On Nov 12, 2008, at 10:06 AM, William Conger wrote:
I agree that there is something about "originals" that fufills a romantic longing for the "long ago and far away". But since a copy is always different from the original, and always less even when it aims at more, people will prefer the original both for its faults and for its perfections. It's a matter of wanting "the real" and is thus tightly attached to our individual desire for individual experience. We want to make up our own minds regarding the truth of our experiences.
I disagree a bit with you, and a lot with Miller's cavalierly equating the desire to see an original work with wanting to posses a relic. Relics, whether a splinter of the True Cross or a sheep's bone, are venerated at religious articles and often are believed to posses apotropaic power to ward off evil or calamity. Not so with ancient artifacts.
One of the important reasons to view the original rather than a copy is to see the workmanship of it. Witnessing it allows the viewer to grasp directly what the creator did, what materials were used, what techniques were employed--and what were not. Look at all those old paintings, for example, and realize there isn't a molecule of cadmium or alizarine or phthalocyanine in them! Look at a red-figure vase and marvel at the surface and remember that they didn't have heat sensors, except perhaps guardian cones, or thermocouples. Or look at the dressed stones of Chartres or the Parthenon or the temple at Luxor and try to imagine how they did it without laser-levels!
On your point, William, I think the "romantic feeling" is provoked, not by being in the presence of "the long ago and far away," but by being in the presence of a work of "creativity" that the viewer didn't do. At least, that's my take on contemporary art attitudes, especially as I observe them expressed by gallery-goers. Add to that the mantra of "authenticity," oft-repeated since the 60s, which adds the cachet of reliability to the work, which is similar to the sense of continuity with a known source (either an individual or a time period) that wraps the work in a preexisting, known and evaluated context.
And there is always the factor of monetary worth. A Rubens? A million bucks. A known apprentice in the studio of Rubens, who later went on to a separate career? A hundred thousand. From the "school of" Rubens? Fifty G, tops. Etc.
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