...phenomenon of a distance however close it may be' conditioned by a magical authority and authenticity. 'The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced.'63 With the separation of art from ritual, art became more and more a product for exhibition...

...emanating from an object's uniqueness its "aura," and associates it with history and narrative extension. "The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...testimony to the history which it has experienced. . . . that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. . ....

...determine commercial horizons of legibility. For Benjamin, the authentic is the transparently legible: "The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...testimony to the history which it has experienced" (my emphasis, "The Work of Art" 221). If the aura of a work of art is a function of a distance that...

...greater sense of aura to the world around us. (I use "aura" in the sense proposed by Walter Benjamin: 'The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced."25 Although photography stripped things of their aura, for Benjamin, my argument is dial...

...by which one could measure the artwork's authority over its beholders. For him, the authentic in art "is the essence of all that is transmissible from...testimony to the history which it has experienced." 5 Although the thrust of his argument in the essay on mechanical reproduction differs from that in...

...by which one could measure the artwork's authority over its beholders. For him, the authentic in art "is the essence of all that is transmissible from...duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced."5 Although the thrust of his argument in the essay on mechanical reproduction differs...

...perspective, Benjamin ([1955] 1969:221) emphasizes that works of art contain a "sensitive nucleus" that is "the essence of all that is transmissible from...ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony of the history which it has experienced." 40. Such importance associated with cloth as a conduit of...

...Vintage, 1973), 3-16. 13 In the "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin writes, The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...testimony to the history which it has experienced. . . . One might subsume the eliminated element in the term "aura" and go on to say: that which withers...

...the object sets up what may be called the originary 8 economy of dissemination. As Benjamin puts it, "the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all...testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction...

...existence." It is also its "authenticity," or "the essence of all that is transmissible [about it] from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced"—and, I would add for present purposes, the history we have experienced through it (1977:...