A couple of paragraphs of Benjamin:
"When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself. The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery -- concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art. [...] "An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction [...] lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice -- politics." http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/Benjamin.html
In other words, before the advent of its reproducibility art had a cult value that it no longer needs to have; now it has exhibition value: "Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work."
Thing is, though, over the last hundred years or so art seems in fact to have taken a double scoop: the best known stuff is both highly politicised (conceptual art, from cans of the artist's dog's shit to light-and-wire installations on opressive dictatorship) and highly cultified by those who buy it (it is priced according to the level of iconisation of the artist - which is most often a factor of how much time and effort has been put into marketing the artist as truthsayer - rather than according to the quality of the artwork). Whereas art, acc. to Benjamin, used to have cult value to the degree that it was associated with a cult, in the age of irony art itself has achieved a kind of cult status.
Btw, there's a play on the topic of art as religion, currently being performed in Canberra.
cheers, Joanna
----- my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au