Words and pictures #4

“Scholars are only now beginning to work their way into its [Benjamin’s Arcades project’s] labyrinthine structure, a structure Adorno claimed only Benjamin himself could fully explain. Let us simply note two important aspects of this project. The first is that Benjamin based it on the revolution in architecture that the use of iron and glass had made possible. Here, commentators have noted in particular than Benjamin was fascinated by the new spatial relationships between interior and exterior that the use of glass made possible: the street could be brought inside, and the inside was opened up to the public. The difference between private and public was thus becoming problematic...”
From John Lechte's entry on Walter Benjamin in Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers