The opposition between original and mechanically reproduced works of art only gets Walter Benjamin so far, and it often leads The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction into contradiction and confusion. The intended targets of mechanical reproduction are photography and film, yet from the outset, the attempt to exclude painting from being another form of mechanical reproduction is in difficulty. The example ' a cathedral leaves its site to be received in the studio of an art lover ' is intended to be about photography, but clearly, could be about painting too, were it not for the additional criteria of tradition, authenticity, and aura, which Benjamin attaches as characteristics to a painted reproduction but not to a photographic reproduction.
In the end, Walter Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction relies on a series of oppositions that one may simply agree with or disagree with. The critical ideas are introduced early, and so that the rest of the essay is built around them: authority, authenticity, aura. ' The authenticity of a thing' Benjamin writes, 'is the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it'. This is connoisseurship, and of course in Benjamin, it meets Brecht's Marxism.