Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
describe multiple casts of this piece as “reproductions without an original,” but
only because there is an element of fraud here in the claim that the work as displayed
is an “original Rodin.” 14 Finally, Krauss’s promotion of Sherrie Levine’s
photographs of photos by Edward Weston and others as “work that acted out
the discourse of reproductions without originals” 15 is misleading. First of all,
Levine’s pictures are obviously in a straightforward sense copies of originals,
namely the prints by Weston et al. Second, they themselves also are originals,
being prints of negatives made by Sherrie Levine.
In short, the distinction between original and replica seems to be meaningful
for all autographic works. A reproduction of a Rembrandt etching or a Steiglitz
photograph (even of one of the early photogravures) is as much a copy, to be distinguished
from an original, as is a forgery or a photograph of a painting.
Despite the fact that “one can make any number of prints” from a negative, it
does, pace Benjamin, make sense “to ask for the ‘authentic’ print.” It is this possibility
of a contrast between original and copy that gives “aura” a foothold in the
world of photography.
At the same time, the practice of restricting the quantity of multiple autographic
works bears witness to the role played by quantity alongside that of
quality in determining the appreciation of artworks. Photographs may, as
Mitchell and Phillips contend, have entered the institutional world of art, but the
restricted number of galleries and private dealers specializing in such images, as
opposed to painting and sculpture, testifies to the limited prices they, like prints
generally, can command. We must at least ask whether it is not “aura” but monetary
value that is associated with uniqueness. The counterexamples offered by
the great commercial success of photographers like Cindy Sherman and
Andreas Gursky prove the rule: the once unthinkable prices paid for works by
these producers are associated with their marketing by dealers generally associated
with painting. In the case of Gursky, whose Untitled V sold for over
$600,000 in February 2002 at Christie’s London (an auction record for a photograph),
the works themselves approach the appearance of painting in their large
format and rich color; while not unique, editions are very small. 16
14 See Krauss, “Sincerely yours,” pp. 187 ff.
15 Krauss, “Originality,” p. 168.
16 Judith Benhamou-Huet draws attention to another feature of this case:
what pushes prices up is not the idea of possessing something that no one else can
own, but the thought of keeping up with the neighbors. This is the new spiral of the
limited edition. Art lovers have gone beyond the stage of wanting a unique work.
They don’t want what nobody else has. But what the person they envy or the institution
they admire already possesses.
The Worth of Art. Pricing the Priceless (New York: Assouline, 2001), p. 112
Similarly, in the case of Jeff Koons’s sculpture, one observer has noted, “Rarity pays, especially
when it is multiple” (Harry Bellet, Le Marché de l’art s’écroule demain à 18h30 (Paris: NiL, 2001),
p. 41).
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