Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was one of the most influential aesthetics philosophers of the twentieth century. That is precisely what happened on the 26th of September 1940, while war was devastating both Europe and humanity. He chose his own fate and overdosed on morphine instead of being deported to a concentration camp. He was trying to flee from European fascism through Spain and Portugal to get to the United States, when Francoist police told him and his fellow refugees that they would have to return to Germany. Walter Benjamin, the German philosopher and art critic, killed himself to escape from Nazi repatriation. GradeSaver, Web.The path to freedom is often hindered. Next Section Literary Elements Previous Section Metaphors and Similes Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format GradeSaver 'Ways of Seeing Walter Benjamin: Berger’s Inspiration'. This application of Marxist theory to contemporary culture became the signature gesture of the Frankfurt School, which Berger borrows throughout Ways of Seeing, even beyond his outright references to Benjamin in Chapter 1. Berger adopts this when he urges the reader to 'seize the means of reproduction,' alluding to the power that images have to shape ideology. While technical reproduction may diminish a work's sense of rarified authenticity, it brings the work to the proletariat. While this may sound like a bad thing, Benjamin posits that it's actually more democratic, since artworks become accessible to a broader set of viewers, not just the wealthy classes that previously owned them.

Even the most perfect reproduction differs fundamentally from an original artwork, because it lacks 'the here and now' of the work-a quality that Benjamin terms 'the aura.' The aura is diminished or even destroyed by the advent of reproduction, because a reproducible work of art can circulate freely, and is no longer tethered to the specific place and time where it was once solely on view. In the essay, Benjamin explains how technologies that reproduce artworks-sound recording, photography, or even bronze casting-fundamentally change the nature of the works. Chapter 1 of Ways of Seeingparaphrases several key concepts from Walter Benjamin's seminal essay, ' The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility' (sometimes referred to as ' The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' the title used for an early English translation).

Walter benjamin ways of seeing