Having read some Walter Benjamin today in the Library this quote is lingering in my mined. I cant quite get my head around the intended meaning here and weather this is somehow a double negative or just an out right statement. The language seems at first straight forward and then quickly decimates in my mind into contradictory outcomes which are hard to articulate.
‘What Shrinks in an age where the work of art can be reproduced by technological means is its aura.’ (2008, 7)
Is it the traditional, original arts ‘aura’ which shrinks or is it the reproductions aura, if the later then how did it acquire an aura of which to wither? And so this conundrum continues round in my mind. Food for thought. I will no doubt return to this book later.
Benjamin, W., 2008, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Penguin UK, London
Rebecca Cleal 