Walter Benjamin And Art

Walter Benjamin's most famous and influential essay remains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an account of how the new twentieth-century technologies that enable the recording and copying of artworks has transformed their interpretation. Walter Benjamin and Art is the first book to provide a broad and dedicated analysis of this canonical work and its effect upon core contemporary concerns in the visual arts, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy.

This book is structured around three distinct areas: the extension of Benjamin's work; the question of historical connection; and the importance of the essay in the development of criticism of both the visual arts and literature. Contributors to the volume include major Benjamin commentators, whose work has very much defined the reception of the essay, and leading philosophers, historians and aestheticians, whose approaches open up new areas of interest and relevance.

Anyone researching, studying or teaching Benjamin's work will find this collection of essays an invaluable resource, offering clear and cogent analysis and exposition of one of the twentieth century's most important cultural critics and his major work.