L’ARTE E LO STATO: DA RUSKIN A KEYNES

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of productionprevails, writes Marx in first page of Capital, presents itself as “an immense accumula-tion of commodities†- and art itself is now a commodity. The uniqueness of a work ofart is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition: and that whichwithers in the age of mechanical reproduction according to W. Benjamin is the “auraâ€of the work of art. The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object fromthe domain of tradition: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproductionemancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.