内容简介

Walter Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art” essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general—in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the “Work of Art” essay—the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin’s best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays—some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin’s media theory can be fully appreciated.

作品目录

A Note on the Texts
Editors’ Introduction
I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art
1. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version
2. Theory of Distraction
3. To the Planetarium
4. Garlanded Entrance
5. The Rigorous Study of Art
6. Imperial Panorama
7. The Telephone
8. The Author as Producer
9. Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century
10. Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian
11. Review of Sternberger’s Panorama
II. Script, Image, Script-Image
12. Attested Auditor of Books
13. This Space for Rent
14. The Antinomies of Allegorical Exegesis
15. The Ruin
16. Dismemberment of Language
17. Graphology Old and New
III. Painting and Graphics
18. Painting and the Graphic Arts
19. On Painting, or Sign and Mark
20. A Glimpse into the World of Children’s Books
21. Dream Kitsch
22. Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boétie
23. Chambermaids’ Romances of the Past Century
24. Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head
25. Some Remarks on Folk Art
26. Chinese Paintings at the Bibliothèque Nationale
IV. Photography
27. News about Flowers
28. Little History of Photography
29. Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography
30. Review of Freund’s Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle
V. Film
31. On the Present Situation of Russian Film
32. Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz
33. Chaplin
34. Chaplin in Retrospect
35. Mickey Mouse
36. The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression
VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio
37. Journalism
38. A Critique of the Publishing Industry
39. The Newspaper
40. Karl Kraus
41. Reflections on Radio
42. Theater and Radio
43. Conversation with Ernst Schoen
44. Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio Play
45. On the Minute
Index
· · · · · ·

作者简介

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.

Michael W. Jennings is Class of 1900 Professor of Modern Languages at Princeton University.

Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

Thomas Y. Levin is Associate Professor of German at Princeton University.

精彩摘录

“由於眼睛捕捉影像的速度遠比動手繪圖更為快速，因此，圖像複製的過程便大大加速，而得以跟上人們說話的速度。在攝影棚裡，攝影師便以演員說話的速度攝錄影像。如果說，平版印刷讓報紙可以附上插圖，那麼，照相術便預示著有聲電影的到來──人們在十九世紀末又發明了複製聲音的技術，也就是錄音技術。”

——引自章节：機械複製時代的藝術作品DasKunstwerkimZ

“在一九○○年前後，機械複製的技術已達到某種水準，因此，它不僅能複製所有流傳下來的藝術品，讓它們的效應發揮最深刻的影響，甚至它還在藝術創作的方法裡，為自身爭得了一席之地。如果我們要研究機械複製技術所達到的水準，那麼，再也沒有比研究藝術品的複製和電影藝術這兩個領域，如何反過來影響傳統形態的藝術，更富有啟發性了！”

——引自章节：機械複製時代的藝術作品DasKunstwerkimZ