The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

WALTER BENJAMIN

PREFACE

When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production,
this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give
them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying
capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be
expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not
only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create
conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.

The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly
than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in
all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it
be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should
be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after
its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art
under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in
the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to
underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number
of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and
mystery—concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable)
application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The
concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from
the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of
Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of
revolutionary demands in the politics of art.

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts
could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of
their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in
the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however,
represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps
at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two
procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping.
Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could
produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically
reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible
for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The
enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has
brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the
phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world
history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During
the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the
beginning of the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance.
With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new
stage. This much more direct process was distinguished by the tracing of the
design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching on a
copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the
market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms.
Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep
pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was
surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of pictorial
reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic
functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of
pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace
with speech. A film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the images
at the speed of an actor’s speech. Just as lithography virtually implied the
illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film. The
technical reproduction of sound was tackled at the end of the last century.
These convergent endeavors made predictable a situation which Paul Valéry
pointed up in this sentence: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into
our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so
we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and
disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.” (op. cit.,
p. 226) Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not
only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the
most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a
place of its own among the artistic processes. For the study of this standard
nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two
different manifestations—the reproduction of works of art and the art of the
film—have had on art in its traditional form.

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. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history
to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the
changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well
as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed
only by chemical or physical analyzes which it is impossible to perform on a
reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be
traced from the situation of the original.
The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of
authenticity. Chemical analyzes of the patina of a bronze can help to establish
this, as does the proof that a given manuscript of the Middle Ages stems from
an archive of the fifteenth century. The whole sphere of authenticity is outside
technical—and, of course, not only technical—reproducibility.2 Confronted
with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the
original preserved all its authority; not so vis à vis technical reproduction. The
reason is twofold. First, process reproduction is more independent of the
original than manual reproduction. For example, in photography, process
reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to
the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes,
such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images which escape natural
vision. Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into
situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it
enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a
photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be
received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an
auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room.
The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be
brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is
always depreciated. This holds not only for the art work but also, for instance,
for a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie. In the
case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus—namely, its authenticity—is
interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. The
authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its
beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history
which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the
authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive
duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical
testimony is affected is the authority of the object.
One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to
say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the
work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond
the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction
detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many
reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in
permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own
particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes
lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the
contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately
connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent
is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is
inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of
the traditional value of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most palpable
in the great historical films. It extends to ever new positions. In 1927 Abel
Gance exclaimed enthusiastically: “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will
make films . . . all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of
religion, and the very religions . . . await their exposed resurrection, and the
heroes crowd each other at the gate.”

Presumably without intending it, he issued an invitation to a far-reaching
liquidation.

III

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes
with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense
perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined
not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. The fifth century,
with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the late Roman art industry
and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different from that
of antiquity but also a new kind of perception. The scholars of the Viennese
school, Riegl and Wickhoff, who resisted the weight of classical tradition under
which these later art forms had been buried, were the first to draw conclusions
from them concerning the organization of perception at the time. However far
reaching their insight, these scholars limited themselves to showing the
significant, formal hallmark which characterized perception in late Roman
times. They did not attempt—and, perhaps, saw no way—to show the social
transformations expressed by these changes of perception. The conditions for
an analogous insight are more favorable in the present. And if changes in the
medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura,
it is possible to show its social causes.
The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical
objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones.
We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance,
however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow
with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its
shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch.
This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary
decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the
increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire
of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is
just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality
by accepting its reproduction.4 Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of
an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction.
Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels
differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence
are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the
former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a
perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to
such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the
theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The
adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of
unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in
the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely
changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different
traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than
with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of
them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura.
Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in
the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a
ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the
existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated
from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic”
work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This
ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even
in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.6 The secular cult of beauty,
developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly
showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell
it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction,
photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the
approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art
reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This
gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of
‘pure’ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any
categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mallarmé was the first to take this
position.)
An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to
these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time
in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its
parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art
reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a
photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask
for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of
authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of
art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another
practice—politics.

Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types
stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the
exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial
objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was
their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the
Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose
it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult
value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues
of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain
covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are
invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various
art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their
products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there
than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a
temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that
preceded it. And even though the public presentability of a mass originally may
have been just as great as that of a symphony, the latter originated at the
moment when its public presentability promised to surpass that of the mass.
With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its
fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift
between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. This
is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by
the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument
of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same
way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art
becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are
conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This
much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable
exemplifications of this new function.

In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the
line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an
ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait
was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved
ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture. For the
last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting
expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the
exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value. To
have pinpointed this new stage constitutes the incomparable significance of
Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has
quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime.
The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of
establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for
historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They
demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not
appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new
way. At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him,
right ones or wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become
obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than
the title of a painting. The directives which the captions give to those looking at
pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and more
imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be
prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.

VII

The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus
photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its
importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the
symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not
realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction
separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared
forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective
of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century,
which experienced the development of the film. Earlier much futile thought had
been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary
question—whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the
entire nature of art—was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same
ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which
photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child’s play as compared
to those raised by the film. Whence the insensitive and forced character of early
theories of the film. Abel Gance, for instance, compares the film with
hieroglyphs: “Here, by a remarkable regression, we have come back to the level
of expression of the Egyptians. . . . Pictorial language has not yet matured
because our eyes have not yet adjusted to it. There is as yet insufficient respect for, insufficient cult of, what it expresses.”* Or, in the words of Séverin-Mars:
“What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same
time! Approached in this fashion the film might represent an incomparable
means of expression. Only the most high-minded persons, in the most perfect
and mysterious moments of their lives, should be allowed to enter its
ambience.”† Alexandre Arnoux concludes his fantasy about the silent film with
the question: “Do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the
definition of prayer?”‡ It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film
among the “arts” forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it—with
a striking lack of discretion. Yet when these speculations were published, films
like L’Opinion Publique and The Gold Rush had already appeared. This,
however, did not keep Abel Gance from adducing hieroglyphs for purposes of
comparison, nor Séverin-Mars from speaking of the film as one might speak of
paintings by Fra Angelico. Characteristically, even today ultrareactionary
authors give the film a similar contextual significance—if not an outright sacred
one, then at least a supernatural one. Commenting on Max Reinhardt’s film
version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Werfel states that undoubtedly it was
the sterile copying of the exterior world with its streets, interiors, railroad
stations, restaurants, motorcars, and beaches which until now had obstructed
the elevation of the film to the realm of art. “The film has not yet realized its
true meaning, its real possibilities . . . these consist in its unique faculty to
express by natural means and with incomparable persuasiveness all that is
fairylike, marvelous, supernatural.”

VIII

The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the
public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by
a camera, with a twofold consequence. The camera that presents the
performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as
an integral whole. Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes
its position with respect to the performance. The sequence of positional views
which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the
completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality
those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. This
is the first consequence of the fact that the actor’s performance is presented by
means of a camera. Also, the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor
to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his
performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the
position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor.
The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the
camera. Consequently, the audience takes the position of the camera; its
approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may
be exposed.

For the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to
the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else. One of the
first to sense the actor’s metamorphosis by this form of testing was Pirandello.
Though his remarks on the subject in his novel Si Gira were limited to the
negative aspects of the question and to the silent film only, this hardly impairs
their validity. For in this respect, the sound film did not change anything
essential. What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a
mechanical contrivance—in the case of the sound film, for two of them. “The
film actor,” wrote Pirandello, “feels as if in exile—exiled not only from the
stage but also from himself. With a vague sense of discomfort he feels
inexplicable emptiness: his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is
deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in
order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then
vanishing into silence . . . The projector will play with his shadow before the
public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera.”* This
situation might also be characterized as follows: for the first time—and this is
the effect of the film—man has to operate with his whole living person, yet
forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it.
The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for
the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the
studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura
that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.
It is not surprising that it should be a dramatist such as Pirandello who, in
characterizing the film, inadvertently touches on the very crisis in which we see
the theatre. Any thorough study proves that there is indeed no greater contrast than that of the stage play to a work of art that is completely subject to or, like
the film, founded in, mechanical reproduction. Experts have long recognized
that in the film “the greatest effects are almost always obtained by ‘acting’ as
little as possible. . . .” In 1932 Rudolf Arnheim saw “the latest trend... in
treating the actor as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and . . . inserted
at the proper place.” With this idea something else is closely connected. The
stage actor identifies himself with the character of his role. The film actor very
often is denied this opportunity. His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is
composed of many separate performances. Besides certain fortuitous
considerations, such as cost of studio, availability of fellow players, décor, etc.,
there are elementary necessities of equipment that split the actor’s work into a
series of mountable episodes. In particular, lighting and its installation require
the presentation of an event that, on the screen, unfolds as a rapid and unified
scene, in a sequence of separate shootings which may take hours at the studio;
not to mention more obvious montage. Thus a jump from the window can be
shot in the studio as a jump from a scaffold, and the ensuing flight, if need be,
can be shot weeks later when outdoor scenes are taken. Far more paradoxical
cases can easily be construed. Let us assume that an actor is supposed to be
startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory, the director
can resort to an expedient: when the actor happens to be at the studio again he
has a shot fired behind him without his being forewarned of it. The frightened
reaction can be shot now and be cut into the screen version. Nothing more
strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the “beautiful semblance” which,
so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive.

The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as
Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt
before one’s own image in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become
separable, transportable. And where is it transported? Before the public.12 Never
for a moment does the screen actor cease to be conscious of this fact. While
facing the camera he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the
consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his
labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the
shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory. This
may contribute to that oppression, that new anxiety which, according to
Pirandello, grips the actor before the camera. The film responds to the
shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the
studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry,
preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity. So long as the movie-makers’ capital sets the
fashion, as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today’s film
than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art.
We do not deny that in some cases today’s films can also promote
revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property.
However, our present study is no more specifically concerned with this than is
the film production of Western Europe.
It is inherent in the technique of the film as well as that of sports that
everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert. This
is obvious to anyone listening to a group of newspaper boys leaning on their
bicycles and discussing the outcome of a bicycle race. It is not for nothing that
newspaper publishers arrange races for their delivery boys. These arouse great
interest among the participants, for the victor has an opportunity to rise from
delivery boy to professional racer. Similarly, the newsreel offers everyone the
opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra. In this way any man might
even find himself part of a work of art, as witness Vertofl’s Three Songs About
Lenin or Iven’s Borinage. Any man today can lay claim to being filmed. This
claim can best be elucidated by a comparative look at the historical situation of
contemporary literature.
For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many
thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the
increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious,
scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing
number of readers became writers—at first, occasional ones. It began with the
daily press opening to its readers space for “letters to the editor.” And today
there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find
an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work,
grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction
between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference
becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the
reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy
nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor
respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is
given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man’s ability to perform the
work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized
training and thus becomes common property.
All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature
took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly
in Russia, this change-over has partially become established reality. Some of
the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but
people who portray themselves—and primarily in their own work process. In
Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man’s legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances
the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through
illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.

The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle
unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a process in which it
is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the
actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting
machinery, staff assistants, etc.—unless his eye were on a line parallel with the
lens. This circumstance, more than any other, renders superficial and
insignificant any possible similarity between a scene in the studio and one on
the stage. In the theatre one is well aware of the place from which the play
cannot immediately be detected as illusionary. There is no such place for the
movie scene that is being shot. Its illusionary nature is that of the second
degree, the result of cutting. That is to say, in the studio the mechanical
equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its pure aspect freed from
the foreign substance of equipment is the result of a special procedure, namely,
the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the shot
together with other similar ones. The equipment-free aspect of reality here has
become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an
orchid in the land of technology.
Even more revealing is the comparison of these circumstances, which differ
so much from those of the theatre, with the situation in painting. Here the
question is: How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this
we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon
represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person
by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient’s body. The
magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself;
though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly
increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he
greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating
into the patient’s body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his
hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician—who is
still hidden in the medical practitioner—the surgeon at the decisive moment
abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation
that he penetrates into him.
Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter
maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates
deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of
multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for
contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably
more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the
thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of
reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask
from a work of art.

XII

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward
art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the
progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is
characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment
with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance.
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the
distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is
uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard
to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The
decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the
mass audience response they are about to produce, and this is nowhere more
pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest
they control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A
painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a
few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as
developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of
painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by
photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art
works to the masses.
Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous
collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic
poem in the past, and for the movie today. Although this circumstance in itself
should not lead one to conclusions about the social role of painting, it does
constitute a serious threat as soon as painting, under special conditions and, as
it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses. In the churches
and monasteries of the Middle Ages and at the princely courts up to the end of
the eighteenth century, a collective reception of paintings did not occur
simultaneously, but by graduated and hierarchized mediation. The change that
has come about is an expression of the particular conflict in which painting was
implicated by the mechanical reproducibility of paintings. Although paintings
began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons, there was no way for the masses to organize and control themselves in their reception. Thus, the same
public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is
bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.

XIII

The characteristics of the film lie not only in the manner in which man
presents himself to mechanical equipment but also in the manner in which, by
means of this apparatus, man can represent his environment. A glance at
occupational psychology illustrates the testing capacity of the equipment.
Psychoanalysis illustrates it in a different perspective. The film has enriched
our field of perception with methods which can be illustrated by those of
Freudian theory. Fifty years ago, a slip of the tongue passed more or less
unnoticed. Only exceptionally may such a slip have revealed dimensions of
depth in a conversation which had seemed to be taking its course on the
surface. Since the Psychopathology of Everyday Life things have changed. This
book isolated and made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along
unnoticed in the broad stream of perception. For the entire spectrum of optical,
and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar
deepening of apperception. It is only an obverse of this fact that behavior items
shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely and from more points
of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with
painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its
incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In comparison with the
stage scene, the filmed behavior item lends itself more readily to analysis
because it can be isolated more easily. This circumstance derives its chief
importance from its tendency to promote the mutual penetration of art and
science. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a
certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more
fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity
of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were
separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film.
By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of
familiar objects, by exploring common place milieus under the ingenious
guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension
of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure
us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our
metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and
our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and
burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that
now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is
extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise
what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural
formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar
qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones “which, far
from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly
gliding, floating, supernatural motions.” Evidently a different nature opens
itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an
unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored
by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one
knows nothing of a person’s posture during the fractional second of a stride.
The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly
know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to mention how this
fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its
lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, it extensions and
accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to
unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

XIV

One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand
which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows
critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be
fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new
art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly
in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest
historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism.
It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to
create by pictorial—and literary—means the effects which the public today
seeks in the film.
Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry
beyond its goal. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values
which are so characteristic of the film in favor of higher ambitions—though of
course it was not conscious of such intentions as here described. The Dadaists
attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its
usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their
material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their
poems are “word salad” containing obscenities and every imaginable waste
product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless
destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions
with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp’s or a poem by
August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation
as one would before a canvas of Derain’s or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of
middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; it
was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct. Dadaistic
activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art
the centre of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public.
From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of
art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a
bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a
demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile,
being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the
spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of
a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the
spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he
cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed.
It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its
significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as
follows: “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been
replaced by moving images. The spectator’s process of association in view of
these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This
constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be
cushioned by heightened presence of mind. By means of its technical
structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in
which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.

The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of
art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The
greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of
participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a
disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet some people have
launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. Among these,
Duhamel has expressed himself in the most radical manner. What he objects to
most is the kind of participation which the movie elicits from the masses.
Duhamel calls the movie “a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, a
spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence
which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the
ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles.” Clearly, this is at
bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art
demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace.
The question remains whether it provides a platform for the analysis of the
film. A closer look is needed here. Distraction and concentration form polar
opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a
work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of an the way legend tells
of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the
distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to
buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art
the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.
The laws of its reception are most instructive.
Buildings have been man’s companions since primeval times. Many art
forms have developed and perished. Tragedy begins with the Greeks, is
extinguished with them, and after centuries its “rules” only are revived. The
epic poem, which had its origin in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the
end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and
nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter
is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that
of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every
attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are
appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception - or rather, by
touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the
attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side
there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile
appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards
architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The
latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in
incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to
architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks
which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history
cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are
mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.
The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master
certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a
matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the
extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most
difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today
it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing
noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in
apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its
shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult
value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position
of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no
attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.

Epilogue

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing
formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to
organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property
structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in
giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express
themselves.21 The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism
seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result
of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of
the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its
counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production
of ritual values.
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and
war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while
respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the
situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes
it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the
property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does
not employ such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the
Ethiopian colonial war:” For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled
against the branding of war as anti-aesthetic. . . . Accordingly we state: . . . War
is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated
machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and
small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metallization of
the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with
the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the
gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of
putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new
architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the
smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others. . . . Poets and artists of Futurism! . . . remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your
struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art... may be illumined by
them!”
This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be
accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today’s war appears as
follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the
property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources
of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The
destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough
to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently
developed to cope with the elemental forces of society. The horrible features of
imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous
means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of
production—in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets.
Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of
“human material,” the claims to which society has denied its natural material.
Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches;
instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities;
and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.
“Fiat ars—pereat mundus,” says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects
war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been
changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of “l’art pour
l’art.” Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the
Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a
degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the
first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic.
Communism responds by politicizing art.