July-->Walter Benjamin

The reading about “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” was cumbersome. I understand they were trying to express the evolution of art, but it could have been shorter and more detailed by using more examples. Hopefully in class I will get a comprehensible understanding of the entire reading. I know Dr. Rog said that most of the texts will make you feel “Dumb,” but this makes me feel “lost.” I guess that is enough babbling about the negatives.

Art as a whole has generated from one specific source, before being converted into one’s individual creation. When the Greeks created art amongst themselves they knew that there were two technical reproducing procedures, which were founding and stamping. Eventually another generation blossomed and lithography took over, which is 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 it products on the market…” Shortly after lithography there was photography. The persistence of art will always develop over time. One of the terms from previous readings that relates to this notion is intertextuality, but instead of referring to text it is used for the historic advancement of art.

Another fraction of the reading that I understood was when they were explaining the different reproductions. For example, process reproduction brings out aspects of the original creation that are unattainable to the naked eye and technical reproduction is when the copy of the original piece of art is completely abolished from the final creation. Process reproduction is like cult value because it relies on the quantity of the art and it is based on its history. While, technical reproduction is compared with exhibition value because it relies on its quality and new functions.