LEFTIST LIBRARY
Author: Walter Benjamin
Year: 1936
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes that the mechanical reproduction of a work of art devalues the aura of the artefacts uniqueness as art. During the Nazi régime (1933–1945), Benjamin wrote the essay to produce a theory of art that is useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art in a mass-culture society; that, in the age of mechanical reproduction, and the absence of traditional and ritualistic value, the production of art would be inherently based upon the praxis of politics. (Wikipedia)
