Mechanical reproduction gives audiences the command over art that appreciation requires

Evidence

The bookseller Adrienne Monnier, who was in close contact with important French avant-garde writers, had contradicted Benjamin’s vehement old prejudice against photographs of paintings. When I went on to call such a way of dealing with art miserable and irritating, she became obstinate. The great creations,' she said, cannot be seen as the works of individuals. They are collective objects, so powerful that appreciating them is almost necessarily connected with reducing their size. Mechanical methods of reproduction are basically techniques for reducing things in size. They help people to achieve that degree of command of the work without which they cannot appreciate it.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 225

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the aura argument in the artwork essay and to Monnier’s Paris bookshop as a node of avant-garde networks. — connects to: Mechanical reproduction works by reducing artworks in size so people can command them — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 844; Great art creates attentional situations, not just artifacts — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 383; Conceptual art can reverse the museum’s information flow toward the viewer — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2918 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Supplies the size-reduction rationale for reproduction, the seed of Benjamin’s later aura concept.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Mechanical reproduction works by reducing artworks in size so people can command them — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 844; Great art creates attentional situations, not just artifacts — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 383; Conceptual art can reverse the museum’s information flow toward the viewer — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2918 (+2 more)