and Severin-Mars speaks of cinema as one might speak of the paintings of Fra Angelico. It is characteristic that even today especially reactionary authors search for the meaning of cinema in the same direction, and if not directly in the sacred, then at least in the supernatural. Werfel states regarding Reinhardt's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream that until now the sterile copying of the outside world with streets, rooms, train stations, restaurants, cars and beaches has been an undoubted obstacle to cinema's path to the realm of art. “Cinema has not yet grasped its true meaning, its capabilities... They lie in its unique ability to express the magical, miraculous, supernatural by natural means and with incomparable persuasiveness” 6.

VIII

The artistic skill of a stage actor is conveyed to the public by the actor himself; at the same time, the artistic skill of the film actor is conveyed to the public by the appropriate equipment. The consequence of this is twofold. The equipment presenting the performance of a film actor to the public is not obliged to record this performance in its entirety. Under the direction of the cameraman, she constantly evaluates the actor's performance. The sequence of evaluative glances created by the editor from the received material forms the finished edited film. It involves a certain number of movements that must be recognized as camera movements - not to mention special camera positions, such as a close-up. Thus, the actions of a film actor undergo a series of optical tests. This is the first consequence of the fact that the work of an actor in cinema is mediated by equipment. The second consequence is due to the fact that the film actor, since he does not himself make contact with the public, loses the ability of the theater actor to change the game depending on the reaction of the public. Because of this, the public finds itself in the position of an expert who is in no way hindered by personal contact with the actor. The audience gets used to the actor only by getting used to the movie camera. That is, she takes the position of the camera: she evaluates, tests. This is not a position for which cult values ​​are significant.

* * *

XII

The technical reproducibility of a work of art changes the attitude of the masses towards art. From the most conservative, for example in relation to Picasso, it turns into the most progressive, for example in relation to Chaplin. A progressive attitude is characterized by a close interweaving of spectator pleasure and empathy with the position of expert assessment. This plexus is an important social symptom. The greater the loss of social significance of any art, the more - as is clear in the example of painting - the critical and hedonistic attitudes diverge in the public. The familiar is consumed without any criticism; the truly new is criticized with disgust. In cinema, the critical and hedonistic attitudes coincide. In this case, the following circumstance is decisive: in cinema, as nowhere else, the reaction of an individual person - the sum of these reactions constitutes the mass reaction of the public - turns out to be conditioned from the very beginning by the immediately impending development into a mass reaction. And the manifestation of this reaction turns out to be at the same time her self-control. And in this case, comparison with painting turns out to be useful. The picture always carried with it an emphatic demand for consideration by one or only a few viewers. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by the mass public, which appeared in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, caused not only by one photograph, but relatively independently of it by the claim of a work of art to mass recognition.

The point is precisely that painting is not able to offer an object of simultaneous collective perception, as has been the case since ancient times with architecture, as was once the case with the epic, and in our time is happening with cinema. And although this circumstance, in principle, does not provide special grounds for conclusions regarding the social role of painting, at the moment it turns out to be a serious aggravating circumstance, since painting, due to special circumstances and in a certain sense, contrary to its nature, is forced to direct interaction with the masses. In medieval churches and monasteries and at the courts of monarchs until the end of the eighteenth century, the collective reception of painting did not occur simultaneously, but gradually, it was mediated by hierarchical structures. When the situation changes, a special conflict emerges in which painting is involved due to the technical reproducibility of the painting. And although an attempt was made to present it to the masses through galleries and salons, there was no way by which the masses could organize and control themselves for such a perception. Consequently, the same public that reacts in a progressive way to a grotesque film necessarily turns reactionary in front of the paintings of the surrealists.

XIII

The characteristic features of cinema lie not only in how a person appears in front of a movie camera, but also in how he imagines the world around him with its help. A look at the psychology of acting creativity opened up the testing capabilities of film equipment. A look at psychoanalysis shows it from the other side. Cinema has indeed enriched our world of conscious perception with methods that can be illustrated by the methods of Freud's theory. Half a century ago, a slip of the tongue in a conversation most likely went unnoticed. The ability to use it to open up a deeper perspective in a conversation that had previously seemed one-dimensional was rather an exception. After the appearance of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the situation changed. This work highlighted and made the subject of analysis things that had previously gone unnoticed in the general flow of impressions. Cinema has caused a similar deepening of apperception across the entire spectrum of optical perception, and now also acoustic. Nothing more than the reverse side of this circumstance is the fact that the image created by cinema lends itself to a more accurate and much more multidimensional analysis than the image in the picture and the performance on the stage. Compared to painting, this is an incomparably more accurate description of the situation, thanks to which the film image lends itself to more detailed analysis. Compared to a stage performance, the deepening of the analysis is due to the greater possibility of isolating individual elements. This circumstance contributes—and this is its main significance—to the mutual penetration of art and science. Indeed, it is difficult to say about an action that can be precisely - like a muscle on the body - isolated from a certain situation, whether it is more fascinating: artistic brilliance or the possibility of scientific interpretation. One of the most revolutionary functions of cinema will be that it will make possible to see the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography, which until then had largely existed separately.

On the one hand, cinema, with its close-ups, emphasizing the hidden details of familiar props, and the study of banal situations under the brilliant guidance of the lens, increases the understanding of the inevitabilities that govern our existence, on the other hand, it comes to the point that it provides us with a huge and unexpected free field of activity! Our pubs and city streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our train stations and factories, seemed to hopelessly enclose us in their space. But then the movie came and blew up this casemate with dynamite in tenths of a second, and now we calmly set off on a fascinating journey through the piles of its rubble. Under the influence of a close-up, space expands, while accelerated shooting expands time. And just as photographic enlargement not only makes clearer what can be seen “already”, but, on the contrary, reveals completely new structures of the organization of matter, in the same way, accelerated photography shows not only well-known motives of movement, but also reveals in these familiar ones movements that are completely unfamiliar, “giving the impression not of slowing down fast movements, but of movements that are peculiarly gliding, soaring, unearthly” 7. As a result, it becomes obvious that the nature that appears to the camera is different from that which opens to the eye. The other is primarily because the place of space worked out by human consciousness is occupied by unconsciously mastered space. And if it is quite common that in our consciousness, even in the roughest terms, there is an idea of ​​​​a human gait, then consciousness definitely knows nothing about the posture occupied by people in any fraction of a second of its step. We may be generally familiar with the movement with which we take a lighter or a spoon, but we hardly know anything about what actually happens between the hand and the metal, not to mention the fact that the action may vary depending on our condition. This is where the camera intrudes with its aids, its descents and ascents, its ability to interrupt and isolate, stretch and compress the action, zoom in and out. She opened up to us the realm of the visual-unconscious, just as psychoanalysis opened up the realm of the instinctive-unconscious.

XIV

Since ancient times, one of the most important tasks of art has been the generation of needs, for the full satisfaction of which the time has not yet come. In the history of every art form there are critical moments when it strives for effects that can be achieved without much difficulty only by changing the technical standard, that is, in a new art form. The extravagant and indigestible manifestations of art that arise in this way, especially during the so-called periods of decadence, actually originate from its richest historical energy center. The last collection of such barbarisms was Dadaism. Only now is its driving principle becoming clear: Dada tried to achieve, with the help of painting (or literature), the effects that the public today seeks in cinema.

Every fundamentally new, pioneering action that creates a need goes too far. Dada does this to the extent that it sacrifices the market values ​​that characterize cinema to such a high degree for the sake of more meaningful goals - which it is, of course, not aware of in the way described here. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the possibility of mercantile use of their works than to the exclusion of the possibility of using them as an object of reverent contemplation. Not least of all, they tried to achieve this exception by fundamentally depriving the material of art of sublimity. Their poems are a “word salad,” containing obscene language and every kind of verbal garbage imaginable. Their paintings, in which they inserted buttons and travel tickets, were no better. What they achieved by these means was the merciless destruction of the aura of creation, burning the mark of reproduction on the works using creative methods. Arp's painting or August Stramm's poem does not, like Derain's painting or Rilke's poem, give us time to collect ourselves and come to an opinion. In contrast to contemplation, which became a school of asocial behavior during the degeneration of the bourgeoisie, entertainment arises as a type of social behavior. Manifestations of Dadaism in art were indeed powerful entertainment, since they turned a work of art into the center of a scandal. It had to meet, first of all, one requirement: to cause public irritation.

From an alluring optical illusion or a convincing sound image, a work of art turned into a projectile among the Dadaists. It amazes the viewer. It acquired tactile properties. Thus, it contributed to the emergence of a need for cinema, the entertainment element of which is primarily also of a tactile nature, namely, based on changes in the scene and shooting point, which jerkily fall upon the viewer. You can compare the canvas of the screen on which the film is shown with the canvas of a pictorial image. The painting invites the viewer to contemplate; in front of it, the viewer can indulge in successive associations.

This is impossible in front of a film frame. As soon as he took in his gaze, he had already changed. It cannot be fixed. Duhamel, who hates cinema and understands nothing of its meaning, but something of its structure, characterizes this circumstance as follows: “I can no longer think about what I want. Moving images took the place of my thoughts” 8. Indeed, the viewer's chain of associations of these images is immediately interrupted by their change. This is the basis for the shock effect of cinema, which, like any shock effect, requires an even higher degree of presence of mind to overcome. Due to its technical structure, cinema liberated the physical shock effect, which Dadaism still seemed to package in a moral one, from this wrapper.

XV

The masses are a matrix from which, at the present moment, every habitual attitude towards works of art comes out degenerated. Quantity turned into quality: a very significant increase in the number of participants led to a change in the method of participation. One should not be embarrassed by the fact that initially this participation appears in a somewhat discredited image. However, there were many who passionately followed precisely this external side of the subject. The most radical among them was Duhamel. What he primarily criticizes cinema for is the form of participation that it awakens among the masses. He calls cinema “a pastime for helots, an amusement for uneducated, wretched, overworked, care-worn creatures... a spectacle that requires no concentration, does not involve any mental faculties... does not kindle any light in the hearts and awakens no other hopes than the ridiculous hope of one day become a “star” in Los Angeles” 9. As you can see, this is essentially the old complaint that the masses seek entertainment while art requires concentration from the viewer. This is a common place. It is worth checking, however, whether it can be relied upon in the study of cinema. – This requires a closer look. Entertainment and concentration are opposites, which allows us to formulate the following proposition: he who concentrates on a work of art becomes immersed in it; he enters this work like the artist-hero of a Chinese legend contemplating his finished work. In turn, the entertaining masses, on the contrary, immerse the work of art into themselves. The most obvious thing in this regard is architecture. Since ancient times, it has represented the prototype of a work of art, the perception of which does not require concentration and occurs in collective forms. The laws of its perception are the most instructive.

Architecture has accompanied humanity since ancient times. Many forms of art have arisen and faded into oblivion. Tragedy arises among the Greeks and disappears with them, reborn centuries later only in its “rules.” The epic, whose origins are in the youth of peoples, fades away in Europe with the end of the Renaissance. Easel painting was a product of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its permanent existence. However, the human need for space is incessant. Architecture never stopped. Its history is longer than any other art, and awareness of its impact is significant in every attempt to understand the attitude of the masses towards a work of art. Architecture is perceived in two ways: through use and perception. Or, more precisely: tactile and optical. There is no concept for such perception if we think of it as a concentrated, collected perception, which is characteristic, for example, of tourists looking at famous buildings. The point is that in the tactile domain there is no equivalent to what contemplation is in the optical domain. Tactile perception passes not so much through attention as through habit. In relation to architecture, it largely determines even optical perception. After all, it is basically carried out much more casually, and not as intense peering. However, this perception developed by architecture in certain conditions acquires canonical significance. For the tasks that critical historical epochs pose to human perception cannot be solved at all on the path of pure optics, that is, contemplation. They can be dealt with gradually, relying on tactile perception, through habituation.

Even the unassembled one can get used to it. Moreover: the ability to solve certain problems in a relaxed state proves that solving them has become a habit. Entertaining, relaxing art quietly tests one's ability to solve new perceptual problems. Since the individual individual is generally tempted to avoid such tasks, art will snatch out the most difficult and important ones where it can mobilize the masses. Today it does this in cinema. A direct tool for training diffuse perception, which is becoming increasingly noticeable in all areas of art and is a symptom of a deep transformation of perception, is cinema. With its shock effect, cinema responds to this form of perception. Cinema displaces cult meaning not only by placing the audience in an evaluative position, but by the fact that this evaluative position in cinema does not require attention. The public turns out to be an examiner, but an absent-minded one.

In the book: Benjamin V. A work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility.

(Translation by S.A. Romashko)

Notes

1. Paul Valery. Pieces sur l'art. Paris. P. 105 (“La conquete de l’ubiquite”).

2. Abel Gance. Le temps de l'image est venue, in: L'art cinematographique II. Paris, 1927. P. 94–96.

3. Abel Gance, I. p. P. 100–101.

4. cit. Abel Gance, I. p. P. 100.

5. Alexandre Arnoux: Cinema. Paris, 1929. P. 28.

7. Rudolf Arnheim. Film als Kunst. Berlin, 1932. S. 138.

8. Georges Dulamel. Scenes de la vie future. 2e ed., Paris, 1930. P. 52.

A work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility

Walter Benjamin worked on this article, which is his most famous writing, in the last years of his life. In a certain sense, it was the result of his many years of research in the field of cultural history and aesthetics. He began writing the article in 1935, and by the end of the year its first version was ready. The leadership of the Institute of Social Research decided to publish it in a French translation, since Benjamin was in France at that time and this publication could improve his position in intellectual circles. The French text was published in the first issue of the magazine Zeitschrift f?r Sozialforschung in 1936. Benjamin continued to work on the text: he created at least two more editions of the article (the second edition was discovered recently, see GS 7.1, 350–384; the edition, for a long time considered the second, was thus in fact third). In the summer of 1936, Benjamin attempted to publish the German text in the pro-communist emigrant magazine Das Wort, whose editors included B. Brecht, L. Feuchtwanger, W. Bredel (its first issue was published in July 1936 in Moscow). Benjamin really counted on Brecht's support, not suspecting that he had an extremely negative attitude towards his work, especially towards the concept of aura, which was so dear to Benjamin; Brecht’s work diary contains a brief scathing review: “All this is mysticism... this is how a materialistic view of history is presented. This is quite terrible” (Brecht W. Werke. - Berlin; Weimar; Frankfurt a. M., 1994, Bd. 26. S. 315). Benjamin's work was formally rejected for being too long. Benjamin's hopes for the sympathy of Russian art theorists (for example, S. Tretyakov, with whom he tried to establish contact) also turned out to be in vain. Despite the setbacks, Benjamin continued to work on the text until at least 1938, and possibly beyond. The work was first published in German only in 1955. The translation is made from the latest edition of the text (GS 1. 2, 471–508).

1 I.G. Merck (Merck, 1741–1791) – writer, critic and journalist, one of the representatives of the Sturm und Drang movement (see also the essay “Goethe”).

2 A. Gans (1889–1981) - French film director who contributed to the development of the visual arts of cinema; known for the films “The Wheel” (1923), “Napoleon” (1927, sound version – 1934).

3 The Viennese art historians Alois Riegl (1858–1905), author of The Late Roman Art Industry, and Frank Wickhoff (1853–1909) became famous as scholars of late Roman Christian art.

4 Grimme H. Das R?tsel der Sixtinischen Madonna. – Zeitschrift f?r bildende Kunst, 1922. Bd. 57.

5 Eugene Atget (Atget, 1856–1927) - French photographer, see about him in Benjamin's A Brief History of Photography.

6 A. Arnoux (1884–1973) - a French writer who took part in the creation of a number of films, published a magazine dedicated to cinema, Pour vous.

7 Films by Charles Chaplin, shot in 1923 and 1925.

8 Franz Werfel (Werfel, 1890–1945) is an Austrian writer who initially adhered to expressionism and then moved to historical prose. Max Reinhardt (Reinhardt, 1873–1943) – German actor and director; The film “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, staged by him in 1935 in the USA, bore clear traces of his theatrical productions.

9 Quoted from the Russian original (“Film director and film material”): Collection. op. in 3 vols. – M., 1974, vol. 1, p. 121.

10 The term of Hegel’s aesthetics.

11 The film by Dziga Vertov was shot in 1934. Joris Ivens (Ivens, 1898–1989) is a Dutch film director and cameraman, author of socially critical and anti-fascist films. His film “Song of Heroes” (1932) is dedicated to Magnitka. Borinage (1933) is about Belgian miners.

12 Benjamin uses the French translation of O. Huxley’s book of travel notes “Beyond the Gulf of Mexico”, available to him in Paris, original: Huxsley A. Beyond the Mexique bay. – London, 1934, p. 274–276.

13 Hans Arp (Arp, 1887–1966) - German artist and poet, Dadaist, and later surrealist; August Stramm (1874–1915) – German poet, one of the most prominent representatives of expressionism; Andre Derain (Derain, 1880–1954) – French artist, representative of Fauvism.

14 Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) was a French writer, pacifist and critic of modern technological civilization.

15 “Let the world perish, but art triumph”: Benjamin reinterprets the famous Latin saying (believed to have been the motto of Emperor Ferdinand I) Fiat justifia – pereat mundus (“Let the world perish, but justice prevail”).

This text is an introductory fragment. From the book Ours and Theirs author Khomyakov Petr Mikhailovich

3. Contours of the next scientific and technological revolution and the technical realities of the new civilization The basis of the new scientific and technological revolution is seen, first of all, as a revolution in the energy sector. At the same time, the potential energy capabilities should increase not by tens of percent, but by

From the book Articles author Feuchtwanger Lyon

How I wrote my first work Having become familiar with foreign languages ​​early, having mastered all the tricks of literary games, at a very young age I acquired formal mastery that surprised my mentors and my peers. I was twelve years old when alone

From the book Russian Questions 1997-2005 (Radio Liberty program) author Paramonov Boris Mikhailovich

COMMUNISM AS A WORK OF ART “The Sense of Reality” is a book by the scientist and thinker, patriarch of English culture, Sir Isaiah Berlin. This is a collection of essays devoted mainly to one issue - the political mind of the twentieth century and the ways in which it was oriented. Sera

From the book The World According to Clarkson author Clarkson Jeremy

This is a work of art, and it sits on our necks. When we travel, we admire modern architecture. This Arc de France in Paris, this is the new Reichstag in Berlin. This is the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco. And even the Millennium Dome. Take the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Who

From the book Adolf Hitler - Founder of Israel author Cardel Henneke

Chapter 6 “My Struggle” - a work written in Landsberg prison on the Lech River After such terrible consequences of the decision to become a politician, another person would have given up this profession. But not Hitler, who was captured in his villa a few days after the failed putsch

From the book Problems of Culture. Transitional culture author Trotsky Lev Davidovich

A new era of scientific and technical thought Comrades, I have just returned from the anniversary holiday of Turkmenistan. This fraternal Central Asian republic celebrates today the anniversary of its origin. It would seem that the issue of Turkmenistan is far removed from the issue of radio technology and

From the book Dostoevsky and the Apocalypse author Karyakin Yuri Fedorovich

The idea as a work of art Pushkin about Dante... Drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo - ideas. Ernst Neizvestny's inscription on the album of graphics given to me "To Yuri from Ernst - AS THE SHADOW OF DESIGN". Drafts of Dostoevsky, Pushkin... - the same as the drawings

From the book Newspaper Day of Literature # 70 (2002 6) author Literature Day Newspaper

THE BEST "WORK" The Secretariat of the Board of the Union of Writers of Russia and the editors of the newspaper "Day of Literature" sincerely congratulate the Samara prose writer and publisher of the literary almanac "Russian Echo" Alexander Vitalievich Gromov on the birth of his first child

From the book Newspaper Tomorrow 857 (16 2010) author Zavtra Newspaper

Heydar Dzhemal WORK IN RED Heydar Dzhemal WORK IN RED “The difference between spirit and matter is only one of degree, and our task is to make matter spiritual and spirit material.” Mercury van Helmont, alchemist. Among all

From the book Galvanized Sheet by gans_spb

About technical and true popularity Popularity is based on a purely technical mechanism of growth. It is very rare that there is real, “popular” popularity. There is, of course, no meaning in human life. To avoid boredom, elephants, for example, shift from foot to foot, because

From the book Scum of History. The most sinister secret of the 20th century author Mukhin Yuri Ignatievich

Report of the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross on the progress of work in Katyn On April 17, 1943, a commission with a temporary composition of 3 people began work, the distribution of which was as follows: 1) Mr. Roykiewicz Ludwik - research of documents in the secretariat

From the book Paper Radio. Podcast haven: letters and sounds under one cover author Gubin Dmitry

Who should we love – the Motherland or the truth? About why the work of a Russian publicist, which caused anger 180 years ago, should still cause it today http://www.podst.ru/posts/4744/Since I discovered that the most boring process of ironing turns into a sweet thing, worth turning on

From the book A Brief History of Photography author Benjamin Walter

A work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility The formation of the arts and the practical fixation of their types took place in an era significantly different from ours, and was carried out by people whose power over things was insignificant in comparison with that

From the book Cardboard Minerva [collection] by Eco Umberto

Work and Flow It’s not that I didn’t write my “cardboard” last week, but that, for various and complex reasons, I couldn’t send it off. It was about a meeting organized on February 14 at the Venice Biennale regarding the merger

From the book Christ was born in Crimea. The Mother of God died there. [The Holy Grail is the Cradle of Jesus, which was kept for a long time in Crimea. King Arthur is a reflection of Christ author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

12.2. Later authors confused the events of the end of the 12th century and the end of the 14th century, that is, the era of Christ and the era of Constantine the Great. So, the great queen Janike-Khanym is considered the daughter of Khan Tokhtamysh, fig. 4.101. As we have already noted, Tokhtamysh is a reflection of Tsar Khan Dmitry Donskoy. He's the same

From the book Chronicles of the Impossible. Factor "X" for Russian breakthrough into the future author Kalashnikov Maxim

The task of the Magi of the scientific and technological revolution It is obvious to me that modern academic science in the Russian Federation and in general on the ruins of the USSR has fallen into deep decline. The point is not only in its meager funding, but also in the fact that the Academy of Sciences itself has degraded. Just like bureaucracy

WALTER BENYAMIN

PIECE OF ART

IN THE AGE

Selected Essays

German Cultural Center named after Goethe

"MEDIUM" Moscow 1996

The book was published with the assistance of Inter Nationals

BETWEEN MOSCOW AND PARIS: Walter Benjamin in search of a new reality

Preface, compilation, translation and notes by S. A. Romashko

Editor Yu. A. Zdorovov Artist E. A. Mikhelson

ISBN 5-85691-049-4

© Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972- 1992

© Compilation, translation into Russian, artistic design and notes, MEDIUM publishing house, 1996.

Walter Benjamin's misfortune has long been a commonplace in literature about him. Much of what he wrote saw the light only years after his death, and what was published was not always immediately understood. This is in his homeland, Germany. The path to the Russian reader turned out to be doubly difficult. And this despite the fact that Benjamin himself wanted such a meeting and even came to Moscow for this. In vain.

However, perhaps this is not so bad. Now that there are no longer any restrictions that prevented the publication of Benjamin’s works in Russian, and in the West he has ceased to be, as he was some time ago, a fashionable author, the time has finally come to just read him calmly. Because what was modern for him, before our eyes, is receding into history, but a history that has not yet completely lost touch with our time and therefore is not devoid of direct interest for us.

The beginning of Walter Benjamin's life was unremarkable. He was born in 1892 in Berlin, in the family of a successful financier, so his childhood was spent in a quite prosperous environment (years later he would write a book about him, “Berlin Childhood at the Turn of the Century”). His parents were Jews, but he was one of those whom Orthodox Jews called Jews celebrating Christmas, so the Jewish tradition became a reality for him quite late, he did not grow up so much

in it, how many came to it later, how they come to the phenomena of cultural history.

In 1912, Walter Benjamin began his student life, moving from university to university: from Freiburg to Berlin, from there to Munich and finally to Bern, where he completed his studies with the defense of his doctoral dissertation “The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism.” The First World War seemed to have spared him - he was declared completely unfit for service - but it left a heavy mark on his soul from the losses of loved ones, from the break with people dear to him, who succumbed at the beginning of the war to militaristic euphoria, which was always alien to him. And the war still affected him with its consequences: post-war devastation and inflation in Germany devalued the family’s funds and forced Benjamin to leave expensive and prosperous Switzerland, where he was invited to continue his scientific work. He returned home. This sealed his fate.

In Germany, several unsuccessful attempts to find his place in life follow: the magazine he wanted to publish was never published, the second dissertation (necessary for a university career and obtaining a professorship), dedicated to the German tragedy of the Baroque era, did not receive a positive assessment at the Frankfurt university. True, the time spent in Frankfurt turned out to be far from useless: there Benjamin met the then very young philosophers Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor Adorno. These relations played an important role in the formation of the phenomenon that later became known as the Frankfurt School.

The failure of the second defense (the content of the dissertation simply remained unclear, which the reviewer conscientiously reported in his review) meant the end of attempts to find his place in the academic environment, which was not very attractive to Benjamin anyway. German universities were not going through their best times; Benjamin, already in his student years, was quite critical of university life, participating in the movement for the renewal of students. However, in order for his critical attitude to take shape into a certain position, some other impulse was still missing. It was a meeting with Asya Latsis.

The acquaintance with the “Latvian Bolshevik,” as Benjamin briefly described her in a letter to his old friend Gershom Scholem, occurred in 1924 in Capri. Within a few weeks, he calls her "one of the most remarkable women I have ever known." For Benjamin, not only a different political position became a reality - a whole world suddenly opened up for him, about which he had previously had the vaguest ideas. This world was not limited to the geographical coordinates of Eastern Europe, where this woman came into his life. It turned out that another world can be discovered even where he has already been. You just need to look at, say, Italy differently, not through the eyes of a tourist, but in such a way as to feel the intense daily life of the inhabitants of a large southern city (the result of this small geographical discovery was the essay “Naples” signed by Benjamin and Latsis). Even in Germany, Latsis, well acquainted with the art of the Russian avant-garde,

primarily theatrical, she lived as if in another dimension: she collaborated with Brecht, who was then just beginning his theatrical career. Brecht would later become one of the most significant personalities for Benjamin, not only as an author, but also as a person with an undoubted, even provocative ability for unconventional thinking.

In 1925, Benjamin went to Riga, where Latsis ran an underground theater; in the winter of 1926-27 he came to Moscow, where she had moved at that time. He also had a completely business reason for his visit to Russia: an order from the editors of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for an article about Goethe. Benjamin, who quite recently wrote a study about Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” in a completely “immanent” spirit, is inspired by the task of giving a materialist interpretation of the poet’s personality and work. He clearly felt this as a challenge - to himself as an author and to the German literary tradition. The result was a rather strange essay (it is difficult to disagree with the editors, who decided that it was clearly not suitable as an encyclopedia article), only partially used for publication in the encyclopedia. It was not a matter of particular courage (or “audacity,” as Benjamin himself said) of the work; there were too many straightforward, simplified interpretive moves in it; there were also clearly unclear, not yet fully worked out passages. But there were also discoveries that foreshadowed the subsequent direction of Benjamin’s work. It was his ability to see in small, sometimes even the smallest details, something that unexpectedly reveals

understanding the most serious problems. This was, for example, his casual remark that Goethe clearly avoided big cities all his life and had never been to Berlin. For Benjamin, a resident of a big city, this was an important watershed in life and thought; he himself tried to find out in the future the entire history of European culture of the 19th-20th centuries precisely through the life perception of these giant cities.

Moscow pushed him away. It turned out to be a “city of slogans,” and the extremely carefully written essay “Moscow” (comparison with diary entries dedicated to the Moscow trip shows how consistently Benjamin avoided the extremely sensitive issues of the political struggle of that time in his publication) rather hides many of his impressions. Despite the sophistication of the presentation, the essay still betrays the confusion of the author, who clearly felt that he had no place in this city - and yet he was going on a trip, not excluding the possibility of moving to a country that had declared its intention to build a new world.

Returning to Western Europe, Benjamin continues the life of a free writer: he writes articles for the press, continues to translate (his translations of Baudelaire were published already in 1923, followed by work on Proust’s novels), and speaks with great enthusiasm on the radio (he was one of the first serious authors who truly appreciated the capabilities of this new information technology). He said goodbye to his academic career completely, and the calls of G. Scholem, who had already

years was in Palestine, to join him in the promised land, where he had chances to try again to start a university career, still turned out (although Benjamin hesitated for a short time) to be ineffective. In 1928, the Berlin publishing house Rowolt published two books by Benjamin at once: “The Origin of German Tragedy” (a rejected dissertation) and “One-Way Street.” This combination clearly demonstrated the turning point that had taken place in his life over the course of several years. "The Street", a free collection of fragments, notes, reflections, in which even the smallest details of everyday life were captured in the broad perspective of history and cultural theory, not yet written (and perhaps could not be written in any complete form), was free the search for forms of thought that could become the most immediate reaction of consciousness to pressing issues of time. The dedication reads: “This street is called Asi Latsis Street, after the name of the engineer who made it in the author.” Soon after the book was published, it became clear that Benjamin would still have to walk along a new road alone, without a companion, whose influence he so highly valued. Their relationship remained a mystery to his friends and acquaintances - they were too different people.

Another city, Paris, turned out to be much more hospitable for Benjamin. He visited there more than once, for the first time during his student years, and since the late 20s, Paris has become one of the main places of his activity. He begins to write a work that received the working title “work on the pass-

zhah": Benjamin decided to trace the development of this "capital of the 19th century" through some details of everyday life and cultural life, thus revealing the sometimes not too obvious origins of the socio-cultural situation of our century. He collects materials for this research until the end of his life, gradually it becomes his main occupation .

It was Paris that turned out to be his refuge in 1933, when Benjamin was forced to leave his homeland. It cannot be said that the city he loved received him very cordially: the situation of the emigrant intellectual was quite desperate, and he again thinks about the possibility of going to Moscow, but this time he does not find any support there. In 1935, he became an employee of the Paris branch of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which continued its activities in exile, where prominent representatives of the left intelligentsia worked: M. Horkheimer, T. Adorno, G. Marcouze, R. Aron, etc. This improved him somewhat financial situation; in addition, the institute's journal began publishing his works, including the famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility.”

Benjamin's life in the 1930s was a race against time. He tried to do something that was simply impossible to do under those conditions. And because it was a time in which loners - and he was precisely a loner, who was not given the opportunity to join anyone, even when he tried very hard to achieve this - were almost doomed. And because the events with which he tried

cope as an author and thinker, developed too quickly, so that his analysis, designed for a leisurely, somewhat detached consideration, clearly did not keep up with them. He felt very accurately what was happening, but he constantly lacked very little time to close the chain of analysis, and only later did many of the consequences of his intense search become apparent.

Events of that time increasingly forced Benjamin to turn to current problems. From the literature of the past, his interests shift to new and emerging cultural phenomena, to mass communication and its technology: to illustrated publications, to photography and, finally, to cinema. Here he manages to combine his long-standing interest in the problems of aesthetics, the philosophy of sign with the desire to capture the characteristic features of modernity, to understand what is new that appears in human life.

With no less inexorability, the course of events forced Benjamin to move to the left of the political spectrum. At the same time, it is difficult to disagree with Hannah Arenda, who believed that he was “the strangest Marxist in this movement, generous with strangeness.” Even the heterodox Marxists of the Institute for Social Research were dissatisfied with his lack of dialecticism (and in modern times the Frankfurt School characterized him as the author of a “frozen dialectic,” to use his own expression). It is unlikely that anyone else in Marxism of that time could so masterfully intertwine Marx and Baudelaire, as Benjamin did in his published the day before

death of an article about his favorite poet. It is difficult to divide Benjamin into periods: before Marxism and Marxist. If only because even in the most “Marxist”, according to his serious conviction, works, concepts from completely different areas, for example, religion, suddenly turn out to be central. This is the "illumination" or "aura". This last concept is extremely important for the aesthetics of the late Benjamin, and it was precisely this that caused the greatest irritation of his leftist allies (mysticism!), and yet it appears already in the earliest period of his work: in an article on Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” one of his first publications, he talks about the "aura of the Russian spirit."

At the same time, it is not worth “saving” Benjamin by proving that he was not a Marxist. In some cases, Marxist passages in his works can be completely omitted without any loss to the main content, as, for example, the preface and conclusion in the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility.” At the same time, Benjamin took the “combat” nature of his theses quite seriously, and there was a very specific and very serious reason for this, which must not be forgotten: fascism. First his threat, and then the political disaster that broke out in Germany, very strictly set the parameters within which Benjamin could afford to work.

Walter Benjamin was one of the first twentieth-century philosophers to experience his condition as an “after” state. After the First World War and the global economic crisis, after the breakdown of traditional forms of self-expression

marriage and communication, after psychoanalysis, Nietzsche’s philosophy and phenomenology, after the prose of Kafka and Proust, after Dadaism and political posters, after the first serious achievements of cinema and after the transformation of radio into an instrument of political struggle. It was absolutely clear to him that a very serious change had occurred in the existence of mankind, which had devalued a significant part of what had constituted his centuries-old experience. Despite the immeasurably increased technical power, man suddenly felt surprisingly defenseless, deprived of his usual cozy environment, sanctified by tradition: “The generation that still traveled to school by horse-drawn horse found itself in the open air in a world in which only the clouds remained unchanged, and below them , in a force field of destructive currents and detonations, a tiny, fragile human body" (phrase from the essay "The Storyteller" dedicated to Leskov).

Benjamin's work does not fit into the framework of academic philosophy. And not everyone - and not only his opponents - are ready to recognize him as a philosopher. At the same time, it is precisely in our time that it has become clear how difficult it is to determine the real boundaries of philosophizing, unless, of course, we limit ourselves to purely formal parameters. Benjamin tried to find a form of understanding reality that would correspond to this new reality, without abandoning borrowings from art: his texts, as researchers have already noted, resemble collage works by early avant-garde artists, and the principle of combining individual parts of these texts is comparable to the editing technique in cinema . At the same time, despite everything

In his modernism, he clearly continued the tradition of unorthodox, non-academic thinking, which was so strong in German culture; this is a tradition of aphorism and free essay, philosophical poetry and prose; Lichtenberg and Hamann, Goethe and the Romantics belonged to this rather heterogeneous and rich tradition, then Nietzsche entered it. This “underground” philosophy ultimately turned out to be no less significant than the philosophy consecrated by titles and titles. And in a broader perspective, Benjamin’s searches are connected with the extensive (starting from the Middle Ages) and multi-confessional heritage of the European religious and mystical worldview.

One should not be deceived by the belligerence of some of Benjamin's political statements. He was an extremely gentle and tolerant person; it was not for nothing that he was able to combine both in his work and in his personal life such opposites, sometimes completely incompatible. He had a weakness: he loved toys. The most valuable thing he took away from Moscow was not his impressions of meetings with cultural figures, but his collection of traditional Russian toys. They carried in themselves exactly what was rapidly disappearing from life, the warmth of spontaneity, proportionality to human perception, characteristic of products of pre-industrial times.

Of course, it was not possible to win the race against time. Benjamin was not a coward. He left Germany at the last moment, when a direct threat of arrest hung over him. When they told him that he should move from France to a more secure

dangerous America, he replied that in Europe “there is still something to protect.” He began to think about leaving only when the fascist invasion became a reality. It turned out to be not so simple: he was denied a British visa. By the time Horkheimer managed to get him an American visa, France had already been defeated. Together with a group of other refugees, in September 1940 he tried to cross the mountains into Spain. The Spanish border guards, citing formal problems, refused to let them through (most likely, they were counting on a bribe) and threatened to hand them over to the Germans. In this desperate situation, Benjamin takes poison. His death shocked everyone so much that the refugees were able to continue their journey unhindered the next day. And the restless thinker found his last refuge in a small cemetery in the Pyrenees.

A WORK OF ART IN AN ERA

ITS TECHNICAL REPRODUCIBILITY

The formation of the arts and the practical fixation of their types took place in an era significantly different from ours, and was carried out by people whose power over things was insignificant in comparison with that which we have. However, the amazing growth of our technical capabilities, the flexibility and precision they have acquired, suggests that in the near future profound changes will occur in the ancient industry of beauty. In all arts there is a physical part which can no longer be looked at and which can no longer be used in the same way; it can no longer be outside the influence of modern theoretical and practical activity. Neither matter, nor space, nor time in the last twenty years have remained what they always were. One must be prepared for the fact that such significant innovations will transform the entire technique of art, thereby influencing the creative process itself and, perhaps, even miraculously change the very concept of art.

Paul Valery. Pieces sur l"art, p. 103-104 ("La conquête de l"ubiquité").

Preface

When Marx began to analyze the capitalist mode of production, this mode of production was in its infancy. Marx organized his work in such a way that it acquired prognostic significance. He turned to the basic conditions of capitalist production

leadership and presented them in such a way that one could see from them what capitalism would be capable of in the future. It turned out that it would not only give rise to increasingly harsh exploitation of the proletarians, but would also ultimately create conditions that would make its own liquidation possible.

The transformation of the superstructure occurs much more slowly than the transformation of the base, so it took more than half a century for changes in the structure of production to be reflected in all areas of culture. How this happened can only be judged now. This analysis must meet certain prognostic requirements. But these requirements are met not so much by theses about what proletarian art will be like after the proletariat comes to power, not to mention a classless society, but by provisions concerning trends in the development of art in the conditions of existing production relations. Their dialectic manifests itself in the superstructure no less clearly than in the economy. Therefore, it would be a mistake to underestimate the significance of these theses for the political struggle. They reject a number of outdated concepts - such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery - the uncontrolled use of which (and now it is difficult to control) leads to an interpretation of facts in a fascist spirit. Inputfurther in the theory of art, new concepts differ from more familiar ones in that they can be used forfascist goals are completely impossible. Howeverthey are suitable for formulating revolutionaryrequirements in cultural policy.

A work of art, in principle, has always been reproducible. What was created by people could always be repeated by others. Such copying was done by students to improve their skills, by masters to distribute their works more widely, and finally by third parties for the purpose of profit. Compared to this activity, the technical reproduction of a work of art is a new phenomenon, which, although not continuously, but in spurts separated by large time intervals, is acquiring increasing historical significance. The Greeks knew only two methods of technical reproduction of works of art: casting and stamping. Bronze statues, terracotta figurines and coins were the only works of art they could reproduce. All others were unique and could not be technically reproduced. With the advent of woodcuts, graphics became technically reproducible for the first time; Quite a long time passed before the advent of printing made the same thing possible for texts. The enormous changes that printing brought about in literature, that is, the technical ability to reproduce text, are known. However, they constitute only one particular, although especially important, case of the phenomenon that is being considered here on a world-historical scale. Wood engraving was supplemented during the Middle Ages by copperplate engraving and etching, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century by lithography.

With the advent of lithography, reproduction technology rises to a fundamentally new level. A much simpler method of transferring a design onto stone, which distinguishes lithography from carving an image on wood or etching it on a metal plate, for the first time gave graphics the opportunity to enter the market not only in fairly large editions (as before), but also by varying the image daily. Thanks to lithography, graphics were able to become an illustrative companion to everyday events. She began to keep up with printing technology. In this regard, lithography was already surpassed by photography several decades later. Photography for the first time freed the hand in the process of artistic reproduction from the most important creative duties, which henceforth passed on to the eye directed at the lens. Since the eye grasps faster than the hand draws, the process of reproduction received such a powerful acceleration that it could already keep up with oral speech. During filming in the studio, the cameraman records events at the same speed with which the actor speaks. If lithography carried the potential of an illustrated newspaper, then the advent of photography meant the possibility of sound cinema. The solution to the problem of technical sound reproduction began at the end of the last century. These converging efforts made it possible to predict a situation that Valéry characterized with the phrase: “Just as water, gas and electricity, obeying an almost imperceptible movement of the hand, come from afar to our house to serve us, so visual and sound images will be delivered

us, appearing and disappearing at the behest of a slight movement, almost a sign."* On the edgeXIX AndXXcenturies of means of technical reproduction up toreached a level where they not onlybegan to transform the entire totality into their objectexisting works of art and the most seriousway to change their impact on the public, but alsotook their own place among the types of artnational activities. To study the level reached, there is nothing more fruitful than an analysis of how two characteristic phenomena of it - artistic reproduction and cinematography - have a reverse impact on art in its traditional form.

Among a number of other representatives of the Frankfurt School, we highlight the works of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). In the context of the issues under discussion, it is important for us that Benjamin assessed the role of mass communication in modern culture differently than Adorno did. The development of the cultural industry, from Benjamin’s point of view, brings with it not only negative, but also positive trends. This is substantiated in the clearest form in the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility.”

Works of art, according to the author, have always been reproducible to one degree or another. However, in the contemporary era, the possibility of “technical reproduction” of works of art is becoming increasingly important. The means of technical reproduction (the author is talking about contemporary photography and cinema) began to seriously influence

72 Davydov Yu.N.. Criticism of the social and philosophical views of the Frankfurt School. M.: Nauka. 1977. P.218.

73 Benjamin V. A work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility. Moscow. 1996.

Mass communication from the perspective of sociological theory

The audience itself. Technical reproduction of the original, i.e. its replication “can transfer the likeness of the original into a situation that is inaccessible to the original itself. First of all, it allows the original to make a movement towards the public...” 74.

According to Adorno, art is initially inherent in a certain aura of elitism due to the individuality and uniqueness of the work as such. Benjamin sees in the development of mass media of reproduction precisely what transforms this aura, unusually democratizing the availability of cultural materials. Those. the uniqueness of a work of art is overcome through the acceptance of its reproduction.

Benjamin says that the aura of the most ancient works of art was predetermined to a large extent by their “inclusion” in the context of tradition. Here art performed important ritual functions, first magical, then religious. However, the presence of mass forms of technical reproduction eliminates the question of the authenticity of the work. This, in turn, predetermines changes in the social functions of art in general. Now, the place of the ritual function is taken by the political function.

In parallel with the liberation of various types of artistic practice from the “womb of ritual”, the works are brought closer to the public. According to Benjamin, a quantitative shift in the balance of exhibition possibilities predetermines qualitatively new phenomena in the perception of works by the broad masses. In relation to cinema, the author points out that the very nature of this medium “through the camera” seems to include a wide range of viewers directly in the process of creating materials.

Benjamin highlights a similar trend in connection with the press: “The progressive development of the press, which began to offer the reading public more and more new political, religious, scientific, professional, local printed publications, led to the fact that an increasing number of readers - at first occasionally - began to move into the category of authors" 75.

74 Benjamin V. Works of art in the era of its technical reproducibility. M.1996. P. 21.

75 Ibid. P. 44.

Understanding mass communication within the framework of critical theory

A qualitative increase in the number of participants in communication processes leads to a change in the very form of participation of the mass audience. Benjamin in this regard discusses the contradiction associated with concentration of attention, on the one hand, and the search for entertainment, on the other. Due to the very nature of modern communication media, attention to their materials turns out to be “scattered”, not implying concentration. It is also important that there are no intermediaries between a work of culture and its consumers; the masses themselves act as experts. It is “the technical reproducibility of a work of art that changes the attitude of the masses towards art. ... A progressive attitude is characterized by the interweaving of spectator pleasure, empathy with the position of expert assessment” 76 . In this regard, Benjamin especially highlights cinema, where the critical and hedonistic attitudes, from his point of view, coincide.

Thus, the tendency towards replication, characteristic of the cultural industry, is positive because the “charm” of works of art is no longer limited to the space of galleries or concert halls. Works of art acquire a mass form of existence. Technical methods of reproduction introduce works of art into the world of everyday life, unusually democratizing the possibilities of interpretation. Widespread accessibility means the destruction of the elitism previously inherent in works of art. Thus, according to Benjamin, thanks to the means of mass communication, works of art enter the life of the common man, creating opportunities to enrich the communication processes of the widest strata.

Share this article:

Similar articles

April 17, 2015
The coolest landing operations of the USSR and Russia

April 17, 2015
337 Airborne Regiment regiment commanders

April 17, 2015
Airborne Cadet Corps

April 17, 2015
Hidden Man Hidden Man abbreviation