Class Discussion Notes 9/22

9/22/09

Walter Benjamin

Questions

• What is art?
• What does mechanical reproducibility?

Points

• Aura – authority, ritual, cult. Function of presence, proximity. Feeling, experience of work of art.
• Mechanical reproducibility destroys aura and authority.
• “The public is an examiner but an absent-minded one.”
• Photography – cult vs. exhibition value.

Critiques

• Should have defined what he though art was.
• Doesn’t account for the individual experience of art.
• Going for the shock effect.
• No flow. Jumps around a lot.