PAUL VALERY, PIECES SUR L'ART
"Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times
very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was
insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our
techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and
habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are
impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a
physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to
be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the
last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from
time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire
technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps
even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art."
Quoted at the top of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin, in
Illuminations. Benjamin's quote is taken from Paul Valery,
Aesthetics, "The Conquest of Ubiquity," translated by Ralph Manheim,
p.225. Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, New York, 1964.
11 January 1996
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