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War as Spectacle. AI art Introduction In the early twentieth century, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism, a movement that exalted speed, machinery, and violence as sources of artistic inspiration. A fervent nationalist and later an open supporter of Mussolini, Marinetti gave cultural expression to fascist ideology by fusing aesthetics with warfare. His Manifesto of the Colonial War in Ethiopia (1935) exemplifies this tendency: it glorified Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia as both a civilizing mission and a technological adventure. Around the same time, Walter Benjamin was formulating his critique of modern art and politics. In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1935–36), he warned that fascism transforms political life into spectacle, channeling collective energies into the destructive theater of war. These texts, though written from opposing standpoints, share a common concern with the relation between art, technology, and human d...

The Beauty of War. AI art Introduction Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction remains one of the most influential analyses of modern aesthetics. Known above all for its reflections on aura, authenticity, and the transformation of art under conditions of reproducibility, the text is often discussed in cultural and media theory. Yet the short epilogue deserves closer scrutiny. While the body of the essay dissects shifts in perception, tradition, and value, the final section abruptly relocates the discussion into the domain of politics. There Benjamin asserts that fascism aestheticizes political life whereas communism should politicize artistic practice. Rather than functioning as a neat conclusion, the epilogue should be understood as an escalation: it radicalizes the preceding theses by drawing their consequences in the most urgent political terms. Preface and Epilogue as Frames The preface establishes Benjamin’s program. He argues ...