Aura (benjamin)

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Aura is a term used by Walter Benjamin in his own definition, the phenomenon of which he sees both in nature and in art . He made his best-known remarks on this in the essay “ The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility ”, published in 1935, and defined it as a unique appearance of a distance, as close as it may be . He goes on to explain at this point that the aura of a work of art is shaped by the characteristics of aloofness , authenticity and uniqueness . One of the central thoughts in the work of art essay deals with the decay of the aura , as it withers due to the technical reproducibility.

The term in the context of the work

Perhaps nothing gives such a correct concept of the real aura as the later paintings by van Gogh, where the aura is also painted on everything (...). Vincent van Gogh: Wheat Field with a Stormy Sky, 1890

The term aura comes from the Greek , means air or breath and in Greek mythology names the goddess of the morning breeze . It was adopted in Latin and expanded to include the visual characteristics of light shine . With the advent of photography in the middle of the 19th century, a permanent trace of the human shadow projected onto the plate was established, which comes close to the concept of the shine of light. At the end of the 19th century, supporters of the esoteric movement took over the word to describe an energy body , the radiation of which is supposed to surround people, not only in photography, like a corona. Benjamin's discussions about the concept of aura are related to this development of the concept, but denote a different meaning than the esoteric use.

Messages about the essence of the aura

In Benjamin's notes, the term is mentioned for the first time in the logs of experiences on hashish use , to which he wrote in March 1930 as communications on the essence of the aura , clearly differentiated from the theosophists :

“First, the real aura appears in all things. Not just in certain how people imagine themselves. Second, the aura changes thoroughly and profoundly with every movement that the thing whose aura it is makes. Third, the real aura can in no way be thought of as the licked spiritualistic ray of magic that the vulgar mythical books depict and describe it as. Rather, what distinguishes the real aura is: the ornament, an ornamental circumference in which the thing or being lies firmly as if sunk in a futeral. Perhaps nothing gives such a correct term for the real aura as the later pictures of van Gogh , where on all things - this is how these pictures could be described - the aura is also painted. "

- Walter Benjamin : Autobiographical Writings, 1930

A short history of photography

The liberation of the object from its aura . Rue Mazarine, 1902. Paris photograph by Eugène Atget, to which Benjamin refers in his essay

In the essay Small History of Photography , published in 1931, Benjamin addresses the aura as a phenomenon that can still be found in daguerreotypes and early portrait photography. In Eugène Atget's Paris pictures, which are considered the forerunners of surrealist photography, he sees the “liberation of the object from the aura” and defines it as a “strange web of space and time: unique appearance of a distance, as close as it may be”.

The photography essay already contains the thoughts and explanations of terms that Benjamin takes up again four years later in the work of art essay. So at the end he also introduces the term chok , which describes the accelerated forms of action and perception of modernity and which ultimately counteract the aura.

The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility

With the essay The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility , Benjamin takes up this definition again and goes on to explain it: “On a summer afternoon, following a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the resting - that is the aura of these mountains , breathe this branch. ”The poem Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke is a template for this lyrical example, there the first verse reads:

“My gaze is already
ahead of the hill, the sunny one, the path that I barely started.
So what we could not grasp,
full of appearance, touches us from a distance - "

- Rainer Maria Rilke : Walk, 1925

Both the observer position and the form of experience and the idea of ​​penetrating distance and proximity correspond to Benjamin's portrayal.

The concept of aura has a central position in the work of art essay, as it analyzes the social significance of the technical development towards the mass media. The modern technical possibilities of reproduction lead to the mass quality as well as the mobility of the works of art, they can be viewed at any place. In addition, the perception has changed, for example through the possibility of accelerating image sequences through film montage or through new forms of representation such as slow motion and close-ups . Benjamin draws the conclusion: "What withers in the age of technical reproducibility of the work of art is its aura."

About some of Baudelaire's motifs

In his essay On Some Motifs in Baudelaire , which he completed in 1939 , Benjamin returned to the term aura. But here he puts it in the context of Georg Simmel's sociology and fixes it on the return of the gaze as a social experience: “The gaze, however, has the expectation of being reciprocated by the one to whom it presents itself. [...] Experiencing the aura of an appearance means lending it the ability to look up. ”The aura is created through the ability of humans to bring natural phenomena and works of art to life when looking at them, to give them a look, that they don't have themselves.

This idea is formulated even more succinctly in the writing Zentralpark , the notes from the years 1938/1939 on Benjamin's Baudelaire essays: "Deriving the aura as a projection of a social experience among people in nature: the gaze is returned."

The passage work

In the fragments of the unfinished Passagen work on which Benjamin worked from 1927 until his death, classified in the collection under the heading Der Flaneur , there is a note in which the term aura is placed next to the term trace : “Trace and aura. The trace is the appearance of a closeness, as far away as what it left behind may be. The aura is an appearance of a distance, as close as what it evokes may be. In the trail we get hold of the matter; in the aura it seizes us. "

A discussion in which the term trace is related to the aura can also be found in the correspondence between Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin: "Isn't the aura always the trace of the forgotten human on the thing?" Asked Adorno in a letter dated 29 February 1940. Benjamin replied in a letter dated May 7, 1940: “Tree and bush that are enfeoffed are not made by man. So there must be something human about things that is not created through work. "

Interpretations

Both the fragmentary and the diverse use of the term aura by Benjamin resulted in diverse and sometimes contradicting interpretations. In summary, it can be said that the use of the term aura is generally interpreted in such a way that it characterizes the specifics of the work of art, which is characterized by its uniqueness and by the fact that it is tied to a location and embedded in the story. The sensation of a moment cannot be reproduced, because the same historical moment is never repeated. Inaccessibility is a peculiar characteristic of the work of art, which can be explained by the fact that the art developed from magical and later religious rituals. For Benjamin, this origin shows up in the teaching of " l'art pour l'art ".

The aura of the work of art is influenced by two aspects: first, the technical reproducibility, which robs the work of art of the "here and now", its authenticity and its tradition, and second, the way the work of art is viewed, which has changed fundamentally over time. According to Benjamin, the work of art no longer has a transcendent function. B. lost the divinity inherent in icons in the age of technical reproducibility. The other way of looking at things, says Benjamin, puts the work of art out of a metaphysical framework into a social one and becomes political. This development contributes to the loss of the aura as well as the loss of its authenticity.

Similar concepts

Concepts about the effect of art beyond itself can be found, among other things, in Hegel's theories of art, in which he works out the beautiful as the sensual shimmer of the idea , or in the philosophical discourse on the sublime by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller .

The concept of aura is taken up, questioned and evaluated differently in Adorno's aesthetic theory under the designation the magic : “What is called aura here is familiar to the artistic experience under the name of the atmosphere of the work of art as what the context of its moments over this points out, and allows every single moment to be pointed out beyond itself. "

In Jacques Derrida's thinking , the aura plays a role as the opposite of the simulacrum (see simulacrum as a trace ).

literature

  • Walter Benjamin: Collected Writings. With the participation of Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser . Volumes I – VII, Suppl. I – III (bound in 17 volumes). 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972–1999. Revised paperback edition: Vols. I – VII (bound in 14 volumes), Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  • Boris Groys : The topology of the aura. In: ders .: Topology of Art. Hanser, Munich / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-446-20368-0 , pp. 33-46.
  • Miriam Bratu Hansen: Benjamin's Aura. In: Critical Inquiry 34.2 (Winter 2008), pp. 336-375.
  • Ulrich J. Beil, Cornelia Herberichs, Marcus Sandl : Aura and auratisation. Mediological perspectives following Walter Benjamin. Chronos, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-0340-1027-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Walter Benjamin: The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility , German version 1939; in: the same: Collected Writings , Volume I, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 471–508; or can be viewed online as a PDF file from ominiverdi.org ( memento of the original dated November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 24, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / walterbenjamin.ominiverdi.org
  2. ^ Walter Benjamin: Fragments of mixed content. Autobiographical Writings (1930); in: the same: Collected Writings Volume VI, Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 588
  3. Walter Benjamin: Small history of photography (1931); in the same: Collected Writings Volume II, Frankfurt am Main, 1977, p. 378
  4. ^ Rainer Maria Rilke: Late poems and fragments ; in: the same: Complete Works , Frankfurt am Main 1956, Volume II, p. 161; also online at: textlog.de
  5. ^ Walter Benjamin: About some motifs in Baudelaire (1939); in: same: Collected Writings Volume I, Frankfurt am Main 1974, p. 646
  6. ^ Walter Benjamin: Central Park (1938/39); in: the same: Collected Writings Volume I, Frankfurt am Main 1974, p. 670
  7. ^ Walter Benjamin: Das Passagen-Werk ; in: the same: Collected Writings Volume V, Frankfurt am Main 1982, p. 560 (M 16 a, 4).
  8. ^ Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno: Briefwechsel 1928-1940 , edited by Henri Lonitz, Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 418.
  9. ^ Walter Benjamin: Collected Letters , edited by Christian Gödde and Henri Lonitz, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, p. 446.
  10. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory ; edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, Frankfurt am Main 1970; 13th edition 1995, p. 408