Illuminations

many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers—at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor." And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man's ability to perform the work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property.¹³All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly in Russia, this change-over has partially become established reality. Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves—and primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.

The Work of Art in the Age of A

extraneous accessories as camera ei staff assistants, ere—unless his eye \ lens. This circumstance, more th; ficial and insignificant any possible the studio and one on the stage. In of the place from which the pla¹tected as illusionary. There is no s that is being shot. Its illusionary n; gree, the result of cutting. That is chanical equipment has penetrated pure aspect freed from the foreign result of a special procedure, nam dally adjusted camera and the m with other similar ones. The equ here has become the height of ar reality has become an orchid in th

Even more revealing is the com] which differ so much from those i tion in painting. Here the question compare with the painter? To ans an analogy with a surgical operatio polar opposite of the magician. Th by the laying on of hands; the si body. The magician maintains the patient and himself; though he re laying on of hands, he greatly inc thority. The surgeon does exactly ishes the distance between himself : into the patient's body, and increas with which his hand moves among trast to the magician—who is still tioner—the surgeon at the decisive the patient man to man; rather, it he penetrates into him.

Magician and surgeon compan The painter maintains in his work a the cameraman penetrates deeply i

The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such

2}2

211

Illuminations

mendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of mjilriplf,. JTjigmgpts which are assembled under_a_new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.

The Work of Art in the Age o,

ture at all times, for the epic poe today. Although this circumstan to conclusions about the social re a serious threat as soon as paintii as it were, against its nature, is cc In the churches and monasteries princely courts up to the end o lectivc reception of paintings dii by graduated and hicrarchized i come about is an expression of painting was implicated by the paintings. Although paintingsbe galleries and salons, there was no and control themselves in their ri which responds in a progressive is bound to respond in a reactioi

XIII

The characteristics of the fill which man presents himself to it the manner in which, by means resent his environment. A glance lustrates the testing capacity of illustrates it in a different perspei field of perception with metho< those of Freudian theory. Fifty passed more or less unnoticed. < slip have revealed dimensions of had seemed to be taking its coun chopathology of Everyday Life isolated and made analyzable thin along unnoticed in the broad str tire spectrum of optical, and no\ film has brought about a similai is only an obverse of this fact i movie can be analyzed much r

XII

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest they control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses.

Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architec-

234

Illuminations

points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In comparison with the stage scene, the filmed behavior item lends itself more readily to analysis because it can be isolated more easily. This circumstance derives its chief importance from its tendency to promote the mutual penetration of art and science. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film.¹⁸

By <4ose^ups.^f the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends^ our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones "which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions." * Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored

• Rudolf Arnheim, loc. cit., p. 138.

The Work of Art in the Age of A

by man. Even if one has a general walk, one knows nothing of a per: tional second of a stride. The act spoon is familiar routine, yet we hai between hand and metal, not to me our moods. Here the camera interv lowerings and liftings, its interrupi sions and accelerations, its enlargem era introduces us to unconscious oj unconscious impulses.

x 1 v

One of the foremost tasks of ar of a demand which could be fully tory of every art form shows criti art form aspires to effects which with a changed technical standard form. The extravagances and crudi particularly in the so-called decade the nucleus of its richest historical barbarisms were abundant in Dadai pulse becomes discernible: Dadaisn torial—and literary—means the eff seeks in the film.

Every fundamentally new, pio will carry beyond its goal. Dadaisi sacrificed the market values whicl film in favor of higher ambitions-conscious of such intentions as her tached much less importance to t than to its uselessness for contemp degradation of their material was r achieve this uselessness. Their poerr obscenities and every imaginable w same is true of their paintings, on and tickets. What they intended :

236

231

Illuminations

destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct.¹⁸Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public.

From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: "I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images." * The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind.¹⁹By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.²⁰

• Georges Duhamel, Scenes de la vie future, Paris, 1930, p. 52.

The Work of Art in the Age of ,

X V

Tlic mass is a matrix from wl

ward works of art issues today in

transmuted into quality. The gre

pants has produced a change in t

fact that the new mode of partic

reputable form must not confuse

have launched spirited attacks aj

aspect. Among these, Duhamel ha

radical manner. What he objects

pation which the movie elicits ft

the movie "a pastime for helots

wretched, worn-out creatures wh

ries . . . , a spectacle which requ

supposes no intelligence . . . , whii

and awakens no hope other than

becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles."

same ancient lament that the mass

demands concentration from the

place. The question remains whet

the analysis of the film. A closer 1<

and concentration form polar opp

follows: A man who concentrate

sorbed by it. He enters into this w

of the Chinese painter when he v.

contrast, the distracted mass absc

most obvious with regard to built

represented the prototype of a 1

which is consummated by a col lee

The laws of its reception are most

Buildings have been man's con

Many art forms have developed i

with the Greeks, is extinguished \

its "rules" only are revived. The ej

* Duhamel, op. cit., p. 58.

'3*

239

Illuminations

in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art.(Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception—or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.

The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies

The Work of Art in the Age of

this position requires no attention. an absent-minded one.

KPILOGUF.

The growing prolctarianizatio creasing formation of masses arc t

FascisnAattcmpts to organize t

masses without affecting the prop< strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its not their right, but instead a chain masses have a right to change pn to give them an expression while ical result of Fascism is the introd cal life. The violation of the mt. Fiihrer cult, forces to their knees, lation of an apparatus which is p ritual values.

All efforts to render politics ae: war. War and war only can set a g largest scale while respecting the This is the political formula for tl formula may be stated as follows: mobilize all of today's technical re property system. It goes without s osis of war does not employ sue says in his manifesto on the Fthiopi seven years we Futurists have reh war as antiaesthetic. . . . According tiful because it establishes man's c machinery by means of gas masks, throwers, and small tanks. War is h drcamt-of metalization of the hum; cause it enriches a flowering mead machine guns. War is beautiful be< the cannonades, the cease-fire, th putrefaction into a symphony. Wat

240

241

Illuminations

new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others. . . . Poets and artists of Futurism! . . . remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art . . . may be illumined by them!" This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today's war appears as follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that

K>rhnnlr>~~gy hiy nnt hppn cnffiripnrly~~jrWMnprH tO COpe with the

""elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic waifaie aie "atrriburable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production—in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of "human material," the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.

"Fiat ars—pereat mundus," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "Tart pour Fart" Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Tholes

i. Of course, the history of a wo this. The history of the "Mona Lisj kind and number of its copies made turies.

2. Precisely because authenticity sive penetration of certain (niechar was instrumental in differentiating a velop such differentiations was an in works of art. The invention of the struck at the root of the quality of flowering. To be sure, at the time ol the Madonna could not yet be sai "authentic" only during the succeec strikingly so during the last one.

3. The poorest provincial staging film in that, ideally, it competes wit mar. Before the screen it is unprc contents which might come to mini that Goethe's friend Johann Heinric and the like.

4. To satisfy the human interest one's social function removed fror guarantees that a portraitist of toda geon at the breakfast table in the mi cial function more precisely than a \ portrayed his medical doctors as r Rembrandt in his "Anatomy Lesson

5. The definition of the aura as s tance however close it may be" repi tion of the cult value of the work t time perception. Distance is the opp< distant object is the unapproachabl deed a major quality of the cult imaj "distant, however close it may be." gain from its subject matter does n retains in its appearance.

Illuminations

6. To the extent to which the cult value of the painting is secularized the ideas of its fundamental uniqueness lose distinctness. In the imagination of the beholder the uniqueness of the phenomena which hold sway in the cult image is more and more displaced by the empirical uniqueness of the creator or of his creative achievement. To be sure, never completely so; the concept of authenticity always transcends mere genuineness. (This is particularly apparent in the collector who always retains some traces of the fetishist and who, by owning the work of art, shares in its ritual power.) Nevertheless, the function of the concept of authenticity remains determinate in the evaluation of art; with the secularization of art, authenticity displaces the cult value of the work.

7. In the case of films, mechanical reproduction is not, as with literature and painting, an external condition for mass distribution. Mechanical reproduction is inherent in the very technique of film production. This technique not only permits in the most direct way but virtually causes mass distribution. It enforces distribution because the production of a film is so expensive that an individual who, for instance, might afford to buy a painting no longer can afford to buy a film. In 1927 it was calculated that a major film, in order to pay its way, had to reach an audience of nine million. With the sound film, to be sure, a setback in its international distribution occurred at first: audiences became limited by language barriers. This coincided with the Fascist emphasis on national interests. It is more important to focus on this connection with Fascism than on this setback, which was soon minimized by synchronization. The simultaneity of both phenomena is attributable to the depression. The same disturbances which, on a larger scale, led to an attempt to maintain the existing property structure by sheer force led the endangered film capital to speed up the development of the sound film. The introduction of the sound film brought about a temporary relief, not only because it again brought the masses into the theaters but also because it merged new capital from the electrical industry with that of the film industry. Thus, viewed from the outside, the sound film promoted national interests, but seen from the inside it helped to internationalize film production even more than previously.

8. This polarity cannot come into its own in the aesthetics of Idealism. Its idea of beauty comprises these polar opposites without differentiating between them and consequently excludes their polarity. Yet in Hegel this polarity announces itself as clearly as possible

The Work of Art in the /1ge of

within the limits of Idealism. VVc q> tory:

"Images were known of old. Fie

for worship, but it could do

might even be disturbing. In (

also something nonspirirual, mei

to man through irs beauty. V

cerned with the work as an objf

of the soul. . . . Fine art has ar

though it has already gone beyi

Likewise, the following passage fro

indicates that Hegel sensed a probli

"We are beyond the stage of r

vine and objects deserving oui

produce is one of a more reflec

arouse require a higher test. . .

ophy of Fine Art, trans., with r

1, p. 12, London, 1920.

The transition from the first kin<

ond characterizes the history of art

from that, a certain oscillation betwi

ception can be demonstrated for ea<

Madonna. Since Hubert Grimme's :

the Madonna originally was painte(

Grimme's research was inspired by

pose of the molding in the foregrc

two cupids lean upon? How, Grin

come to furnish the sky with two 1

the Madonna had been commissione<

Pope Sixtus. The Popes lav in state

Peter's. On that occasion Raphael's

nichelike background of the chapel,

picture Raphael portravs the Madon

in clouds from the background of tl

by green drapes. At the obsequies oi

value of Raphael's picture was taker

it was placed on the high altar in tr

Piacenza. The reason for this exile is

which forbid the use of paintings c>

jects on the high altar. This regulati<

244

24a

Illuminations

some degree. In order to obtain an adequate price nevertheless, the Papal See resolved to add to the bargain the tacit toleration of the picture above the high altar. To avoid attention the picture was given to the monks of the far-off provincial town.

9. Bertolt Brecht, on a different level, engaged in analogous reflections: "If the concept of 'work of art' can no longer be applied to the thing that emerges once the work is transformed into a commodity, we have to eliminate this concept with cautious care but without fear, lest we liquidate the function of the very thing as well. For it has to go through this phase without mental reservation, and not as noncommittal deviation from the straight path; rather, what happens here with the work of art will change it fundamentally and erase its past to such an extent that should the old concept be taken up again-and it will, why not?—it will no longer stir any memory of the thing it once designated."

10. "The film . . . provides—or could provide—useful insight into the details of human actions. . . . Character is never used as a source of motivation; the inner life of the persons never supplies the principal cause of the plot and seldom is its main result." (Bertolt Brecht, Versuche, "Der Dreigroschenprozess," p. 168.) The expansion of the field of the testable which mechanical equipment brings about for the actor corresponds to the extraordinary expansion of the field of the testable brought about for the individual through economic conditions. Thus, vocational aptitude tests become constantly more important. What matters in these tests are segmental performances of the individual. The film shot and the vocational aptitude test are taken before a committee of experts. The camera director in the studio occupies a place identical with that of the examiner during aptitude tests.

11. Rudolf Arnheim, Film als Kunst, Berlin, 1932, pp. 176 f. In this context certain seemingly unimportant details in which the film director deviates from stage practices gain in interest. Such is the attempt to let the actor play without make-up, as made among others by Dreyer in his Jeanne cCArc. Dreyer spent months seeking the forty actors who constitute the Inquisitors' tribunal. The search for these actors resembled that for stage properties that are hard to come by. Dreyer made every effort to avoid resemblances of age, build, and physiognomy. If the actor thus becomes a stage property, this latter, on the other hand, frequently functions as actor. At least it is not unusual for the film to assign a role to the stage property.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mt

Instead of choosing at random from a us concentrate on a particularly con working will always be a disturbance be permitted its function of measurin play, astronomical time would clash wi circumstances it is highly revealing th propriatc, use time as measured by a cl« many other touches it may clearly be circumstances each and every prop in functions. From here it is but one ster "the playing of an actor which is cor built around it ... is always one of t matic construction." (W. Pudovkin, F Berlin, 1928, p. 126.) The film is the fir strating how matter plays tricks on ma ccllent means of materialistic represent

12. The change noted here in the n mechanical reproduction applies to t crisis of the bourgeois democracies co tinns which determine the public prcse racies exhibit a member of gnvcrnmcr fore the nation's representatives. Parli? innovations of camera and recording e the orator to become audible and visib persons, the presentation of the man < recording equipment becomes paramo theaters, are deserted. Radio and film n the professional actor but likewise the exhibit themselves before this mechanic ern. Though their tasks may be differs the actor and the ruler. The trend is t( and transferable skills under certain so a new selection, a selection before tb star and the dictator emerge victorious

13. The privileged character of the Aldous Huxley writes:

"Advances in technology have led reproduction and the rotary press nite multiplication of writing and and relatively high wages have ere

246

Illuminations

know how to read and can afford to buy reading and pictorial matter. A great industry has been called into existence in order to supply these commodities. Now, artistic talent is a very rare phenomenon; whence it follows . . . that, at every epoch and in all countries, most art has been bad. But the proportion of trash in the total artistic output is greater now than at any other period. That it must be so is a matter of simple arithmetic. The population of Western Europe has a little more than doubled during the last century. But the amount of reading—and seeing—matter has increased, I should imagine, at least twenty and possibly fifty or even a hundred times. If there were n men of talent in a population of x millions, there will presumably be in men of talent among 2x millions. The situation may be summed up thus. For every page of print and pictures published a century ago, twenty or perhaps even a hundred pages are published today. But for every man of talent then living, there are now only two men of talent. It may be of course that, thanks to universal education, many potential talents which in the past would have been stillborn are now enabled to realize themselves. Let us assume, then, that there are now three or even four men of talent to every one of earlier times. It still remains true to say that the consumption of reading—and seeing—matter has far outstripped the natural production of gifted writers and draughtsmen. It is the same with hearing-matter. Prosperity, the gramophone and the radio have created an audience of hearers who consume an amount of hearing-matter that has increased out of all proportion to the increase of population and the consequent natural increase of talented musicians. It follows from all this that in all the arts the output of trash is both absolutely and relatively greater than it was in the past; and that it must remain greater for just so long as the world continues to consume the present inordinate quantities of reading-matter, seeing-matter, and hearing-matter."—Aldous Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay. A Traveller's Journal, London, 1949, pp. 274 ff. First published in 1934. This mode of observation is obviously not progressive. 14. The boldness of the cameraman is indeed comparable to that of the surgeon. Luc Durtain lists among specific technical sleights of hand those "which are required in surgery in the case of certain difficult operations. I choose as an example a case from oto-rhino-laryngology; . . . the so-called endonasal perspective procedure; or

The Work of Art in the Age of A

I refer to the acrobatic tr'cks of laryn formed following the reversed picrui also speak of ear surgery which S' watchmakers. What range of the mc required from the man who wants to We have only to think of the couc is virtually a debate of steel with major abdominal operations (laparotc

15. This mode of observation ma theoretician Leonardo has shown, cru< times be usefully adduced. Leonardo as follows: "Painting is superior to nate music, it does not have to die a which is consumed in the very act of which the use of varnish has rendcre

16. Renaissance painting offers a tion. The incomparable development rested not least on the integration of : least of new scientific data. Renaissanc and perspective, of mathematics, m Valery writes: "What could be fun claim of a Leonardo to whom paintii ultimate demonstration of knowledge: painting demanded universal knowled from a theoretical analysis which to u: depth and precision. . . ."—Paul Valei Corot," Paris, p. 191.

17. "The work of art," says Andre far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of veloped art form intersects three line works toward a certain form of art. there were photo booklets with pict looker upon pressure of the thumb, th a tennis match. Then there were the picture sequences were produced by t

Secondly, the traditional art forms velopment strenuously work toward lessly attained by the new ones. Bef

24S

2₄₉

Illuminations

Dadaists' performances tried to create an audience reaction which Chaplin later evoked in a more natural way.

Thirdly, unspectacular social changes often promote a change in receptivity which will benefit the new art form. Before the movie had begun to create its public, pictures that were no longer immobile captivated an assembled audience in the so-called Kaiserpavoravia. Here the public assembled before a screen into which stereoscopes were mounted, one to each beholder. By a mechanical process individual pictures appeared briefly before the stereoscopes, then made way for others. Edison still had to use similar devices in presenting the first movie strip before the film screen and projection were known. This strip was presented to a small public which stared into the apparatus in which the succession of pictures was reeling off. Incidentally, the institution of the Kaiserpanorama shows very clearly a dialectic of the development. Shortly before the movie turned the reception of pictures into a collective one, the individual viewing of pictures in these swiftly outmoded establishments came into play once more with an intensity comparable to that of the ancient priest beholding the statue of a divinity in the cella.

18. The theological archetype of this contemplation is the awareness of being alone with one's God. Such awareness, in the heyday of the bourgeoisie, went to strengthen the freedom to shake off clerical tutelage. During the decline of the bourgeoisie this awareness had to take into account the hidden tendency to withdraw from public affairs those forces which the individual draws upon in his communion with God.

19. The film is the art form that is in keeping with the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face. Man's need to expose himself to shock effects is his adjustment to the dangers threatening him. The film corresponds to profound changes in the apperceptive apparatus—changes that are experienced on an individual scale by the man in the street in big-city traffic, on a historical scale by every present-day citizen.

20. As for Dadaism, insights important for Cubism and Futurism are to be gained from the movie. Both appear as deficient attempts of art to accommodate the pervasion of reality by the apparatus. In contrast to the film, these schools did not try to use the apparatus as such for the artistic presentation of reality, but aimed at some sort of alloy in the joint presentation of reality and apparatus. In Cubism,

The Work of Art in the Age of Me

the premonition that this apparatus 1 optics plays a dominant part; in Futu the effects of this apparatus which are quence of the film strip.

21. One technical feature is significa to ncwsrccls, the propagandist import; overestimated. Mass reproduction is a: duction of masses. In big parades and n and in war, all of which nowadays are < recording, the masses arc brought face process, whose significance need not 1 nectcd with the development of the te photography. Mass movements are usua a camera than by the naked eye. A bird erings of hundreds of thousands. And € be as accessible to the human eye as ii received by the eye cannot be enlarge larged. This means that mass movemem form of human behavior which particul ment.

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	Illuminations many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers—at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor." And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man's ability to perform the work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property.¹³All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly in Russia, this change-over has partially become established reality. Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves—and primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.	The Work of Art in the Age of A extraneous accessories as camera ei staff assistants, ere—unless his eye \ lens. This circumstance, more th; ficial and insignificant any possible the studio and one on the stage. In of the place from which the pla¹tected as illusionary. There is no s that is being shot. Its illusionary n; gree, the result of cutting. That is chanical equipment has penetrated pure aspect freed from the foreign result of a special procedure, nam dally adjusted camera and the m with other similar ones. The equ here has become the height of ar reality has become an orchid in th Even more revealing is the com] which differ so much from those i tion in painting. Here the question compare with the painter? To ans an analogy with a surgical operatio polar opposite of the magician. Th by the laying on of hands; the si body. The magician maintains the patient and himself; though he re laying on of hands, he greatly inc thority. The surgeon does exactly ishes the distance between himself : into the patient's body, and increas with which his hand moves among trast to the magician—who is still tioner—the surgeon at the decisive the patient man to man; rather, it he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compan The painter maintains in his work a the cameraman penetrates deeply i
	XI The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such

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	Illuminations mendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of mjilriplf,. JTjigmgpts which are assembled under_a_new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.	The Work of Art in the Age o, ture at all times, for the epic poe today. Although this circumstan to conclusions about the social re a serious threat as soon as paintii as it were, against its nature, is cc In the churches and monasteries princely courts up to the end o lectivc reception of paintings dii by graduated and hicrarchized i come about is an expression of painting was implicated by the paintings. Although paintingsbe galleries and salons, there was no and control themselves in their ri which responds in a progressive is bound to respond in a reactioi XIII The characteristics of the fill which man presents himself to it the manner in which, by means resent his environment. A glance lustrates the testing capacity of illustrates it in a different perspei field of perception with metho< those of Freudian theory. Fifty passed more or less unnoticed. < slip have revealed dimensions of had seemed to be taking its coun chopathology of Everyday Life isolated and made analyzable thin along unnoticed in the broad str tire spectrum of optical, and no\ film has brought about a similai is only an obverse of this fact i movie can be analyzed much r
	XII Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest they control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses. Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architec-

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	Illuminations points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In comparison with the stage scene, the filmed behavior item lends itself more readily to analysis because it can be isolated more easily. This circumstance derives its chief importance from its tendency to promote the mutual penetration of art and science. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film.¹⁸ By <4ose^ups.^f the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends^ our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones "which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions." * Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored • Rudolf Arnheim, loc. cit., p. 138.	The Work of Art in the Age of A by man. Even if one has a general walk, one knows nothing of a per: tional second of a stride. The act spoon is familiar routine, yet we hai between hand and metal, not to me our moods. Here the camera interv lowerings and liftings, its interrupi sions and accelerations, its enlargem era introduces us to unconscious oj unconscious impulses. x 1 v One of the foremost tasks of ar of a demand which could be fully tory of every art form shows criti art form aspires to effects which with a changed technical standard form. The extravagances and crudi particularly in the so-called decade the nucleus of its richest historical barbarisms were abundant in Dadai pulse becomes discernible: Dadaisn torial—and literary—means the eff seeks in the film. Every fundamentally new, pio will carry beyond its goal. Dadaisi sacrificed the market values whicl film in favor of higher ambitions-conscious of such intentions as her tached much less importance to t than to its uselessness for contemp degradation of their material was r achieve this uselessness. Their poerr obscenities and every imaginable w same is true of their paintings, on and tickets. What they intended :

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	*Illuminations* destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct.¹⁸Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public. From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: "I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images." * The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind.¹⁹By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.²⁰ • Georges Duhamel, Scenes de la vie future, Paris, 1930, p. 52.	The Work of Art in the Age of ,
		X V Tlic mass is a matrix from wl ward works of art issues today in transmuted into quality. The gre pants has produced a change in t fact that the new mode of partic reputable form must not confuse have launched spirited attacks aj aspect. Among these, Duhamel ha radical manner. What he objects pation which the movie elicits ft the movie "a pastime for helots wretched, worn-out creatures wh ries . . . , a spectacle which requ supposes no intelligence . . . , whii and awakens no hope other than becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles." same ancient lament that the mass demands concentration from the place. The question remains whet the analysis of the film. A closer 1< and concentration form polar opp follows: A man who concentrate sorbed by it. He enters into this w of the Chinese painter when he v. contrast, the distracted mass absc most obvious with regard to built represented the prototype of a 1 which is consummated by a col lee The laws of its reception are most Buildings have been man's con Many art forms have developed i with the Greeks, is extinguished \ its "rules" only are revived. The ej * Duhamel, op. cit., p. 58.

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Illuminations in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art.(Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception—or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation. The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies	C	The Work of Art in the Age of this position requires no attention. an absent-minded one. KPILOGUF. The growing prolctarianizatio creasing formation of masses arc t
	C	FascisnAattcmpts to organize t
	masses without affecting the prop< strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its not their right, but instead a chain masses have a right to change pn to give them an expression while ical result of Fascism is the introd cal life. The violation of the mt. Fiihrer cult, forces to their knees, lation of an apparatus which is p ritual values. All efforts to render politics ae: war. War and war only can set a g largest scale while respecting the This is the political formula for tl formula may be stated as follows: mobilize all of today's technical re property system. It goes without s osis of war does not employ sue says in his manifesto on the Fthiopi seven years we Futurists have reh war as antiaesthetic. . . . According tiful because it establishes man's c machinery by means of gas masks, throwers, and small tanks. War is h drcamt-of metalization of the hum; cause it enriches a flowering mead machine guns. War is beautiful be< the cannonades, the cease-fire, th putrefaction into a symphony. Wat

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	Illuminations new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others. . . . Poets and artists of Futurism! . . . remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art . . . may be illumined by them!" This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today's war appears as follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that K>rhnnlr>~~gy hiy nnt hppn cnffiripnrly~~jrWMnprH tO COpe with the ""elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic waifaie aie "atrriburable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production—in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of "human material," the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way. "Fiat ars—pereat mundus," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "Tart pour Fart" Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.	Tholes i. Of course, the history of a wo this. The history of the "Mona Lisj kind and number of its copies made turies. 2. Precisely because authenticity sive penetration of certain (niechar was instrumental in differentiating a velop such differentiations was an in works of art. The invention of the struck at the root of the quality of flowering. To be sure, at the time ol the Madonna could not yet be sai "authentic" only during the succeec strikingly so during the last one. 3. The poorest provincial staging film in that, ideally, it competes wit mar. Before the screen it is unprc contents which might come to mini that Goethe's friend Johann Heinric and the like. 4. To satisfy the human interest one's social function removed fror guarantees that a portraitist of toda geon at the breakfast table in the mi cial function more precisely than a \ portrayed his medical doctors as r Rembrandt in his "Anatomy Lesson 5. The definition of the aura as s tance however close it may be" repi tion of the cult value of the work t time perception. Distance is the opp< distant object is the unapproachabl deed a major quality of the cult imaj "distant, however close it may be." gain from its subject matter does n retains in its appearance.

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	Illuminations 6. To the extent to which the cult value of the painting is secularized the ideas of its fundamental uniqueness lose distinctness. In the imagination of the beholder the uniqueness of the phenomena which hold sway in the cult image is more and more displaced by the empirical uniqueness of the creator or of his creative achievement. To be sure, never completely so; the concept of authenticity always transcends mere genuineness. (This is particularly apparent in the collector who always retains some traces of the fetishist and who, by owning the work of art, shares in its ritual power.) Nevertheless, the function of the concept of authenticity remains determinate in the evaluation of art; with the secularization of art, authenticity displaces the cult value of the work. 7. In the case of films, mechanical reproduction is not, as with literature and painting, an external condition for mass distribution. Mechanical reproduction is inherent in the very technique of film production. This technique not only permits in the most direct way but virtually causes mass distribution. It enforces distribution because the production of a film is so expensive that an individual who, for instance, might afford to buy a painting no longer can afford to buy a film. In 1927 it was calculated that a major film, in order to pay its way, had to reach an audience of nine million. With the sound film, to be sure, a setback in its international distribution occurred at first: audiences became limited by language barriers. This coincided with the Fascist emphasis on national interests. It is more important to focus on this connection with Fascism than on this setback, which was soon minimized by synchronization. The simultaneity of both phenomena is attributable to the depression. The same disturbances which, on a larger scale, led to an attempt to maintain the existing property structure by sheer force led the endangered film capital to speed up the development of the sound film. The introduction of the sound film brought about a temporary relief, not only because it again brought the masses into the theaters but also because it merged new capital from the electrical industry with that of the film industry. Thus, viewed from the outside, the sound film promoted national interests, but seen from the inside it helped to internationalize film production even more than previously. 8. This polarity cannot come into its own in the aesthetics of Idealism. Its idea of beauty comprises these polar opposites without differentiating between them and consequently excludes their polarity. Yet in Hegel this polarity announces itself as clearly as possible	The Work of Art in the /1ge of within the limits of Idealism. VVc q> tory: "Images were known of old. Fie for worship, but it could do might even be disturbing. In ( also something nonspirirual, mei to man through irs beauty. V cerned with the work as an objf of the soul. . . . Fine art has ar though it has already gone beyi Likewise, the following passage fro indicates that Hegel sensed a probli "We are beyond the stage of r vine and objects deserving oui produce is one of a more reflec arouse require a higher test. . . ophy of Fine Art, trans., with r 1, p. 12, London, 1920. The transition from the first kin< ond characterizes the history of art from that, a certain oscillation betwi ception can be demonstrated for ea< Madonna. Since Hubert Grimme's : the Madonna originally was painte( Grimme's research was inspired by pose of the molding in the foregrc two cupids lean upon? How, Grin come to furnish the sky with two 1 the Madonna had been commissione< Pope Sixtus. The Popes lav in state Peter's. On that occasion Raphael's nichelike background of the chapel, picture Raphael portravs the Madon in clouds from the background of tl by green drapes. At the obsequies oi value of Raphael's picture was taker it was placed on the high altar in tr Piacenza. The reason for this exile is which forbid the use of paintings c> jects on the high altar. This regulati<

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	*Illuminations* some degree. In order to obtain an adequate price nevertheless, the Papal See resolved to add to the bargain the tacit toleration of the picture above the high altar. To avoid attention the picture was given to the monks of the far-off provincial town. 9. Bertolt Brecht, on a different level, engaged in analogous reflections: "If the concept of 'work of art' can no longer be applied to the thing that emerges once the work is transformed into a commodity, we have to eliminate this concept with cautious care but without fear, lest we liquidate the function of the very thing as well. For it has to go through this phase without mental reservation, and not as noncommittal deviation from the straight path; rather, what happens here with the work of art will change it fundamentally and erase its past to such an extent that should the old concept be taken up again-and it will, why not?—it will no longer stir any memory of the thing it once designated." 10. "The film . . . provides—or could provide—useful insight into the details of human actions. . . . Character is never used as a source of motivation; the inner life of the persons never supplies the principal cause of the plot and seldom is its main result." (Bertolt Brecht, Versuche, "Der Dreigroschenprozess," p. 168.) The expansion of the field of the testable which mechanical equipment brings about for the actor corresponds to the extraordinary expansion of the field of the testable brought about for the individual through economic conditions. Thus, vocational aptitude tests become constantly more important. What matters in these tests are segmental performances of the individual. The film shot and the vocational aptitude test are taken before a committee of experts. The camera director in the studio occupies a place identical with that of the examiner during aptitude tests. 11. Rudolf Arnheim, Film als Kunst, Berlin, 1932, pp. 176 f. In this context certain seemingly unimportant details in which the film director deviates from stage practices gain in interest. Such is the attempt to let the actor play without make-up, as made among others by Dreyer in his Jeanne cCArc. Dreyer spent months seeking the forty actors who constitute the Inquisitors' tribunal. The search for these actors resembled that for stage properties that are hard to come by. Dreyer made every effort to avoid resemblances of age, build, and physiognomy. If the actor thus becomes a stage property, this latter, on the other hand, frequently functions as actor. At least it is not unusual for the film to assign a role to the stage property.	The Work of Art in the Age of Mt Instead of choosing at random from a us concentrate on a particularly con working will always be a disturbance be permitted its function of measurin play, astronomical time would clash wi circumstances it is highly revealing th propriatc, use time as measured by a cl« many other touches it may clearly be circumstances each and every prop in functions. From here it is but one ster "the playing of an actor which is cor built around it ... is always one of t matic construction." (W. Pudovkin, F Berlin, 1928, p. 126.) The film is the fir strating how matter plays tricks on ma ccllent means of materialistic represent 12. The change noted here in the n mechanical reproduction applies to t crisis of the bourgeois democracies co tinns which determine the public prcse racies exhibit a member of gnvcrnmcr fore the nation's representatives. Parli? innovations of camera and recording e the orator to become audible and visib persons, the presentation of the man < recording equipment becomes paramo theaters, are deserted. Radio and film n the professional actor but likewise the exhibit themselves before this mechanic ern. Though their tasks may be differs the actor and the ruler. The trend is t( and transferable skills under certain so a new selection, a selection before tb star and the dictator emerge victorious 13. The privileged character of the Aldous Huxley writes: "Advances in technology have led reproduction and the rotary press nite multiplication of writing and and relatively high wages have ere

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	Illuminations know how to read and can afford to buy reading and pictorial matter. A great industry has been called into existence in order to supply these commodities. Now, artistic talent is a very rare phenomenon; whence it follows . . . that, at every epoch and in all countries, most art has been bad. But the proportion of trash in the total artistic output is greater now than at any other period. That it must be so is a matter of simple arithmetic. The population of Western Europe has a little more than doubled during the last century. But the amount of reading—and seeing—matter has increased, I should imagine, at least twenty and possibly fifty or even a hundred times. If there were n men of talent in a population of x millions, there will presumably be in men of talent among 2x millions. The situation may be summed up thus. For every page of print and pictures published a century ago, twenty or perhaps even a hundred pages are published today. But for every man of talent then living, there are now only two men of talent. It may be of course that, thanks to universal education, many potential talents which in the past would have been stillborn are now enabled to realize themselves. Let us assume, then, that there are now three or even four men of talent to every one of earlier times. It still remains true to say that the consumption of reading—and seeing—matter has far outstripped the natural production of gifted writers and draughtsmen. It is the same with hearing-matter. Prosperity, the gramophone and the radio have created an audience of hearers who consume an amount of hearing-matter that has increased out of all proportion to the increase of population and the consequent natural increase of talented musicians. It follows from all this that in all the arts the output of trash is both absolutely and relatively greater than it was in the past; and that it must remain greater for just so long as the world continues to consume the present inordinate quantities of reading-matter, seeing-matter, and hearing-matter."—Aldous Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay. A Traveller's Journal, London, 1949, pp. 274 ff. First published in 1934. This mode of observation is obviously not progressive. 14. The boldness of the cameraman is indeed comparable to that of the surgeon. Luc Durtain lists among specific technical sleights of hand those "which are required in surgery in the case of certain difficult operations. I choose as an example a case from oto-rhino-laryngology; . . . the so-called endonasal perspective procedure; or	The Work of Art in the Age of A I refer to the acrobatic tr'cks of laryn formed following the reversed picrui also speak of ear surgery which S' watchmakers. What range of the mc required from the man who wants to We have only to think of the couc is virtually a debate of steel with major abdominal operations (laparotc 15. This mode of observation ma theoretician Leonardo has shown, cru< times be usefully adduced. Leonardo as follows: "Painting is superior to nate music, it does not have to die a which is consumed in the very act of which the use of varnish has rendcre 16. Renaissance painting offers a tion. The incomparable development rested not least on the integration of : least of new scientific data. Renaissanc and perspective, of mathematics, m Valery writes: "What could be fun claim of a Leonardo to whom paintii ultimate demonstration of knowledge: painting demanded universal knowled from a theoretical analysis which to u: depth and precision. . . ."—Paul Valei Corot," Paris, p. 191. 17. "The work of art," says Andre far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of veloped art form intersects three line works toward a certain form of art. there were photo booklets with pict looker upon pressure of the thumb, th a tennis match. Then there were the picture sequences were produced by t Secondly, the traditional art forms velopment strenuously work toward lessly attained by the new ones. Bef

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	Illuminations Dadaists' performances tried to create an audience reaction which Chaplin later evoked in a more natural way. Thirdly, unspectacular social changes often promote a change in receptivity which will benefit the new art form. Before the movie had begun to create its public, pictures that were no longer immobile captivated an assembled audience in the so-called Kaiserpavoravia. Here the public assembled before a screen into which stereoscopes were mounted, one to each beholder. By a mechanical process individual pictures appeared briefly before the stereoscopes, then made way for others. Edison still had to use similar devices in presenting the first movie strip before the film screen and projection were known. This strip was presented to a small public which stared into the apparatus in which the succession of pictures was reeling off. Incidentally, the institution of the Kaiserpanorama shows very clearly a dialectic of the development. Shortly before the movie turned the reception of pictures into a collective one, the individual viewing of pictures in these swiftly outmoded establishments came into play once more with an intensity comparable to that of the ancient priest beholding the statue of a divinity in the cella. 18. The theological archetype of this contemplation is the awareness of being alone with one's God. Such awareness, in the heyday of the bourgeoisie, went to strengthen the freedom to shake off clerical tutelage. During the decline of the bourgeoisie this awareness had to take into account the hidden tendency to withdraw from public affairs those forces which the individual draws upon in his communion with God. 19. The film is the art form that is in keeping with the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face. Man's need to expose himself to shock effects is his adjustment to the dangers threatening him. The film corresponds to profound changes in the apperceptive apparatus—changes that are experienced on an individual scale by the man in the street in big-city traffic, on a historical scale by every present-day citizen. 20. As for Dadaism, insights important for Cubism and Futurism are to be gained from the movie. Both appear as deficient attempts of art to accommodate the pervasion of reality by the apparatus. In contrast to the film, these schools did not try to use the apparatus as such for the artistic presentation of reality, but aimed at some sort of alloy in the joint presentation of reality and apparatus. In Cubism,	The Work of Art in the Age of Me the premonition that this apparatus 1 optics plays a dominant part; in Futu the effects of this apparatus which are quence of the film strip. 21. One technical feature is significa to ncwsrccls, the propagandist import; overestimated. Mass reproduction is a: duction of masses. In big parades and n and in war, all of which nowadays are < recording, the masses arc brought face process, whose significance need not 1 nectcd with the development of the te photography. Mass movements are usua a camera than by the naked eye. A bird erings of hundreds of thousands. And € be as accessible to the human eye as ii received by the eye cannot be enlarge larged. This means that mass movemem form of human behavior which particul ment.

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