Walter Benjamin’s piece, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” stood out to me in a number of ways, neither his comments about the interactions between art and Marxism or attaching theory to “revolutionary demands in the politics of art” caught my attention the same way that his comments about Art and originality did.
In the second section of his piece, Benjamin discusses the reproduction of art throughout history, and how humans have valued reproduced or redistributed art in different ways. He begins the section with a bold assertion: “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (714). At the surface this makes sense, and even in 2024, has some truth to it. If you find the Mona Lisa on Google Images, it is a much different experience than seeing the real thing with your own eyes. Rather, where I assess this claim as bold requires us to pay attention to the Benjamin’s word choice in his assertion.
Firstly, Benjamin’s vague generalization of ‘art’ is immediately problematic- particularly when adding judgement statements such as “perfect” or “lacking”. While “perfect” is technically attributed to the reproduction of art, it implies that one piece of reproduced art can be more “perfect” or simply better than another. Benjamin could have chosen to say, “more accurate” or “more precise” rather than “perfect”, but the author chose to attach a judgement to these claims. I find this decision not only significant, but revealing of the author’s biases towards what defines appropriately reproduced art.
To this, Benjamin also uses the word “unique” upon describing the “existence” of an original art piece. Ultimately, he asserts that these “perfect” representations lack one thing: uniqueness. I find this claim to be somewhat contradictory.
While a work of reproduced art is ultimately the same has the original, Benjamin argues that it is not- all the while claiming that this reproduced, different work of art is not unique. If an original piece of art is “unique” in its existence, so too must a reproduction be unique in its difference from the original.