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Walter BenjaminThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Nazi Germany and the Rise of Fascism
Content Warning: This section references Fascist violence, the Shoah, and antisemitism.
This essay was written in the context of the rise of the Third Reich and other forms of Fascism throughout the world from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1932, the Nazi Party became the largest party in the German Parliament. The Nazis were an antisemitic, Fascist party that sought to exterminate the Jewish people, control the German masses, and suppress all forms of dissent. In January of 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Following the false flag operation known as the Reichstag Fire, Hitler’s government passed a law allowing him to make laws without consent of the parliament or Reichstag. In 1934, following a referendum, Hitler was designated sole leader or Führer of Germany.
The rise of Nazi Germany and other forms of Fascist government in Europe, such as Mussolini’s regime in Italy, led to the persecution of minorities such as Jews, Roma, and people with disabilities throughout the continent. It also led to new forms of propaganda, such as the film The Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl (1935), which communicated the Fascist worldview and sought to create a willing public to accept the means necessary for returning Germany to a great world power.
Benjamin wrote this essay during these events and in direct response to them. Being Jewish, he was forced to leave his native country of Germany to emigrate to France to avoid death in a concentration camp. In this essay, he is responding to imagery and ideology of Fascism and how it is connected to advances in technology. The Fascists were obsessed with modern technology and how it could be applied to their goals of creating a “perfect” society through destruction. Benjamin tries to establish a language of art criticism that can identify Fascist impulses in aesthetics as well as point a way toward creating art that can respond to this form of authoritarianism. This is why Benjamin evaluates art forms with relation to their politics, both as explicitly articulated and implicit in their mode of production and the image of reality they portray.
Cultural Context: Art for Art’s Sake
“Art for art’s sake” is a philosophy of art that posits that a “true” work of art should not hold itself to any moral or political standard. According to this philosophy, great art should not try to teach a lesson or be politically engaged. Art should exist in a sphere where the highest value is beauty. This concept is closely connected with the mid 19th-century French writer and critic Théophile Gautier, who articulated it in French as “l’art pour l’art,” a phrase that appears multiple times in Benjamin’s essay. The supporters of this theory of art were contesting the moralistic quality of Victorian art and literature, which often contained very explicit lessons about the correct or proper way to think or act.
There are two predominant, connected themes of critique of the slogan “art for art’s sake.” The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book Twilight of the Idols (1888), argued that “l’art pour l’art” was not only undesirable in a moral society but also impossible because art always expresses a political message, whether explicit or implicit. Marxists, such as Walter Benjamin, also reject this theory of art. Classical Marxists and other forms of Communists believe that art should have a political and moral message that supports socialism. Walter Benjamin describes in detail this view in his essay “The Author as Producer,” which was posthumously translated by Manhoor Javed and published in the New Left Review in 1970. In this essay, he states “The correct political tendency of a work includes its literary quality because it includes its literary tendency.” He argues that the value of a work of art is connected to the politics it expresses.
