ABSTRACT
In his ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, Walter Benjamin (1936) shows how art objects have lost part of their original meaning and authenticity due to their ever increasing reproduction and diffusion. The reproduction of art objects goes together with the loss of authenticity, uniqueness and distinctiveness which considerably reduces their propensity to surprise, fascinate and thus to illuminate. What Benjamin said about art objects in 1935 seems to apply exactly to today’s everyday objects and especially to products, brands and discourses created and diffused by marketers. Due to an extreme process of standardisation, these so-called objects seem to have lost their meaning, that is, their authenticity. The aim of this chapter is to suggest some conditions under which marketing could romanticise our dull everyday lives surrounded by undifferentiated products and discourses. The analysis is mainly based on the concept of ‘aura’, as developed by Walter Benjamin. The conditions under which aesthetic and functional properties of objects may be reconciled, so as to create ‘auratic objects’, are fixed. The parallel drawn between art objects and marketed objects thus accounts for the possibility for marketers to rethink and redesign ‘illuminating’ objects.
