The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

Walter Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art” essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general—in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only t...

(展开全部)

Walter Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art” essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general—in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the “Work of Art” essay—the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin’s best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays—some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin’s media theory can be fully appreciated.

A Note on the Texts
Editors’ Introduction
I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art
1. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version
2. Theory of Distraction
3. To the Planetarium
· · · · · · (更多)

A Note on the Texts
Editors’ Introduction
I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art
1. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version
2. Theory of Distraction
3. To the Planetarium
4. Garlanded Entrance
5. The Rigorous Study of Art
6. Imperial Panorama
7. The Telephone
8. The Author as Producer
9. Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century
10. Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian
11. Review of Sternberger’s Panorama
II. Script, Image, Script-Image
12. Attested Auditor of Books
13. This Space for Rent
14. The Antinomies of Allegorical Exegesis
15. The Ruin
16. Dismemberment of Language
17. Graphology Old and New
III. Painting and Graphics
18. Painting and the Graphic Arts
19. On Painting, or Sign and Mark
20. A Glimpse into the World of Children’s Books
21. Dream Kitsch
22. Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boétie
23. Chambermaids’ Romances of the Past Century
24. Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head
25. Some Remarks on Folk Art
26. Chinese Paintings at the Bibliothèque Nationale
IV. Photography
27. News about Flowers
28. Little History of Photography
29. Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography
30. Review of Freund’s Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle
V. Film
31. On the Present Situation of Russian Film
32. Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz
33. Chaplin
34. Chaplin in Retrospect
35. Mickey Mouse
36. The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression
VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio
37. Journalism
38. A Critique of the Publishing Industry
39. The Newspaper
40. Karl Kraus
41. Reflections on Radio
42. Theater and Radio
43. Conversation with Ernst Schoen
44. Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio Play
45. On the Minute
Index
· · · · · · (收起)