Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.
Walter BenjaminNo poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Walter BenjaminNot to find oneโs way around a city does not mean much. But to lose oneโs way in a city, as one loses oneโs way in a forest, requires some schooling.
Walter BenjaminIn other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
Walter Benjamin... [L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up.
Walter Benjamin