Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
models were not only cast and patinated by others but also realized in marble, in
a variety of sizes, by mechanical means? 12 These are good questions, but Krauss
seems wrong to conclude that the concepts of “original artwork” or “authenticity”
are empty with respect to such works, and that photography typifies a
mode of “reproductions without originals.”
It seems more appropriate to say with Goodman that, in the case of allographic
works, every example is an original; while in the case of autographic works we
can define “originality” generally in terms of a standard process of production of
the final object (photographic prints, etchings, sculptures) from the relevant original
(negative, plate, plaster model), and then introduce additional categories as
necessary to make whatever distinctions seem important, such as “printed by the
artist,” “printed under the artist’s supervision,” “made under license,” etc. And,
in fact, this is what is done in the study and trade of such objects. Reproductions
of photographs by August Sander, for example, fall on one side of a divide, on the
other of which lie prints made from his negatives, which in themselves are sorted
into prints made by Sander, with or without signatures, prints made by his son,
and prints made under the authority of the Sander estate.
Such an example itself, of course, makes it clear that Krauss is right to draw
attention to an area of artificiality in the concept of “original” invoked in the art
business (an area covered by Goodman’s philosophical rug, with all problems
swept under by the phrase, “requisite history of production”). One could argue
that the artist’s signature on a print confers authenticity on the image by guaranteeing
the artist’s approval of it as a representative of his or her work, although
an unsigned copy might in fact be just as acceptable a realization of the artist’s
intention as a signed one. But with editions of prints limited to five, ten, or whatever
low number, we are clearly dealing with attempts to raise market value by
restricting supply. 13 (We will return to this below.) On the other hand, we have
works like Rodin’s Gates of Hell, assembled after his death from pieces produced
by the artist, apparently in some disregard of his intentions. It seems correct to
12 Rosalind Krauss, “The originality of the avant-garde” and “Sincerely yours,” in idem, The Originality
of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 151–94. For
an interesting discussion of these problems, with a penetrating criticism of Krauss, see Alexandra
Parigoris, “Truth to materials: bronze, on the reproducibility of truth,” in Anthony Hughes
and Erich Ranfft (eds), Sculpture and Its Reproductions (London: Reaktion, 1997), pp. 131–51.
13 The discussion of originality and replication by Jean Chatelain cited by Krauss in “Sincerely
yours” illustrates both recognition of the role of the art market in the functional definition of
“originality” and the confusions arising from identifying originality and uniqueness. Limiting
editions of multiples, as Chatelain explains, produces an “originality effect”; the effectiveness of
the artificially restricted “original edition” is used “to give greater value to editions which, for
want of being originals, will at least have the appearance of being so, by being numbered”
(p. 177). But Chatelain himself, in another passage cited by Krauss, observes that, from a technical
point of view, a cast “made from the original plaster is a proof, an edition; that which is
not made from the original plaster is a reproduction”—in contrast to the legal efforts made to
restrict the concept of “originality” to the benefit of the art trade (p. 178).
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