The Aura

     When thinking about Benjamin’s idea of “aura”, it reminds me of Starry Night by Vinicent Van Gogh.

    The original painting of Starry Night has an aura surrounding it that is calming and inviting. The aura cannot be replicated in any copy of the original. The art piece, "Starry Night", was painted one year before his death. Boime states, “The painting depicts a phase of his life where he was in need of realism that had become the driving force in his life and work. He became disillusioned with organized religion and adopted instead the scientific method in his pursuit of truth” (Boime, 1984). The authentic Starry Night was an oil painting with a specific and meaningful idea behind it. 

     Benjamin believes an “aura” becomes destroyed the more the artwork becomes mass-produced. The context is no longer present, and the artwork becomes “cheap”. The image of the "Starry Night" trash can is a good example of how mass-produced art becomes cheapened. A garbage can has the context of something meaningless and is just a vessel to hold trash. Trash itself has a negative context behind it as well. It is disposable and thrown away without a thought. Starry Night has now become Kitch and a piece of art that is now accessible to everyone in a consumerism way. 

Boime, A. (n.d.). Van Gogh’s Starry night: A history of matter and a matter of history [Boime, 1984]. Google Books. 

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, second version. In M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, & T. Y. Levin (Eds.), The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (E. Jephcott, R. Livingstone, H. Eiland, et al., Trans.). The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.