Walter Benjamin Quotes About Art

• In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin (2015). “Illuminations”, p.170, Random House

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• The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.244, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  739

• 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.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.230, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  3810

• The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.460, Harvard University Press

  2278

• Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty (2008). “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media”, p.209, Harvard University Press

  401

• Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.

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  Walter Benjamin

  "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1939.

  596

• The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4598

• Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (2002). “Selected Writings: 1935-1938”, p.352, Harvard University Press

  2117

• The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.

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  Walter Benjamin

  Men  

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.257, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  3920

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