ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the boundaries between loss and preservation, alienation and durability, along with the shifts in reception and perception as they correspond to enframing as a reductive force by working with Benjamin’s seminal essay. Benjamin’s adherence to Marx’s revolution is driven by an ardent belief in the ultimate leveling of economic inequities and an overcoming of alienation. Benjamin explores the shifts establishing an artwork’s purpose, moving from the “elk portrayed by the man of the stone age” through the renaissance Madonna to current practices espousing “art for art’s sake” and the related exhibition value and market transactions. In other words, for Benjamin, each era’s new developments lead to constant transitions in the way the readers absorb images and will continue to change with historical progress. He states: one of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. .
