Sebastien's Reviews > Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

These are meandering thoughts on the book (especially on Benjamin's Mechanical Reproduction essay). If you have any thoughts, insights, critique on my view I appreciate any comments. The topic of art is something I'm endlessly fascinated by and always love discussing!

I loved the preface by Hannah Arendt, gives insight into mindset and analytical style of Benjamin. Offers perceptive bio framing his life against historical issues and cultural landscape (including situation of Jewish bourgeoisie in Europe at the time which is Benjamin’s background, she also interweaves details from Kafka who also came from this milieu and struggled with similar identity issues facing European Jewish bourgeoisie of that era). The story of Benjamin’s final days and attempt to escape the Nazis from France to Spain is tragic and heartbreaking. I had no idea of this backstory.

There are several essays on Kafka and Proust. Very interesting, Proust is kind of a weird guy but Benjamin offers a lot of insightful commentary on his life and how this influenced Proust's work and his way of dealing with time, memory, past, present, and how this all plays a role in examination of the self. Makes me want to read some Proust but not sure I have the patience for it either, seems very solipsistic and maybe a different time and place in my life I would have been more intrigued... I didn’t realize the extent of Proust’s health issues and suffering which seem to have had a large part in shaping his work. I also enjoyed the essay on Baudelaire which interweaves analysis on modern city life and Baudelaire’s connection and then disillusionment with this situation.

Following paragraphs are my thoughts (like I said meandering) on Benjamin’s essay on Mechanical Reproduction, I will do my best, this would be an essay to reread carefully because there is a lot there, and I don’t doubt I’ve missed certain nuances and points but that won’t stop me from writing about it haha!

This is a very good essay as it hits upon a lot of interesting insights but I have some issues. Let me preface this by saying that I think Benjamin truly knows how to dance around and with a subject, poking and prodding it allowing him to expertly and gradually drill to core issues. So sometimes I disagree with his tone or view, but his insights are keen. It was interesting how he presented the evolution of the purpose of art, how it morphed and changed from cultish function (often times religious/social glue) to more the idea of “art for art’s sake.”

Benjamin delves into issues of who manufactures art and its quality. In this realm he references Alduous Huxley, who brandishes a viewpoint I find mindblowingly elitist and aggravating to my sensibilities. To reduce it, Huxley comes across as the type of guy who thinks only one type of person (genius) is fit to produce art (his example is based on the art of writing), his view is that a greater amount of people creating (due to greater amount of reading public) has led to a high output of garbage art (literally he calls it garbage!) and vulgarity that caters to lowest common denominators. It’s one of the more aggravating excerpts I’ve read, I’ve always had good thoughts about Huxley but this passage was a disappointment for me, smacking of a real aristocratic superiority. It’s a view that not so subtly hints that art should be walled off, and created and consumed by only a specific subset of people. It’s hard for me not to get emotional with such a viewpoint because it touches a raw nerve for me, kind of makes me want to punch people in the face. As if art needs to strive to be only one thing, nestle itself into a small box, and needs to cater to a certain elite “cultured” chosen. Huxley seems to have a narrow definition, that only great art should be made by the men of genius and all else is garbage (I assume garbage is anything that doesn’t speak to him or his particular sensibilities). I don’t even know what good art is! How can one apply such qualitative assessments on what is good and therefore deserves to be made? Is it “mastery” of technique? Style? Universality? Different things appeal to different people which is why I’m happy there is a lot of different kinds of art and diversity of practitioners, creators, and a broad diverse public that consumes the work.

I know there are things I think are good but it doesn't mean it is universally good, it merely means it speaks to me and has some meaning for me. I tend to gravitate towards things that fit my tastes based on style, technique, themes, but I also search for work where the artist seems to have managed to put some truth of their life or experience within their work which I always consider an accomplishment. It doesn’t need to be technically brilliant and mind-blowing, it just needs to communicate to me and make me feel something that I think is important for my life and how I relate to this world, maybe acts as mirror and helps me see things about myself or about others. For me art is about communication, that is broad but I can’t really figure out more specific parameters. Yes it transcends mere passing of information, it is often more ethereal and abstract, nebulous.

Of course I judge art based on my time, place, upbringing, experiences, views, tastes, and am influenced by the people and culture around me, but I will never say something is universally good or great, tastes wax and wane and vary across cultures, all that matters is that something speaks to us. To project one’s personal artistic tastes as being the be all end all definition of what good art is is the height of arrogance and pride imo, so you know I kinda gotta throw Huxley in the doghouse on that one because he might be very brilliant in many ways but from the passage Benjamin quotes he strikes me as the kind of guy who thinks his standard is the only standard (you can tell this is a subject that really riles me up right?! haha)

Benjamin is much more nuanced and doesn’t fall into this elitist trap so easily. Too clever hehe. He is more about looking at issues and stripping the veneer off the subject matter to get a better look at it, look at how the machinery works and how it has evolved. He’s not blindly denouncing anything that doesn’t fit his standard although he is asking piercing questions that hints at some of his uneasiness (some of which is justified for sure). It is a very good essay and hits so many interesting points, and there is just so much to talk about. But one problem is that I feel he has a fetishization of original object (his argument is that reproduction leads to a destruction or “withering of aura” breaking the art away from tradition and history). He seems to place traditional art forms (painting) on a pedestal, I feel he has a lot of nostalgia for this mode. In his eyes the modern art techniques like film are not all bad, in fact they have a lot of potential due to the force of their democratizing possibilities, but they also feature a capacity to exploit, dominate, indoctrinate, and subjugate people. To be fair I think one can make an argument that this is not new at all, for example painting and previous modes of art were exploited in such a manner by the Catholic church, maybe not as broadly due to limitations of the medium but churches and art within them were tools and had broad reach in both physical but also spiritual realms/lives of people living in medieval Europe, certainly exploited to gain greater power and exert social control. In a similar vein in these eras many paintings were commissioned by powerful elites to project power. And acknowledging this doesn't mean I don't like this work, in fact there is a lot of art from this era - most especially the Northern Renaissance - that I love for multiple reasons, including craftsmanship and style of certain works but also the historical and cultural aspects of the works.

And it’s funny because for me my favorite art form is painting, but I don’t attach more significance to it than I do to film or writing or many other forms of artistic communication. It is a tool like all the others and even if I love painting I try my best not to overly fetishize/mythologize the art object. But hey full disclosure I’m not immune to enchantment, I love love love sitting in front of a painting, looking at how it is painted, love knowing the artist’s hand was there because it creates a connection to the original creation point and connection to the artist (or team of artists if they worked in a workshop) that transcends time and space, and there is a meditative quality to looking at the static image. As Benjamin mentions this is in contrast to the moving image which by its constant flood of image after image exacts what he calls a "shock effect" on the viewer, hampering the ability to think and process the constant stream of visual info. I don't think this medium precludes the ability to think deeply on the material but it is easy to get lulled into being a mere receptacle. Anyways yes I like paintings, I like the static image, but sometimes becoming too obsessed with this mythologization of object we paradoxically becoming blinded to it and what is directly in front of us!

In my estimation each medium has its own positive and negative aspects, ultimately it comes down to the creators and their ability to leverage whatever medium they choose. Maybe my thinking is more democratic about art and modern techniques because I was raised with them, I’ve consumed a lot of visual forms and I enjoy film a lot. I don’t come from a world where the artist’s hand is the only avenue for creation so Benjamin sometimes seems a bit quaint to me with some of these arguments. Maybe I miss some of his nuance even though I have to agree that some of his critiques of modern art forms are on point but the negative aspects of the critique are overemphasized vs the positive aspects, while the reverse is true for how he treats the older modes like painting.

Now this obsession with aura… I don’t know, tbh it just straight up annoys me but the discussion is rather fascinating. I find him overly obsessed with the object and its materiality, and while I do think there is importance to seeing a physical piece in the flesh and witness it in its context I think he goes overboard in placing the art object in this mystical realm. He deconstructs film as being too manufactured, too sliced and diced in the effort to create illusion (also there is no actual original object, he really doesn't like this!). But you know, painting is all illusion too, filled with various techniques, color strategies, perspective, composition, all in the effort to create various visual illusions. That film is created via the camera lens is a detriment in his eyes, taking away the human hand. But even more traditional mediums have artificiality and limitations, for instance the painter is often limited by the very nature of the 2d canvas/wood-panel (well that is the preferred format on average), so there is artificiality within this pursuit as well. Sometimes I think the focus on the artificiality of photography and film has more to do with these being new techniques of the modern age, and in a way this newness is frightening to people like Benjamin who were witnessing a flux of new techniques and mediums. But to overlook the artificiality of previous modes of creation is a bit silly to me, even if the human hand was more involved in past times it was still using tricks of technique to create illusion (heck I wonder what he’d have to say about the use of the camera obscura going way back, it’s highly likely that many artists including Vermeer were using this technique to capture greater realism within their work. Does this take away from the paintings so-called “aura” because an artificial lens/lens-like technique was used to create the illusion?).

Benjamin is more balanced than a lot of the other Frankfurt school philosophers who just hate mass culture and see it as a tool of control that flattens and deadens thought. I think Benjamin recognizes both the potential benefits and potential dangers of mass culture and art. Now what he says on the issue concerning concentration of viewer vs distraction is interesting. Why and how we consume art are key issues and I like the exploration of this question. Sometimes if distraction is our only reason for visiting art we become mere receptacles, but if we approach art with concentration we can pierce through content and think through it, more of a meeting in the middle. But even on this issue I think people should consume art however they see fit, whether it be via concentration or the goal of distraction. I prefer the idea of concentration, that’s just my preference but yes I do consume things to distract as well. So it’s not always just one way, it depends.

As Benjamin explains in the essay originally much art served a cultic or religious function. Over time there was a greater shift to the mentality of art for art’s sake (which as an idea I find a bit silly). As I said, to distill my view I see art as a mode of communication that helps us connect with each other and try to better understand this world, life experience, others, ourselves; a conduit to share ideas and experience. To critique the "art for art's sake" I'd say this, I doubt we would make art if we alone existed and no other humans existed. Art is a bridge, and when we are lucky it can help us expand our minds, help us transcend daily reality, allow us to share ideas and experience, make us connect with things beyond ourselves, reveal insights into our own selves and the world we live in.