Essay Response - Austin

I found Benjamin's essay brought forth some highly important aspects and issues with the nature of art--not only the nature of art itself as an independent entity, but art in its context, its place in society, and its role and occupation to humans, how it is perceived, and the significance of artwork and the beholder. Despite the fact that there are many small analytic points Benjamin makes which I am not convinced, which I find to be a stretch, unrealistic or an illogical jump between postulations, on the whole I strongly agree with his general thesis and overarching principles of his essay--and all the ramifications to the essence and position of art that entails (which are seemingly innumerable).

It is fascinating to read Benjamin's idea of what is happening with art in relation to this new age of "mechanical reproduction." I believe that he is completely correct in his basic principle that inherent to a work of "art" is a certain aura that is only present in the single, unique, original piece. I think that this seemingly simple idea has numerous profound extrapolations, and speaks greatly to what goes into art, what art is, by the nature that implies a great level of depth--it is a truly marvelous thing. As Benjamin says, it also speaks to the implicit tie between the artist and his creation. One small point of disagreement for me there, Benjamin maintains that this connection cannot be understood by the beholder and adds to the mystery of a piece; I maintain that this deep connection is not even fully understood by the artist.

Although the loss of such a huge amount of the meaning and essence of the piece is clearly extremely lamentable, I think that is still a necessary evil so to speak. I cannot say how much I have personally gained from the accessibility to all the world of art, and there are millions of others who experience the same, so even though it is not desirable, it still achieves a much greater good. There are a few things also in the artistic realm analogous to this situation I find--I use translations, and live music as my examples. A translation is a necessary evil to me, I lose so much of the aesthetics, so much of the very inherent character and nature by reading something that is translated, the same as viewing a art reproduction. Or, listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on tiny headphones will never be comparable to listening to it performed by a 100-strong orchestra. But in both cases, though I lose so much of the purity and truth of the character of the artwork, I would still much rather listened to the accessible but compromised form, than to never experience, which is infinitely worse in my opinion.

Thank you Benjamin for writing a very interesting essay that leads to much important thought on the nature of art and its place in the human sphere.

image from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal