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The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
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The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, an...
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is ideal for students, scholars, and readers interested in media studies, cultural theory, aesthetics, and the history of art. It suits those seeking a deep, critical understanding of how technological advances have reshaped artistic expression and perception.
Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art“ essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general. 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.
In wanting to be a great literary critic [Benjamin] discovered that he could only be the last great literary critic. ... He explained certain aspects of the modern with an authority that seventy years of unpredictable change have not vitiated. -- Frank Kermode Walter Benjamin's work, fragmentary and partly esoteric as it is, fully withstands a comparative measure, and surpasses any of its rivals in philosophic consequences. There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George Steiner In recent decades, Benjamin's essay on the work of art may have been quoted more often than any other single source in an astonishing range of areas -- from new-left media theory to cultural studies, from film and art history to visual culture, from the postmodern art scene to debates on the future of art, especially film, in the digital age. The antinomies and ambivalences in Benjamin's thinking, his efforts to explore the most extreme implications of opposing stances, are still invaluable for illuminating the contradictions in today's media environment. Anyone interested in the fate of art, perception, and culture in the industrialized world must welcome this collection of Benjamin's writings on media. -- Miriam Hansen This one-volume gathering of Benjamin's dialectical writing on media of all kinds, ranging from children's literature to cinema, has at its heart the second, most expansive version of his path-breaking essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.' Readers familiar only with partial versions of this piece, where Benjamin began to record the melancholy loss of aesthetic presence at the turn of the twentieth century, will find their understanding transformed-- for this second version, like all the essays and supplemental texts included here, explores a set of latent, utopian possibilities inherent in mechanical means of art-making. Benjamin, the visionary magus of particulars, reveals profoundly, and repeatedly, both the grounds and the consequences of our ever-changing image of the made world. -- Susan Stewart
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Description
Benjamin's famous Work of Art essay sets out his boldest thoughts on media and on culture in general—in their most realised 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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780674024458
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 May 2008
Country: United States
Imprint: The Belknap Press
Illustration: 22 halftones
Contributors:
- Edited by Michael W. Jennings
- Edited by Brigid Doherty
- Edited by Thomas Y. Levin
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 235.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 448
About the Author
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis. Michael W. Jennings is Professor of German, Princeton University. *Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Thomas Y. Levin is Associate Professor of German at , Princeton University.
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