<P> Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours . But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful . In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power . For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial . We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art . </P> <P> The Preface presents Marxist analyses of the construction of society and of the place of art in a capitalist society; and explains the socio - economic conditions to extrapolate future developments of capitalism, which, ultimately, result in the exploitation of the proletariat, and produce the social conditions that would abolish capitalism . </P> <P> Benjamin reviews the development of the means of the mechanical reproduction of art--an artist manually copying the work of a master artist; the industrial arts of the foundry and the stamp mill in Ancient Greece; woodcut relief - printing, etching, engraving, lithography, and photography--to establish that artistic reproduction is not a modern human activity; and that the modern means of artistic reproduction permit greater accuracy throughout the process of mass production . </P> <P> Benjamin discusses the concept of authenticity, of being in accordance with fact, noting that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be ." That, in the artwork proper, the "sphere of authenticity is outside the technical (sphere)" of producing the art work; hence, the original work of art is independent of the copy . That the action of mechanical reproduction diminishes the original art work, by changing the cultural context (original vs. copy); thus, the aura, the unique aesthetic authority, of an artwork is absent from the mechanically - produced copy . Benjamin's concept of the aura of a work of art derived from the work of Ludwig Klages . </P>

The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction