Final Project Part 1: The Aura

This is the first of four blog posts I will be making that directly relate to the final project for this class. I will be focusing on the aura, and will be pulling examples from different sources to prove the point that although a difficult concept to grasp, has an extremely big effect on the value of different items. I believe that objects have a sort of aura to them, and this is used to attach value. This is directly related to the originality of items, and the number of items created. In general, if there are less of an item it is more valuable, and if it is an original, it has an aura that makes it even more valuable.

This first section will be used to generally define the aura and how I will use it throughout the rest of my argument. The aura is something that has been discussed extensively throughout the Honors 200 class. It has been a subject of many show and tell presentations and used in context of art, people, and products. This term of aura was first brought up in the Walter Benjamin essay “The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In this essay, Benjamin discusses the uniqueness of things and how reproduction can destroy that aura, or uniqueness. “Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura”. (Benjamin, 223). This quote illustrates the idea that the aura is a sense of uniqueness of an object. He then goes on to discuss how the value of objects and their auras depends largely on their reproducibility. When talking about photographers, he says they “can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense” (Benjamin, 224). This specific example shows that there is less value based on the original because prints are already easily reproducible. I personally this means there is less of an aura attached to these objects that are highly reproducible.

Overall, the aura is something that is attached to uniqueness, and originality. It is human nature to be attracted to unique things and place a high value on them. Things that are not easily reproduced generally have an aura to them that gives them their high value. This is generally why hand drawn artwork has such a high value attached to them. They took artists sometimes years to produce such profound and beautiful pieces of work.

My next blog post will discuss the TV show White Collar. The reason I will talk about this show is because it illustrates a great deal of the importance of aura and value – especially in artwork. Aura plays a huge role in value, and it will be shown that it makes things more valuable.