BENJAMIN, Walter (1892–1940)

‘L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée’ [‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’]

In: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. V, No. 1 (Paris, Librarie Félix Alcan, 1936)

‘there is not a sentence which I would not wish to discuss with you in detail’ – Theodor Adorno, writing to Benjamin in 1936

A foundational work of film theory, and one of the most significant of all writings on modern aesthetics. Benjamin’s essay provides the first – and still the best – account of the transformation art undergoes when it enters into an age of mass reproduction. An essay no less important in the politically charged atmosphere on the 1930s as it is now, in an age of AI deepfakes, algorithmic and ‘post internet’ art, unprecedented access to online visual material of all kinds, and, to quote Benjamin, ‘politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic’.

‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ was conceived by Benjamin as a contemporary complement to his much larger Arcades Project. He began writing the essay in 1935, from his home in exile in Paris. In October he mentioned the essay in letters to Gretel Karplus and Max Horkheimer, telling the latter that the essay was the beginning of ‘a materialist theory of art’. The title in German is ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’. In a letter of October 1935 Benjamin had suggested to Horkheimer that the essay might be published in the Frankfurt School journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Horkheimer agreed to this, on condition that the essay should appear in French translation. Benjamin – then residing in France and deeply concerned with French politics – readily agreed, and collaborated with the philosopher-translator Pierre Klossowski, finishing the translation work in parallel with his completion of the revised essay itself.

In spite of what Howard Eiland calls Benjamin's ‘meticulous collaboration’ with Klossowski, publication in the Zeitschrift was far from straightforward, with editorial intervention leading to what Benjamin regarded as a toning down of the political intensity of the piece. In spite of these problems, the essay was published in 1936 in Volume 5, Issue 1 of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, in Klossowski's French translation, with the title: ‘L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée’, followed by abstracts in German and English. Horkheimer's decision to publish in French was immediately vindicated, as the essay was widely discussed in French intellectual circles. Benjamin continued to revise the essay down to 1939, just before his early death by suicide in 1940.

Good condition: binding somewhat weak; cover spotted and a little worn; spotting to foreedge and some leaves, only mildly affecting Benjamin’s essay; otherwise internally very good, largely uncut (‘L’œuvre d’art’ fully opened).