Art "fission" Aesthetic Of The Era

Walter Benjamin, a famous and outstanding German literary critic in 20th century, attracts lots of scholars and readers in different fields for his talent ideology and unique, obscure writing style. With poetic thinking and literary philosophy discourse, Benjamin makes a proper response to the "fissure" of the age of art ,and he descrips how the traditional art with "aura" changed into modern art with obscure, "shock" style, and even develop into popular culture. Many of his original concept, such as "aura", "shock", "fable," "reproduction", "writing skills" and so on, brings great shock to western culture and art academia fields in original ideas. This essay is based on Benjamin's some cultural and aesthetic core concepts, to have a try to research, to analyze and to explain Benjamin's cultural and aesthetic theory, combing with the developing history of Western art, literature and the evolution of aesthetic style.In Chapter I of the essay, it is mainly about the characteristics of Benjamin's concept "aura", to indicate that the traditional art with mystery, unique, distant charm of "aura" which is close to the poetic, harmony atmosphere of the the age of classics in aesthetics development. This part interprets "auar" by the way of comparing he early prehistoric art and religious worship, the mystery of "aura" and the inspiration of genius' creation and the general whole perfect classical rules of art. Simultaneously, it deals with the changes which is called "the ere of art fissure" by Benjamin, and the traditional, sacred, real art works, being hard to be known or accepted by public, gradually went away with masses and finally be replaced by modern art.Now it comes to chapter II. This part will reveal the feature of allegory style in Trauerspiel (Tragedy) in 17^th Germany and changes in modern art in western world. With regard to Benjamin's viewpoint, modern art works, lately appeared, meant to be against harmony, perfect, body-whole regulation of classics and aesthetics. It is affirmed by Benjamin for its fragmental structure and shocking effect, which comes from deformed figure to distort reality to counter the alienation in some modern art works, displaying some revolutionary "destroying character" and "blasting factor" to old practice or things out-of-date. All these show that Benjamin is profoundly effected by Marx's theory, such as historical materialism, woking class revolution, and attempt to expose and criticize the reality of capitalist society to make salvation come true. In Chapter III, we will make a perspective draw of Benjamin's theory of reproduction technology and popular culture. Through the analysis of Benjamin's viewpoint of technology, writing skills, literary quality, literary productivity, etc, the author want to illustrate that not only had he enriched and expanded theory of art productivity of the Marx, but also defended for the the self-discipline of art and writer's main part, by regarding writing skills as art productive power. To analyze Benjamin's movie theory and his position of popular culture is in order to highlight his theory of civil position in masses' response and acceptance of art, and his political attempt or demands in reproductive art. Moreover, what can not be ignored is that some controversy risen from Benjamin's attitude of popular culture, representing his reasonable attitude to technological development and bringing abundant ideas and inspiration to our academic fields.This part is chapter IV of the paper, in which we mainly interpret Benjamin's poetic politics and aesthetic redemption, by clarifying his Jewish origin, his Messiah salvation, and this leads to his giving up abstract theory research to shift attention to the realities of this mortal life. Benjamin establishes his epistemological mode, his poetic criticism and his theological aesthetics in a theological way, displaying his style of thinking and writing different from traditional ones, and conveying his critical spirit to the alienating capitalist society ,and his political aspirations and his clearly rescued attempt.However, the defect of Benjamin's cultural and aesthetic theory is obvious. For instance, his attitude to clssic art with "arua" shows his attachment and contradiction to tradition, his excessive self-confidence in reproductive technology and popular culture displays his ignoring its negative impacts; his political aspiration and escued attempt reveals his Utopian ideal, evidently showing his study scholar's taste, political immaturity, and his obscure writing style.