markus benjamin and german reproduction debate

8/10/2019 Markus Benjamin and German Reproduction Debate

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Walter Benjamin and the German Reproduction Debate

Gydrgy Markus

I.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproduction" is undoubtedly the best

known, most widely discussed and referred to writing of Benjamin. The editors of a recently

published volume dealing specifically with this essay go significantly further in their assess

ment of its impact. The Artwork essay, they write in their Foreword, "is probably the most

frequently cited and most intensely debated essay in the history of the academic humanities in

the twentieth century" (Gum brecht

XIII).

To this, however, they immediately add: "[T]he past

seven decades have shown that almost none of Benjamin's central predictions have proven to

be right." (Gum brecht X III-XIV) The aura has not disappeared, but conquered even the field

of art's technical reproduction; film has not developed along the lines indicated by him into a

critical medium for the "masses"; politicisation of art hardly seems to be a relevant practical

proposal against its misuses today. These are, one should acknowledge, at least quite plausible

critical remarks, to which probably one could add several more.

This is the paradox of Benjamin's actuality to which this representative volume of more

than thirty essays is ultimately addressed. The book does not resolve its enigma, however, it

only dramatises it. Some contributors (passionately or ironically) reject the central ideas of the

Artwork essay, taking it to stand metonymically for B enjamin's whole oeuvre. Others seem to

be primarily interested in appropriating it as a "precursor" to some contemporary trends of

thought, as diverse as a McLuhanite media theory, Luhmann's conception of social systems

or Baudrillard's idea of simulacra. And in-between there are papers which - perhaps without

attempting a global evaluation - draw attention to some important observations of Benjamin

that point to developmental trends which reached a relative maturity only in our age of elec

tronic media.

In this situation perhaps B enjamin's own views concerning the nature of understanding of

the works of the past can help to explain the paradox of his own afterlife. He certainly radi

cally rejected the idea of interpretation as the disclosure of assumed authorial intentions, per

haps refracted through its reception by his/her contemporaries. Historical understanding is "an

afterlife of that which has been understood and whose pulse can be felt in the pres en f (Ben

jamin II.2.

468/3.

262).' However fruitftil hermeneutically this formulation might be, it still

seems to assume - in its categorical lapidariness, so characteristic of Benjamin's style - that

there can be some safe method to identify and measure what truly pulsates in a work for us

today. If, however, such an understanding means, as he asserts, the ever renewed task of mak-

1 All references to Benjam in's works are to the

Gesammelte Schriften

and the

Selected Writings.

The pagina

tion and volume are given in the text. The German precedes the English.


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352 Gy orgy Markus

inga work actual for the historical moment, for the Now in its openness, in its suspension be

tween the past and future, then the idea ofasingle "true actuality" can only be projected into

that Messianic future, the stillstand of which renders the whole of history legible. For our pro

fane, deeply divided Now this is not even an approachable ideal. There is no "solution" to the

paradox of Benjamin's influence, to the so diversely appreciated, but generally felt simultane

ous radical actuality and inactuality of his ideas. For any understanding will depend on the

interpreter's grasp of his/her own situation, its potentialities, its weak ("Messianic") power -

ifany- to interrupt the false continuity of history.

On the other hand Benjamin equally insists on the necessity of distinguishing the making

actual ofawork for the Now from its superficial or false "actualisation". The former demands

a disclosure ofitstruth-content, which is distinct from, but approachable only through the in

vestigation ofitsmaterial content, tied to the time ofitsorigin. To find out what "pulsates" in

a w ork thus requires the reconstruction of

its

historical context, not as anecdotal or positivisti-

cally accumulated facts, but in its bearing upon the situation of the writing

itself,

which in a

divided world cannot be but - implicitly or explicitly - polemical. This will not solve the

paradox of the simultaneous nearness and famess of Benjamin's thought for us, but it can at

least exclude some (perhaps not inconsequential and rare) misunderstandings.

Such recourse to the historical background seems to be particularly desirable in respect of

the Artwork essay. The extraordinary weight and significance attributed to it, together with its

striking originality, seem to render the pedestrian questions concerning its actual "origin" ir

relevant. It is therefore rarely realised or acknowledged that the general question addressed in

the essay - does technical reproducibility change, and if so, then how, the situation of con

temporary art? - was not at all peculiar or original to Benjamin. It had been widely discussed

in Weimar Germany, especially in respect of photography, which is also the subject-matter of

a paper from 1931 that already contains some of the fundamental ideas to which he then re

turns in the years of emigration, in the different versions of the Artwork essay. It was this

context to which Benjamin, then a publicist aiming at a strategic intervention into the most

broadly conceived literary life in Germany, first reacted in ways partly foreshadowing his

later discussion. To understand what is truly "original" in the Artwork essay, it is useful to

situate it in the context ofits"origin".

11.

There had been a lively dispute in Weimar Germany concerning the aesthetic, and more

broadly cultural, significance of photography as a new, technical form of representation and

reproduction. More precisely there was not one such dispute, but

two.

One of these concerned

the relationship between photography and painting, the latter exemplifying the classical con

ception of art. This was a long-standing polemic with a widespread echo, and Benjamin di

rectly referred and reacted to it. The other was a very specific, short-lived and marginal dis

pute in a provincial art journal. Its peculiar topic, the possible function of photography of

works of art, plays, however, a fundamental ro le in his writings on technical reproducibility. It

cannot, however, be convincingly proven that he knew about it, though if not, this certainly


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Walter Benjamin and the German "Reproduction Debate" 353

would be a rather strange case of coincidence. In any case, the views expressed in this later

debate - in their differences and even more in their underlying commonalities - were embed

ded in the cultural atmosphere of Germany at the end of the twenties.

It is somewhat arbitrary to date the first controversy, since it essentially continued the old

debate, going on from the middle of nineteenth century, about "photography as art", the ob

verse side - as Benjamin will later indicate - ofitscommercialisation. With the emergence of

the post-war avant-garde this dispute acquired, however (and not only in Germany), a new

direction and content. It no longer was concerned with the possibility of making aesthetically

satisfying, "truly painterly" photos, but rather questioned the future of traditionally under

stood paintings in view of all the new possibilities opened up (though still not sufficiently ex

ploited) by the modem techniques of visual reproduction. For the German discussion the ap

pearance of the book by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of the central figures of the Bauhaus, in

1925 had a decisive significance. The short and somewhat impressionistic textof Malerei,

Photographie, Filmserved as the reference point for the ensuing discussion.

Painting, wrote Moholy-Nagy, traditionally fulfilled two, quite distinct functions: expres

sion ofthe relations between colours and light-values, on the one hand, and representation of

the elements of external reality with their associative contents, on the other. The first is based

on culture-independent, biological universals, the second is necessarily culture-dependent

(Moholy-Nagy 8-9). Photography now allows the splitting of these two tasks corresponding to

the general tendency of human development. For this demands the purification oftheexpres-

sional means pertaining to different functions so that they could reach the ir optimum, i. e. the

highest intensity rooted in their biological laws, the achievement of which is actually the task

of art (Moholy-Nagy 16-17). Photography and film can fulfil the task of representation in

comparably better than easel painting; they emancipate this latter to concern itself solely with

pure colour compositions (abstract or absolute painting). "The traditional painting has become

a historical relic and is finished with." (Moholy-Nagy 45) The technologies of

the

camera not

only offer a much more accurate picture of reality, not only extend the scope of visibility -

ultimately they are able to produce purely optical, strictly objective representations as op

posed to the unaided visual perception which is always embedded in a network of culturally

and individually specific associations, confounding the optical and the conceptual. With pho

tography and film "we may say that we see the world with an entirely different eye" (Moholy-

Nagy 29).

Moholy-Nagy certainly takes pains to underline repeatedly the legitimacy and future per

spective of "absolute" painting (he certainly does not wish to alienate completely such col

leagues at the Bauhaus as Klee or Kandinsky). However, even in this respect his emphasis

falls on the limited potential of painting in comparison with that opened up by the new optical

technologies. For painting is necessarily static, while these last - which "reach their highest

level in the film" (Moholy-Nagy 33) - are able to explore and visually express kinetic rela

tions, "creating a light-space-time continuity in the synthesis of motion", "an optical passage

oftime in a state of equilibrium" (Moholy-Nagy 21). These possibilities, however, are essen

tially still unrealised. Understandably so, since it usually takes a long time for the truly revo-


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354 Gyorgy Markus

lutionary consequences of a new technology to be properly utilised. There are, however, al

ready some attempts in this direction - Moholy refers to the photograms of Man Ray and

himself,

and also to some experimental films. A large part of

his

book presents practical pro

posals for exploring these possibilities - some prophetic, some phantasmagoric technological

Utopias.

The realisation of these hidden potentialities promises to change radically the activities of

both the recipient public and the artist creator, and thereby the place of art in modem life. As

forms ofmassproduction they m ake art widely available to the m asses. As a way to trace art

back to its universal ground in the laws ofthe human sensorium, they correspond to the col-

lectivist, universalising tendency of our age. Through the combination of photo and typogra

phy "the unambiguousness of the real, the truth in the everyday situation is there for all

classes" (Moholy-Nagy 38). At the same time the new kinetic images demand an increased

activity on the part of

the

recipient, who - instead of contemplatively imm ersing him/herself

in the static image - must actively participate in the optic event to seize it instantaneously in

its change. On the other hand, they unbound genuine creativity, emancipating it from the task

of manual execution, and more broadly from that of mere reproduction in the sense of the

repetition of the already achieved and familiar. "In fact, in comparison with the inventive

mentalprocess of the genesis of the work, the question of its execution is important only in so

far as it must be masteredto the limit. The m anner, however - whether personal or by as

signment oflabour,whether manual or mechanical - is irrelevant." (Moholy-Nagy 26)

Moholy-Nagy's book represented a synthesis of the various ideas underlying the general

enthusiasm of

the

post-war avant-garde towards photography. In the latter twenties, however,

they came under concentrated attack, provoking a wide-ranging debate that endured into the

late thirties. This opposition against the passionate involvement of the avant-garde with the

formal possibilities offered by the new media, the call for a "return to realism", was not

merely a German phenomenon. Neither was it restricted to the field of photography alone. A

similar dispute erupted around the same time in a particularly sharp form in France concern

ing the legitimacy oftheexperimental, "pu re" film.^ N or was such a turn solely, or even pre

dominantly, motivated by conservative - aesthetical or political - impulses. In fact its main

initiator in Germany - beside the photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch - was Emo Kallai, an

other Hungarian emigrant, the editor of

Sozialistische Monatshefte

and one of

the

early theo

rists of

the

constructivist avant-garde. Though the causes of this change in the cultural atmos

phere of the time were certainly diverse and manifold, a not unimportant role was played in it

by the growing disillusionment precisely of the Left with the sweeping promises and expecta

tions oftheavant-garde concerning the ability ofthenew art to contribute to the transforma

tion of life. This was also connected with a broader disappointment with the prospects held

out by technical development

itself,

a critique of "progressivist" illusions. The slogan of "re-

See the material (and the editorial introduction) presented in Part IV of the anthology edited by R. Abe l.


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alism" frequently was a way of expressing the demand {oneway of expressing it) for an art

more directly and critically engaged with social reality.

Initially Kallai's and Renger-Patzsch's criticisms were based on quite different considera

tions. Kallai's argument was of a general aesthetical character. Photography can never legiti

mately compete with painting, and still less supplement it, because of its principal aesthetic

insufficiency: the lack of facture. The artistic excellence of a painting ftindamentally depends

on the tension (and its resolution) between the palpable, tactile materiality of its surface and

the ideal meaning of the presented image, the sublated contradiction between the materiality

of the means and the spirituality of the expressed intention. The transparent, mirror-like sur

face of the photo makes it devoid of this creative strain. Instead of pursuing the unrealisable

end of creating on such a technical basis a new, superior realm of art, the future of photogra

phy lies in consistently following its genuine vocation: the truly objective, impersonal repro

duction of meaningfully selected, socially significant aspects and fragments of reality.

The initial target of Renger-Patzsch's criticism was much narrower: the still prevalent

practice of "painterly", artificially arranged and posed, highly retouched photography (equally

rejected also by Moholy-Nagy and Kallai). It violates the fundamental law ofart:the unity of

technique and material. Only "absolute realism" allows photography to achieve its inherent

end: to capture - beyond the means of painting - the hidden magic of material things, from

the transient beauty of flowers to the dynamism of machines.

In spite of these differing points of departure and diverse emphases, Kallai and Renger-

Patzsch soon found themselves in a solidaristically accepted common front. The avant-garde

experiments with photography represent only the latest phase of the failed, nonsensical at

tempts to emulate and compete with painting, now with its modem form, i. e. abstract paint

ing. This can result only in vain, formal decorativeness, a craving for and affectation of origi

nality, mere conversational fodder for the culture-mongers (cf Phillips 140-141).

Benjamin was undoubtedly familiar with this dispute and the standpoints of its main rep

resentatives. Though Moholy-Nagy's faith in the beneficial effects of technological progress

was truly alien (and alienating) to him, his sympathies concerning the parties in this debate

were unambiguous. In his essay, "Little History of Photography" (1931) he approvingly

quotes from Moho ly's book, one of the few explicit references in this paper (cf Benjamin

ILL 382-38 3/2. 523).^ Renger-Patzsch, on the other hand, was one ofhis

betes noires.

He re

peatedly referred to the highly successful album of this photographer. Die Welt ist schon,as

representing thatphotographischer

Schmock

the pseudo-realism of which "has succeeded in

transforming even abject poverty - by apprehending it in fashionably perfected manner - into

an object of enjoym enf (Benjamin ILL 383/2. 526). This serves only one political function:

"to renew from within - that is, fashionably - the world as it is." (Benjamin II.2. 693/2. 775)

In fact it seems that Benjamin generally followed Moholy's writings with some interest. In his first paper

explicitly dealing with photography ("Neues von Blumen", from 1928), he quotes also from one of

Moholy's articles written after the publication of the book, an article that appeared in a small Viennese

photo-journal (see II.2. 151/2. 155-156).


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356 Gyorgy Markus

Nevertheless, and in spite of

his

expressed sympathies with the photographic experiments

of

the

Constructivists, Dadaists and Surrealists, Benjamin already in his 1931 essay proposes

to side-step the traditional aesthetic debate about "photography-as-art". Instead, one should

investigate the social fact of "art-as-photography" and its function (Benjamin ILL 381/2.

530).In the sharper and clearer formulation oftheArtwork essay this means no more to pose

the "misguided and confused" question as to whether photography is an art, but to raise "the

more fundamental question of whether the invention of photography had not transformed the

entire character of art", primarily effected through the photographic reproduction of works of

art (Benjamin 1.2. 486 /4. 258).

Though this program is already formulated in the 1931 essay on the history of photogra

phy, it is only partially realised in it. For this whole history is in fact reconstructed by Benja

min in terms of the changing relation of an aesthetic competition between painting and pho

tography. It is essentially described as a process in three stages. The early, "pre-industrial"

portrait daguerreotypes - owing to a complex of technical and social conditions - successfully

preserved the aura of their human subject, on which their lasting charm and "magical value"

is based. (This is also the first occasion that Benjamin explicitly defines the concept of "aura"

- Benjamin ILL 378/2. 518-519.) In this way they also finished off some genres of painting,

first of all portrait miniature. (Elsewhere Benjamin suggests that Impressionism was first of

all a defensive reaction against the competitive achievements of photography.) Further techni

cal and social changes, however, slowly undermined the exact congruence of technique and

subject, upon which the artistic success of early daguerreotypes was based (Benjamin

376/517). The great precursors of modem photography - first of all Atget and Sander - radi

cally faced up to the fundamental character of

this

change: the destruction of

the

aura and the

estrangement between man and his surroundings. Their images offered to the "politically edu

cated eye" a direct, palpable testimony of the guilty secrets of the age by capturing its unre

marked and unremarkable details, making the familiar suddenly strange (Benjamin 378-

379/518-519).

This was, however, an exceptional reaction. Commercial photography, following the im

peratives of the market, in general responded to the destruction of the aura by its artificial

simulation - highly retouched, posed photos in the studio, among props borrowed from the

tradition of famous paintings, "the bad pain ters' revenge on photography". This was the long

(and still enduring) period of "painterly" photos, whose attempt to remain "artistic" resulted

in a "sharp decline of taste" (Benjamin 374-375/515). However, Benjamin unambiguously

suggests, now a new stage is beginning. "For once again, as eighty years before, photography

has taken the baton from painting." (Benjamin 382/523) This is heralded by Surrealist photog

raphy (and the Russian film) sacrificing the false allure of creativity and fashionable beauty

for the task of unmasking and/or construction, for the sake of a critical instruction that must

be brought home to the beholder by caption/inscription. In this way photography itself be-


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comes a constitutive element in the general process of literarisation of conditions of life (Ben

jamin 385/527).^

Given this construction of the history of photography and especially its concluding prog

nosis, Benjamin's programmatic statement advocating a fundamental change of approach to

photography, the abandonment of its aesthetic comparison with painting, comes rather unex

pectedly. In fact the brief discussion that follows and explicates it appears rather as an inser

tion interrupting the historical exposition. And this explication begins with a striking asser

tion: "[T]he impact of photographic reproduction of artworks is of very much greater impor

tance for the function of art than the greater or lesser artistry ofaphotography that regards all

experience as fair game for the camera." (Benjamin 381/520)

Works of art as a particular class of subjects for representation: this had not even been

mentioned earlier in the essay, nor did it play any prominent role in the long-standing disputes

about the potentialities and values of photography.^ However, the problems associated with

them had been - particularly from a museological standpoint - vehemently disputed in a

short-lived debate that took place in a provincial art journal not much more than a year before

Benjamin wrote his essay.

III.

Between March 1929 and March 1930 a polemical discussion, ultimately with ten parti

cipants, had taken place in the small, left-wing Hamburg journal Der Kreis.Zeitschriftfilr

kilnstlerische

Kultur.^

It began as a controversy between two directors of regional museums.

Max Sauerlandt (Hamburg) and Carl G. Heise (Lubeck), about the aesthetic and pedagogical

legitimacy of plaster and galvanoplastic reproduction of sculptures. The topic of the discus

sion, however, soon changed - it shifted to the value (or its lack) of various kinds of photo

graphic reproductions of paintings. This shift to a large extent was a response to a minor cul

tural provocation. In the spring of 1929 a small exhibition (probably sponsored by the repro

duction industry) was organised in Hannover that presented some original works of art on pa

per alongside their high quality reproductions (facsimile prints). A prize competition was of

fered to the visitors to distinguish between them. And, as was announced afterwards, no one

among the well over a hundred competitors could quite correctly solve this task.

As intended, this provocation had a rather wide echo in the press. The dispute in Der

Kreiswas its theoretically most articulated part. The opposed "conservative" and "progressiv-

ist" positions were most clearly represented in it by the contributions of K. K. Eberling, on the

It is in the earliest notes ("Paralipomen a") to the Artwork essay that this broad concep t of "literarisation" is

replaced by Benjamin with that of "politicisation" (cf. Benjamin 1.3. 1039).

In fact Moholy-Nagy in his book (25) touches upon the use of photography for the creation of a "domestic

picture-gallery" of photos and transparencies, not to serve as pieces of lifeless room-decoration, but kept on

shelves or cupboards, essentially for purposes of eventual study. He does not ascribe, however, any broader

importance to it.

The history of this dispute is discussed in a paper by Diers.


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358 Gyorgy Markus

one hand, and A. Domer, on the other. The widest and most searching discussion of the issues

involved was, however, contributed by Erwin Panofsky, whose paper, however, due to its

length (14 printed pages ), could not be included in this small journal, but was published as a

separatum, for a long time lost and forgotten.

The art-historian Eberling regards (as Sauerlandt did in his earlier paper) facsimile repro

ductions just as commercially clever forgeries. They bear testimony only to the visual barba

rism of the times, to the common decline of the capacity of experience and memory. They

may have a limited usefulness, especially for a scholar, as mnemonic aids, but any wider use

of them reflects only the brutal utilitarianism and false democratism of the age. For "[t]here is

no universal right to art" (Phillips 148). It is an aristocratic thing, in an ethical, not a political

sense - its understanding and enjoyment have to be acquired and earned. Reproductions,

however good, offer only a cheap, falsifying substitute for genuine aesthetic experience, for

they lack the "epidermis" of the living work of art. (This is what Sauerlandt more emphati

cally called its mind-body unity: the absolute unification ofthegeneral form-idea with its ir

replaceable, unique materialisation.) Uniqueness and authenticity are fundamental characteris

tics of a work ofart. They constitute what Eberling calls its "mysterious, magical, biological

'flwra'" (Phillips 148), that can never be forged and without which art itself loses its sover

eignty.

Domer (director of the Hannover Museum) in his reply concedes that facsimiles of art

works of the past violate their original meaning-intention to which being unique essentially

belonged. It is only some contemporary artists, like Mondrian or Lissitsky, whose works not

only allow, but actually welcome reproduction. But the tension between the integrity of the

works of the past and our present needs and interests does not originate with the use of me

chanical reproductive technologies. It is already present in the institution and practice of the

art-museum. Museum exhibition itself violates the original purpose of the work and the inten

tion of its creator. Ancient works of art are, however, not historical relics. The experience of

their historical authenticity is quite separable from the aesthetic apprehension of the artist's

ideas that reproductions even today can convey with minimal loss. This is the price to be paid

for not conserving art as an isolated island in the stream of modem life, but making its experi

ence generally available. While he accepts that "the ideal artistic experience is naturally ob

tained before the original" (Phillips 153), he simultaneously envisages the possibility of such

a further development of the technologies of reproduction owing to which facsimiles in the

future ultimately may become capable of replacing the original (Phillips 151).

Panofsky opposes the standpoint of both camps in this dispute, arguing that they are

based on a shared misconception. Both assume that the ultimate end of reproductive tech

nologies is to replace the original work of

art.

No doubt some (perhaps a great many) recipi

ents today are unable to distinguish the original from its facsimile. This subjective failure,

however, as little proves the ability ofthelatter to replace the former, as the fear-reactions of

the members of an early cinema audience, when seeing on the screen an oncoming locomo

tive,proved the capacity of film to replace reality. In respect oftheother great form of

repro

duction, musical records, even the minimally educated musical ear is capable today of making


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such a distinction. Mechanical reproductions of whatever kind can never aim at replacing the

original, just because they are mechanical: they have their specific acoustics or optics of an

inorganic character, directly perceivable after some experience with them. Their end can be

nothing but to be a good (i. e. accurate) reproduction. And in this respects fme arts are in a

worse situation than music - because the reproduction of their works is still not sufficiently,

completely mechanical. The production of facsimiles still demands the intervening role of a

human person. Therefore such prints still lack that homogeneous quality which makes a musi

cal record immediately recognisable as such. This is, however, merely a sign of their technical

underdevelopment (Panofsky 1079-1083).

Reproductions, however good they may be, can never replace the original artwork, be

cause they can never convey that "experience of authenticity" {Echtheitserlebnis) that is an

irreplaceable ingredient - but only one ingredient - of the fiill aesthetic experience provided

by the latter. They are, however, necessary today, primarily because the general cultural inter

est in arts, stimulated and demanded in modernity, stands opposed to that practical limitation

of space and time that is freely available to the individual. Therefore they are needed not only

by the "poor student", but ultimately also by the well-to-do enthusiast of authentic experience

(Panofsky 1080-181).

At the same time Panofsky is sharply critical of those who regard authenticity as thede

fining feature of the artwork, by arguing that its aesthetic essence consists in the absolute

unity ofanirreproducible, singular materialisation and an ideal meaning content. Such a view

hypostatises a particularly modem conception of art. It was ftindamentally alien both to its

Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic understanding, dominant in its earlier history, both of which

considered material embodiment of the form-idea its necessary, but discretional, merely pas

sive substrate. The demand and experience of authenticity changes in history, and its weight

and significance are also different in different artistic genres, style epochs and for different

creative personalities. Furthermore important constituents of this experience - patina, weath

ering, discolouration, all the results of natural changes that the work as a material product has

undergone in time and which offer a testimony of its historically unique origin - in many

cases confound the intended meaning of the work. The experience of authenticity and the

comprehension of meaning Sinn-Erlebnis) may follow completely different paths; overem

phasising the first may seriously distort the second (Panofsky 1084-1088). Panofsky ends his

paper with an emphatic conclusion: iftheability to distinguish the original from its mechani

cal reproduction were lost, this would signal not only the end of the appropriate understanding

of art, but rather the end of art itself Its death, however, would not have been caused by the

technique and practices of reproduction.

IV,

This schematic overview ofthemain tenets oftheHamburg debate indicates, I think, not

only that its specific topic coincided with one of the fundamental issues discussed by Benja

min in his related papers. There are also a number of ideas and observations, even formula

tions,

made by the protagonists ofthiscontroversy which in either a positive or negative, po-


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360 Gyorgy Markus

lemical sense seem to return in his writings. Nevertheless, one cannot assume that he was ac

quainted with this dispute that took place in a marginal provincial journal. In fact he himself

explicitly pointed to another source of his ideas and interest in the topic

itself.

In his "Paris Diary", published in the late spring of 1930, Benjamin describes his meeting

with Adrienne Mounier, the poet and Paris bookseller whom he respected greatly. The re

ported conversation at the end accidentally turns to the topic of photographs of artworks.

When Benjamin remarks that though they make it easier to "enjoy" the work, they are essen

tially a wretched and unnerving way to deal with art, she sharply objects to such a view. Great

creations are essentially collective objects. Their photographic reproduction and reduction in

size offer people a degree of power over them as the condition of their enjoyment. Benjamin

ends his recollections by characterising Mounier's remarks as a valuable gift presented to him

for rethinking the problem of reproduction (Benjamin IV. 582/2. 348).

This story, however, has a further twist.^ When a year and half later Benjamin publishes

(in the very same w eekly where his "Diary" appeared) his "Little History of P hotography", in

its short, but principally important excursus on "art-as-photography" he simply reproduces

(more exactly: with the - possibly significant - change of

two

single words) Mounier's state

ments as his own view - opposing them to that widespread opinion which in the conversation

was actually represented by himself (Benjamin ILL 382/2. 523).

All this is, no doubt, a bit strange. There is, however, no reason whatsoever to doubt the

essential accuracy of Benjamin's recollections and the significance of his conversation with

Mounier for the formation of his own ideas concerning the impact of technical reproduction

on art. Nor does it exclude a simultaneous acquaintance with the dispute in Der Kreis.In any

case,

these unresolvable questions of biography are of secondary importance. Because against

the background oftheHamburg dispute one can clearly perceive what was genuinely original

in Benjamin's conception already in 1931 . For there is a consensus underlying the sharply

opposed views of all the participants in this controversy, certainly expressing the silently ac

cepted presupposition of all "experts". Under the present conditions (the technical imperfec

tion even of the best facsimiles, their "inaccuracies") only viewing the original can offer a

truly adequate aesthetic experience. Benjamin, however, already in 1931 approaches the

whole problem in a different way. The question relevant to the fate of art is not that ofthefi

delity or accuracy of reproductions. He accepts without demur that there is an unmistakable

difference between the copy

Abbild)

and its original

{Bild)

(cf Benjamin 379/519). The deci

sive point, however, is that reproduction, being mechanical, thus an indefinitely repeatable

and improvable process, makes the copy of the original, produced independently of subjective

intentions and individual skill, universally available by delivering it into the hand of the re

cipient. This concerns not simply its - desirable or disastrous - pedagogic effectiveness and is

not merely a question of "dissemination". It retroactively changes the recipient's basic atti

tude towards the original, and thereby the very status of art. The work ceases to be the un-

This has been pointed out in a paper by Haxthausen.


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touchable object of contemplative absorption in its unique totality, to be inspected and inves

tigated in all its details and potential functions of use. Technical reproduction peels away the

beautiful shell of the art object, the aura of its enduring uniqueness and inapproachability as

the socially imposed norm of an adequate receptive attitude that constitutes the objective

ground of its illusory autonomy. It changes the very function of art - from an aesthetical to a

social (political) one.

It is, however, not solely the concept of the aura (whose definition in the paper on photog

raphy is simply repeated in the Artwork essay) and its destruction, with its assumed conse

quence of the "refunctionalisation" of

art,

that are already present in 1931. A number of fiin-

damentally important insights and contentions elaborated in the later writing were also there,

at least concisely indicated five years earlier. To mention perhaps the main ones: the notion of

the "optical unconscious" (Benjamin 371/510), the passionate inclination of the contemporary

masses to overcome the uniqueness of each object and situation (Benjamin 378/519), the po

tentially productive character of man's alienated relation to his surroundings (Benjamin

379/519), the significance of captions Beschriftung) for photography as an aspect ofthe"lit-

erarisation" of all conditions of life (Benjamin 385/527), the production of, and adaptation to

shock as effects of the new technologies of reproduction (Benjamin 385/527), etc.

One could perhaps be inclined, on the basis of these observations, to regard the Artwork

essay as the radical continuation, the simultaneous deepening and widening of the ideas al

ready present in the paper on photography. Its first half (parts I-VI ofthe latest version), one

could argue, represents a unified, now both anthropologically (changes in the modes of per

ception of human collectivities) and historically (the cultic origin of art, the distinction be

tween cult and exhibition value) grounded, coherent framework for the dispersed and usually

laconically formulated observations in this earlier writing. In its secondhalf, then, the scope

of discussion is fundamentally broadened, extended from photography to film, whose promi

nent role in the processes analysed has already been stated, but not explicated earlier.

This may seem to be a not implausible understanding of the relation between these two

essays dealing with the same problem of technical reproducibility. It is, however, fundamen

tally mistaken. The crucial four to five years that intervened resulted - notwithstanding all the

connections between them - in basic changes in Benjamin's view of the same issue. This is

most directly reflected in his changed attitude to photography.

To put it crudely: the Artwork essay does not deal with photography as such. True, in part

VI (Benjamin 1.2. 485/4. 257-258) he sums up in a single paragraph the fundamental results

of his view of its early history as it was presented in 1931. But this is rather an insert. For at

the very beginning he underlines that there are only two manifestations of the new technolo

gies that are directly relevant to the fate of

art:

reproductionof artworksand the art of the film

(Benjamin 475/253). Both the development of technologies for the reproduction of sound and

the development of visual reproduction in the form of photography are taken into account

only as achievements which play a necessary preparatory role in the em ergence of sound film

- except, of course, for the quite specific case of photos of works of art.


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362 Gyorgy Markus

This pronounced change is clearly connected with Benjamin's re-evaluation of the per

spectives ofthe development of photography. In 1931 he expected Surrealist photography to

overcome the constitutive limitations of painting, realising new possibilities of unmasking and

construction in art. In late 1936, in his second "Letter from Paris", after quoting Aragon ex

pressing the very same beliefinthe revolutionary energy of this art, he comm ents: "This was

in 1930. Aragon would not make these statements today. The Surrealist attempt to master

photography by 'ar tistic' m eans has failed." (Benjamin III.

504/3.

241)

What changes during these years, however, are not simply particular prognoses, but the

very meaning of the attempted prognosis. Though making no such claim, the "Little History

of Photography" w as in a sense prognostic in the ordinary meaning of

the

term: it predicted a

definite developmental trend of its subject, connected with (desirable) changes in the very

function ofart.The Artwork essay makes the prognostic value ofitstheses ("defining the de

velopmental tendencies ofart )central to its whole enterprise (Benjamin 1.2. 473/4 . 251-252).

But what kind of "developmental tendencies" is meant here, what is actually "predicted" in

respect of the main subject of this analysis, the film?

It is much easier to clarify what Benjamin did

not

mean by such a prognosis than to give a

positive answer to this question. First of

all,

he makes it clear at the very beginning that he is

not concerned w ith the future of art after the successfiil revolution or in a classless society. He

is asking about the tendencies of art "under the present conditions of produc tion" (Benjamin

473/252). It is, however, also evident that he does not mean here predictable technical and/or

artistic, aesthetic or stylistic changes. His discussion of film is in this respect strikingly ahis-

torical. Even the great transition from silent to sound film is substantively treated by him only

in a longer footnote, and merely

fi om

he viewpoint of its economic causes (and short-term

political effects). In fact he refers (especially in the last version) to concrete, particular films

only in very few cases, merely for illustrative purposes and without discriminating between

"old" , silent and relatively recent sound films. Nor is he interested - in opposition to many

left-wing film theorists - in the potential role of film as a form of revolutionary enlightenment

and mobilisation. "We do not deny that in some cases today films can also foster revolution

ary criticism of social conditions, even of property relations. But the present study is no more

specifically concerned with this than is Western European film production." (Benjamin

492/262) This is not an ad hoc delimitation of interest. On the one hand Benjamin is very

sceptical about the ultimate political effectiveness of such films of radical intent. From the

presentation before the radio and the camera "the star and the dictator emerge as victors"

(Benjamin 492/277). More importantly he is deeply suspicious of the aspirations of Leftist

artist-intellectuals to usurp the position of the instructors and guides of the revolutionary class

to which - in spite of their progressing proletarianisation - they themselves do not belong.

(This had been one of the basic motives of his hostility towards NeueSachlichkeit.)

What, then, is Benjamin actually "predicting" in his discussion of film? First of

all,

what

ever it is, it is predicated not on this or that genre, style or trend of contemporary cinema, but

on film in general, on its "technological structure" (Benjamin 503/267) as a particular mode

and technique of presentation and representation. And what he in such a way ascribes to the


13/14


cinema as the consequence and impact of filmic technique in most (and the most important)

cases does not easily fit under the concept of a "developmental tendency", something in be

coming, some characteristic observable in an initial form already today that can unfold fully

only in the future. The most significant points made by him in this context are presented as

already accomplished and fully present states of affairs, as general observations and not as

predictive prognoses. This is so first of

all

in respect of the destruction of the aura, both of the

film actor (a fact that can only be artificially counteracted by the externally imposed cult of

personality) and that of the work owing to which "all semblance of art's autonomy disap

peared forever" (Benjamin 486/258). The same is true of the fundamental characteristics of

the relation of the audience to the film: cinematic experience as an exercise in adaptation to

the shock-effects of modem life and to the demands of "second technology"; the inherently

collective character of this reception which is simultaneously visual and somatic-kinetic ("tac

tile");

the fusion of pleasure and appraisal, distraction and critical examination as its specific

feature etc. He regards, however, all these (for him) indubitable "facts" as prognoses, because

he treats them assigns.They are signs, isolated and restricted to some narrow domain, of the

possibility of a rad ically different future, of the realisability of Utopia, a world completely

transforming man's relation to nature and technology, and simultaneously the relationship be

tween the individuals and their (newly formed) collectivities. He aims to make us apprehend

the inconspicuous sparks of the future, their presence in the present. In this respect, notwith

standing their quite different subject-matters and some not inconsequential changes in the

conceptual framework of their articulation, there is a fundamental commonness in the under

lying intention and project of

the

Artwork essay and thePassagenwert.to m ake the possibil

ity of another future actual for the Now .

The question of Benjamin's own "actuality"^ for us is primarily a question about what

this project can mean and teach us today, in our pedestrian "now". It would be hard to deny

that most of the issues it raised and addressed - both the most general and the more particular

ones - remain quite "actual". Are we condemned to "progress" at an ever more accelerated

tempo in a firmly set, unchangeable direction beyond our control or can we - in one way or

other - interrupt this fatal (and possibly catastrophic) continuity of history; is another fix ture

possible, or even conceivable for us? What is the potential role ofthenew technologies of

re

production, representation and mass communication in these processes of change? How do

they impact upon art in its traditional understanding, some of the most important domains of

which (painting, theatre, novel, lyric poetry) are in the situation of

a

continuous crisis, already

sharply and convincingly characterised by Benjamin?

One cannot but admire and regard as exemplary the consistency of Benjam in's efforts -

in all his professed inconsistencies - to make these questions actual for his time. The problem

is not simply that the future he envisaged and so much willed failed to materialise - in this

respect his "predictions" shared the same fate as those of

the

invoked great model, Marx. Nor

8 Con cernin g the difficulties of this question see also the beautiful essay by Woh lfahrt.


14/14

364 Gyorgy Markus

can the paradox ofhisinfluence be resolved by exactly clarifying which of his concrete prog

noses concerning his main, specific topics, photography and film, proved to be correct and

which were quite mistaken. The problem is that this whole project of reading the signs of fu

ture in the present (quite distinct from the causal model of Marx) was based on a Messianic,

secular theology of history that is perhaps even less attractive and acceptable today than

Marx's unquestioning faith in the power ofanempirical science of society to predict the long-

range course of

history.

The perplexity concerning the meaning of Benjamin's oeuvre for us

is rooted in its being genuinely exemplary, but an example that we cannot, should not follow.

Thus his non-accidental failures and mistakes are of no less import than his valid insights. Ul

timately, however, our perplexity concerning his "actuality" is just part of a much larger,

weightier and more significant perplexity: how, on what theoretical basis, can we find an

swers effective in and for our present to his questions whose remaining actuality it would be

difficult to deny.

Literature

Benjamin, Walter. GesammelteSchriften. 1 vols. Ed. Herrmann Schweppenhauser and Rolf

Tiedemann. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1972-1989.

- .Selected Writings.4 vols. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University P ress, 1996-2003.

Abel, Richard. French Film Theory and Criticism. A History/Anthology. Vol. I. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1988.

Diers, Michael. "Kunst und R eproduktion: Der Hamburger Faksimile Streit."Idea: Jahrbuch

der

Hamburger Kunstsammlung5

(1986): 125-137.

Gum brecht, Hans Ulrich, and Michael Marrinan (ed .).Mapping

Benjamin. The

Work

of Art in

the DigitalAge.Stanford: Stanford University Press,

2003.

Haxthausen, Charles W. "Reproduction/Repetition: Walter Benjamin/Carl Einstein." October

107 (2004 ): 47-74.

Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo.

Painting Photography,

Film.Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1969.

Panofsky, Erwin. "Original und Faksimilereproduktion."

DeutschsprachigeAufsdtze.

Vol. II.

Ed. K. Michels und M. W amke. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. 1078-1090.

Phillips, Christopher (ed.).Photography in the Modern Era. New York: The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, 1989.

Wohlfahrt, Irving. "'Einige wenige schwere Gewichte'? Zur 'Aktualitat' Walter Benjamins."

Global

B enjamin.Ed. K. Garber und L. Rehm. Vol. 1. Munich: Fink Verlag, 1999. 31-

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