Walter Benjamin and the romantic criticism of the art work

Abstract

The text addresses Walter Benjamin’s conception of work of art as arising from the influence of early romanticism. Tracing this influence allows us to understand procedures Benjamin uses from his first works and which persist throughout the development of his thought. In this context aesthetic experience is beyond any kind of previous agreement (between subject and object), that is, aesthetic experience shows the impossibility of the work of art depending on a previous intention, communicable  in itself, free of confusion, whose expected receptor is a reader or a spectator. The work of art does not explain or communicate, but problematically appeals to the receiver or spectator.