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20 Then
From ritual to mechanical reproduction

Different values are subscribed to the artwork at different periods
throughout history. Benjamin identifies three major stages:
1 Art as ritual
2 Art as exhibition
3 Art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

1 Art as ritual

Some of the earliest known art (for example, the cave painting) is
deliberately located inaccessibly. Benjamin thus asserts that the
primordial value of art was its ritual value – not how many people
could see it. The act of creation itself was paramount and carried
out for the gaze of the gods rather than other humans: ‘the elk
portrayed by the man of the Stone Age was an instrument of magic.
He did not expose it to his fellow men … it was meant for the
spirits’ (Section V).

2 Art as exhibition

The ancient origins of art as ritual continued in the Western
tradition of organized religion but there is shift from the act of
creation to the artefact itself. The artwork begins to assume a new
value of exhibition. Thus, within Renaissance churches, although the
artwork is tied to its location within a place of worship it is designed
to be seen by the congregation. Artworks also become objects of
veneration and pilgrimage, initially in their role as religious artefacts,
but increasingly in their own right as objects to be admired for their
artistry (for example, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). The secular
cult of beauty in today’s art world inherits many of these religious
functions – the artist as saint, the critic as priest and the gallery as
temple.

3 Art in the age of mechanical reproduction

Benjamin argues that the ability to mechanically replicate a work of
art has historically been limited. In the art of classical Rome and
Greece, for example, the only means of reproduction were casting
and stamping, and thus only a small class of artefacts were repro-
ducible. Later, woodcuts and lithography, in combination with the
printing press, extended the domain of reproducibility. Nevertheless,

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