batchen readingggg.

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction was an interesting enough read, if not a little dense as well as slightly disjointed. The main point became clear after a few reads and re-reads, and addressed the fact that the ability to reproduce a work of art has drastically effected not only the purpose of art, but also it's impact on its viewers. I found Benjamin's view on art very interesting; his view was one I had not heard before. I never thought to consider an original work of art in comparison to its replica before. His comments on art's purpose (ritual versus political) were too broad a generalization for me, although I was able to see where he was coming from, but I found myself getting lost in his explanations and examples. I think the point that most stuck out to me was his comment in section five, where he mentioned the different types of value in art- cult value and exhibition value. He stated that what mattered in a work of art depended on what kind of value it had- for example, if a work had cult value, what mattered in the piece was merely that it existed, whereas what mattered in a work with exhibition value was merely that it was on view. This made a lot of sense to me. Art today is readily available to the masses, and generally a work of art's worth is dependent on how it is received by the public. Art in previous times, however, was available to a much smaller circle of viewers, and was more intimate and pointed. As I read further into the article, I continued to sort of lose myself in its discussion of photography and film as art. Generally, I do not see the need to discuss whether or not the two are forms of art- to me, they obviously are. The comparisons between the cameraman and the painter and their respective realms of view were hard for me to grasp, and I struggled with the last few sections. Overall, I thought that Benjamin's article was an interesting one; it introduced me to some viewpoints I had never considered before.