Digital Dilemma

At its time, no other text grasps in developing a language addressing issues withing the art age of technology more than Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Benjamin's essay resolves around cultural criticism that proposes the devaluation of a work of art is consequent to its mechanical reproduction. Technology raised issues of authorship and the uniqueness of the art object whose 'aura; was lost in reproduction. It is debatable weather or not art still had retained its value once it's manufactured in a certain sense. Instantly, this reminds me of the "kitsch" term used by Clement Greenburg, who believed modern art at the time was tied more to mass production, and was not "genuine culture," as he would put it. Kitsch as how Greenburg had seen it, was art made simply for art's sake, and nothing else. A similar relationship can be seen on Benjamin's essay, discussing the issues with mass produced art.