The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.* (Chris, Eric and Audrey).

Walter Benjamin composes his argument based on the notion of reproduced art; he develops multiple examples on the different art matter such as movie, theatre, painting and photography, always pointing out the fact that there is a draining aspect to art when it is mechanically reproduced. It is not proposed that this idea is new, but it as become more and more of an alarming state were art doesn’t have its own value and tradition. Art has a contextual position and an “aura”, according to what, every piece as a meaningful place in time and space. Therefore mass reproduction can not convey this element to art because the essence of the “aura” goes against our social bases among with mass acceptation of the massive art reproduction. He then applies our cultural values in explaining the differences of the “authenticity” and the “authority” in art, adding to what our sense of “cult” of art has transformed in looking at an “exhibition”.

The uniqueness of a piece of art always includes the components of its original creation; reproduction breaks the idea of contact with conception. Mechanical reproduction detaches art from its authenticity, but it goes along with our contemporary aesthetic where as mass industrial produced art does not interfere with the lack of attachments to things. Contemporary art is ephemeral, an article of Arthur Danto explains how artist create in our days, being in conflict with the “cult values” of our society. “The power of the contemporary comes from the insecurity of being ephemeral rather than from building on some illusory historical foundation -- a hypothetical but always crumbling permanence -- as though that will make ones automatically meaningful and of enduring value. No art is historically important forever: the historical staying power of past art depends on contemporary creative needs -- on contemporary emotional and cognitive necessity. It is permanent and necessary only because the contemporary creates the temporary illusion that it is.”

The “aura” of an art piece can be defined in different ways; somehow, even if the artist had a significant explication to his art, the reproduction fact blurred the elements that communicated it. People consume and possess reproductions, they assume they are, know thousands of other people have seen them, bought and enjoy them. Today a piece of art is a "thing" for to many people, reproduction of art is like production.
However, is it because it is socially accepted to own copies and reproductions that it makes that piece of art less of what it is, does the “aura” disappear when it’s reproduced or does it just change of nature dependently of what it became and where it stands in space and time ?