Politics of Art

Other Frankfurt School writers, most notably Benjamin's friend Theodor Adorno, worried about the resulting "distracted" relation to art characteristic of mass consumption, and argued that in losing the aura, we had also lost a space for potentially revolutionary reflection and imagination. In contrast, Benjamin argued that the withering of the aura was a more complicated historical development, an ambiguous force that also had the potential for democratizing both access to cultural objects and a critical attitude toward them. "Instead of being based on ritual, begins to be based on another practice - politics." For Benjamin, the politicization of art should be the goal of Communism; in contrast to Fascism which aestheticized politics for the purpose of social control.