TRANSFORMATION OF ART AND THE ROLE OF TECHNICAL REPRODUCTIVITY

Abstract

The main subject of this paper is Adorno’s critique of the theory of technical reproduction formulated in Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essay „The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In a series of letters exchanged between the two, Adorno criticized Benjamin’s „Brechtian” marxism, his positive attitude towards the new mass media and dissolution of auratic tradition, an undialectical approach in interpretation of newly developed utilitarian and mass-art, and destruction of autonomous art initiated by new technical media of reproduction. While Benjamin argued for emancipatory potential of photography and film, Adorno immanently criticized culture industry, commodity fetishism and ideological function of mass art.