In “ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin argued that the uniqueness of art creates an “aura” that is deeply connected to cultural practices and rituals. Benjamin was interested in what happens when modern photographic and printing technology made something like a painting, that had once been a one-of-a-kind original thing that existed in only one place–and made it a commercial commodity that could be reproduced infinitely. The mass-production of art is the topic of perhaps the most famous essay by the Jewish Marxist/Mystic philosopher Walter Benjamin, who was loosely associated with the midcentury critical movement known as the Frankfurt School. The answer is not at all obvious from either an aesthetic or a Christian point of view. Let’s pause for just a minute and ask the obvious question of why we want mass-produced art that makes us comfortable. And about the general understanding of, and uses for art in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pretty much all of which is mass-produced and comfortable. We are comfortable with this Jesus, and I think that, if we are going to stock our foyers with mass-produced art that makes us comfortable, then paintings of Jesus are the way to go.īut this is as good an excuse as any to talk about meetinghouse art generally, and about the way that Church-approved art depicts of Jesus Christ in particular. These are the images of Jesus that many of us grew up with.

The truth is that, for most chapels in the United States, not much is going to change. If someone told me that this was a painting of Kenny Loggins circa 1975, rather than a Middle-Eastern Jew from the Ancient Roman period, I would not be terribly surprised. Diversity Jesus is the whitest of all, with shoulder-length hair and piercing blue eyes highlighted by his equally blue robe. I call this one “Diversity Jesus.”Īll of the Jesuses in the approved collection are lilly-white and vaguely Scandanavian. But there are a few newer ones too, including one of Jesus in what appears to be the African Savannah holding a black child. They are mainly the ones by Del Parson and Harry Anderson that Mormons have been using for years. Most of the paintings will be familiar to Latter-day Saints. –Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”Īs of today, it appears, the art in meetinghouse foyers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be limited to 22 officially approved reproductions. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.

Austin graven