UKC

Just having a look at The Elgin Marbles thread, and noticed this comment https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/culture_bunker/should_the_elgin_marbles_b... 
I have changed my mind.  They should be returned to Athens.  Make some copies first etc.
I was also recently in The Prado, and jolly good it was too, but as I was wandering around I noticed the Mona Lisa, well not the Mona Lisa, but a Mona Lisa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado)
No one was looking at it, in total contrast to the “Bucket List” Prado works with crowds around them.
I found this rather thought provoking as TBH, if you had told me The Prado, Mona Lisa was The one, I would not have a clue, though side by side, I could tell the difference, but crucially, I still would not identify which was The one.
I think there is a lot Emperors New clothes about all this art stuff, and very few people can tell the real deal from a good copy.
Going back to the Elgin Mables and copies, IIRC there is a room full of plaster copies of Archtectural features in the BM, I think it was a bit of a thing in Victorian times, as people often could not travel to se the “real” ones and would guess they have a set of copies of the Elgin Marbles. I would also say that if a set of copies was displayed in either the BM or Athens, not very many people could tell the difference.

In reply to Godwin:

I feel a Benjamin coming on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Repr...

In reply to felt:

Well the looks worth reading, thank you. I maybe sometime.

In reply to Godwin:

Maybe not a copy, but there is a big difference between seeing a Rothko on screen and having one in front of you. A lot of art benefits, or is impacted by context as well, and that doesn't necessenrily mean a gallery.

There is also a matter of the visual texture when you see an original piece. When you a see a Van Gogh or similar, where there's a real texture to the applied paint that you don't see a 'flat' copy

In reply to Godwin:

I wish I could give you an up-vote & down-vote!

Most of the "bucket list" paintings are now behind bullet proof glass and/or you can't get close to them so you may as well see reproductions.

However, when you can see the originals up close, such as the room full of Caravaggio's in the Galleria Borghese, the impact can be profound. Then next door is Bernini's Apollo & Daphne - I walked round it marvelling at what can be done with a hammer, a chisel, a lump of marble and endless talent.

I'm sure someone will be along to say that a combination of lidar, ai and a 3d printer could replicate Bernini...

In my experience the colours in reproductions are pretty rubbish.

(On a lifelong crusade to be able to buy postcards of paintings I like from the gift shop that actually look like the paintings.)

Besides, I don't get the sensation of my soul soaring and excitedly going from room to room from looking at Google Images, do you? 

In reply to Godwin:

The way I see it, to make a near perfect reproduction you need heaps of artistry (or nowadays technology) but little in the way of art. The resulting work may well be virtually or actually indistinguishable from the original, and should elicit a similar response from an observer, assuming they believe it to be the original.

But that makes the copy identical only in terms of observation; the creative process that led to it could hardly be more different. The art is in choosing what to portray and how to portray it, and that is completely absent from a reproduction.

We're probably now close with visual art to where we've been for a long time with photography or indeed recorded music. In a real sense any reproduction can be identical to the original print or master copy, and viewing or listening to it will be the same. People won't go half way around the world to hear a recording they can listen to at home.

I think very soon we'll be in the same position with painted artwork. Once it can be truly digitised and identically reproduced (3-d printed?) there will be greatly reduced interest in seeing an identical 'original'.

In reply to Godwin:

I think it comes down to where value is drawn from in Art. I am personally of the view that the value of art is dictated by the response it elicits. A copy, or a postcard of a piece of art might be visually appealing, and I will likely be able to appreciate the art, but the original will always be more valuable because of the emotion that is evoked.

This isn't to say that copies cannot evoke emotion and this would all depend on the art in question as well as your own standards for judgement. The Prado Mona Lisa is likely so ignored because representations of the original are circulated ad nauseum. In this case the emotional response only arises because you are seeing the one of a kind original. An Albers print on the other hand may elicit far more emotion as his art is much less widespread.

In reply to Godwin:

However perfect a reproduction might be, there is always going to be a sense of awe looking directly at something actually painted by Da Vinci or carved 2500 years ago in devotion to Athene by a Greek sculptor.

The sense of awe is probably in proportion to cultural significance though.

In reply to john arran and all:

Some very interesting replies. I am not an art scholar, but do visit Art galleries to try and appreciate the work of art, as opposed to take a picture to share on social media, to prove something.

I think Johns comment here, comes close to helping me understand my thinking. If copies where made, either by human hand or machines, for example, 10 Mona Lisa’s as in the Louvre then distributed around the world, to galleries, including the Original. Infact they could all be put in a room with the original, and then picked at random before dispersal, would people still flock to the Louvre, to see a Mona Lisa, that might be a fake.

As to the creative process. I find it difficult to imagine the mind of Hieronymus Bosch when he created The Garden of Earthly Delights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights ,500 years agos,  genius or madness. It is difficult to conceive the world he lived in, so different to ours. Looking at the painting I wondered if people seeing may have been as likley to burn him as a witch as laud him as an artist, incredible. <Sorry, got over excited there>

In reply to Godwin:

I suspect that people would, ideally, aim to visit all ten galleries to make sure they had seen Leonardo's actual work.

In reply to Godwin:

I think no matter how accurate a fake is, or how many are produced, there will always be interest in seeing the original (or what people believe to be the original). Having a piece of art in front of you that was conceived and created by an artist themselves in a time so different to ours is something near universally appreciated. I know plenty of people who don't particularly care for art but when in a gallery faced with an original work will still have an emotional response.

It is one thing to look at a 3d printed exact replica of the Elgin Marbles, but another to see the craftwork of a civilisation long passed.

In reply to slawrence1001:

Possibly I agree with you, certainly do not disagree, but the answer i am seeking is why. Particularly in the situation I crudely outlined, where you can never know if it is the copy or the original.

Possibly my visit to the Prado was a success, because it has made me question myself about this, maybe that is one purpose of Art.

In reply to Godwin:

I think for me personally it is because of the deep emotional connection that art has to the artist. As an observer, the original piece of art represents a snapshot of an artists mind. We are able to experience a connection emotionally to someone who has long passed.

This might come off as waffle and nonsense (Philosophy degree shining through) but connection through artifice and the endurance of someone's being long beyond their passing is a comforting thought.

In reply to Queen of the Traverse:

But is that because of the sense of place and the expectation of how seeing things in an art gallery will be, or because of something intrinsic in the art works themselves?

In reply to Godwin:

Interesting discussion. I’ve no formal education in art and until fairly recently had very little interest in it. I could admire the technical skills involved, but looked at art as physical representations of ideas or points of view and tended to consider ‘the idea’ rather than the piece in front of me. For this a representation of it was fine. Most of the ‘great’ paintings I’ve seen in the flesh have left me quite indifferent - their images and sometimes even execution often striking me as a bit “meh”. I’m always surprised the Mona Lisa got house room anywhere (I saw it on a quiet morning in the Louvre some 40 years ago.) Munch's 'bad spaniel' I despair of.  For most abstract works, even the ones I like, I’ve always thought if you really want one, go paint one. For the big pieces of course, size and even location, may be an irreproducible element. 

Commercialism and silly money seems to distort values in the fine art world while the emperor isn’t at all short of new clothes. So once the artist’s idea is produced as a piece of art, what sets its value? Intrinsic costs of production? Desireability as an object? Market forces? Competitive bidding by prospective owners? Perceived worth as a status symbol? Box-office drawing power to see it? Uniqueness? A currency alternative for nefarious purposes (as a Non-fungible £300/£3000/£30M pound note)? Or doesn’t it have any value beyond being a decorative artefact or a display of skill? I’m in the intrinsic value and decorative artefact camps and see everything else as externally foisted on the artwork by ‘interested parties’. Neither am I persuaded by ‘meaning’ in art as most seems fairly inarticulate (it’s a limited vocabulary after all, and cartoons do it better 99% of the time, by using words). It may well evoke an emotional response, affecting how you feel for a bit, but isn’t this something the viewer brings to the party? Witness how responses differ when people think the casts at Pompeii and Herculaneum are human remains rather than mouldings of bodies -even the original pyroclastically formed ones, let alone the plaster-of-Paris ones in some displays. Or dinosaur sleetons. Copies do the job.

Ultimately I suspect art is something artists produce, and for different reasons. Those motivated purely by creativity and love of it often don’t care so much about their finished works but are found busily doing what they love -producing more. It’s nice to get a living from it, but the lowest (least romantic) views of art are often found among practising artists who really enjoy it most for what it is -beautiful, or interesting, or novel. Once it’s finished, it’s a commmodity item, whether it has one buyer or many, as an original or as prints. “I like painting, I’m not quite so keen on paintings.”

In reply to Basemetal:

I used think this... and then was totally unprepared for the effect that seeing Van Gogh's Starry Night at MoMA had on me.  For some art it's largely just knowing it's an original that makes the difference (The Scream, for instance) but for an artist like Van Gogh reproductions bear little resemblance to the impact of the originals.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Was it the visual impact of the piece on its own merits, Dave,  or was the impression it had on you informed by your prior knowledge of Van Gogh? Would the painting be 'less' if painted by John Smith last wednesday? (I'm trying to think about why the answer is probably yes).

In reply to Dave Garnett:

 I'd  never really understood why people liked Rothko's pictures having only seen pictures in books or posters. But there was something, maybe the texture or the way the texture played with the light, that was mesmerising when I saw an actual canvas for the first time. There is, at least for me, a similar effect with Turner's waterclours but it was much more marked with Rothko.

In reply to Doug:

But if you were in a gallery, with no labels could you tell a Rothko, from something by Doorsen or Ramsay, I certainly do not think I could https://theartling.com/en/artzine/artists-follow-if-you-mark-rothko/

In reply to Basemetal:

The vast majority of non-modern art really isn’t about an idea, this is a frame of reference that simply doesn’t make sense. For example, there are literally no “ideas” in Turner’s work, he is interested almost entirely in what light looks like when it bounces off water. That’s it! Or course light bouncing off water is a very, very complicated and varied phenomenon, and Turner clearly wanted to explore that aspect of the visual world in all its depth. But there’s no real idea there, nothing intellectual. He is just really, really into the sky, he’s amongst the top 1% of humans at “being into the sky”, and there is very little about the sky’s appearance - specifically the English sky, which is excellent - that Turner did not know. 

The point of art isn’t to examine ideas or technical proficiency, it’s to feel something, or to help us recognise something in the world and bring it to our attention. This for me is a kind of making the world afresh and giving the viewer, a sharper, better appreciation of reality.  
 

With all due respect, from what you wrote above I suspect you may not have been really looking at the paintings. Of course it’s fine not to like the Mona Lisa, or Munch, or whatever; personally Van Gogh leaves me a bit cold and Gaugin really irritates me. I see why others like them, but those painters don’t stir my feelings. But for even a painting I do like to have an effect on me, I have to look at it, really take it in, put my thinking brain aside and soak up the shapes and the colours, try and grasp the other person’s take on reality. 

 

In reply to Robert Durran:

You can see a Leonardo sketch book at the VAndA. Fascinating . Written in code , so as to hide his ideas.  

In reply to seankenny:

It does help to understand what artists were doing before hand and for example the history of oil paints, materials and even things like easels. That’s when these thing s really start to make you gasp in amazement at some of these painters.  

In reply to neilh:

Don’t really agree with this I’m afraid. For sure, it helps to understand a bit of the history of art to know what painters were trying to achieve, but not the material aspects. To me that’s prioritising an overly intellectual approach rather than concentrating on the image itself. One does not need to know much about 17th century Dutch painting techniques to find the Rembrandt room at the National Gallery totally stunning. 

Of course such knowledge can definitely help deepen one’s appreciation of a piece, but you don’t need to know about the development of oil paints and outdoor painting to really get Monet’s water lillies. 

In reply to Godwin:/Sean :  I think a bit of knowledge and context adds very much to the interpretation . and perhaps the feeling I get looking at a piece of work.

Re. copies - depends how - it is hard to beat standing in front of a piece that resonates with you (f. eks a Van Gogh, ) and seeing, as well as the colour, the texture, smell the oil and see how the creative act took place.  It's not just looking at the colours and shapes.  I don't expect all art to work for me, but apart from the obviously bad, I just accept it doesn't, and walk past it to something else. As another example Turners works don't do much for me, but a Rothko or especially a Pollock really do, 

In reply to slawrence1001:

There's a very strong argument to say that a 3-d printed copy would be entirely the artist's own work, and therefore just as 'original' as the identical one produced by their brush, in much the same way that any digital copy of a music album is still the performers' own work.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I don't think it's just cultural significance. The pieces that grab me are the ones that grab me, because they're good, because there's something interesting in them, because they're a clever use of the medium, because there's evocative about them. I don't need to know they're famous necessarily.

In reply to seankenny:

You don't, but if you paint/draw/sculpt etc yourself you can have an appreciation of and excitement about the medium.

In reply to seankenny:

You don't, but if you paint/draw/sculpt etc yourself you can have an appreciation of and excitement about the mastery of the medium.

In reply to seankenny:

That's what I was alluding to with 'point of view' - ways of seeing, like Turner's quest, studying an aspect of the world or exploring a theme and its representation. 'Idea' is such an elastic term though and I'd include all those projections of status, wealth and power; glory, vanity, celebration, standards of beauty, social comment, religious iconography, evocations of the exotic and even the idealisations and figments of imagination that comprise so much of fine art. All are ideas.

I recognise this last function of art as the one that got me hooked over the last few years and I've been surprised by how much my visual perception has altered through it. Some paintings I saw really lifted my spirits and the images stayed with me. The pursuit of technical proficiency though -going back to Turner's skies, or even to perspective representation or giving the impression of luminance, is a tool for creating images with sufficient resonance to generate feeling. But I suppose that's the producer's point of view, not the viewers'. Viewers only see the results. 

Until recently, you'd have been quite right. But that changed over the last few years and many of my estimations have been adjusted. Like you I have my favourites and some that irritate and worse, and I can usually tell why. That was when I wondered if it was actually the quality of the artwork that was giving these paintings their current values. There's historical significance of course, but that isn't the artwork itself -the painting doesn't contain the back story, you have to be supplied with it. Original vision is a big thing, even starting whole movements, but then the movement dilutes the impact of the first exemplar and we're back to considering their historical significance. A friend paints plein air and studio works and considers it important to tell galleries which is which and to give them a story of each work's production "so the gallery staff have something to tell customers". He's quite candid that a good story can sell a picture. Take one of Munch's Screams or  Salvator Mundi, however we feel about them, or because of them, can be coloured by external knowledge... or external myth. 

But reductively, my main point was that much of the fuss about art isn't about the art as art. There's the commodity value, historical significance, last transaction value, pride of ownership, exclusivity and so on. The 'art' component -how the image makes you feel (as opposed to how ownership makes you feel) or what it shows you about the world -probably comes cheapest. And a copy (even by the artist or a competent copier) could supply that.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Whilst they were globetrotting though the museums may have done another switcheroo, which would be mildy amusing

In reply to Godwin:

Folk are forever enviously admiring my fake Rolex.

In reply to Robert Durran:

It would usefully create much-needed new challenges for record-breaking and charity fund-raising: fastest time to tick all ten Monas (helicopter support, major sponsors, livestreaming and GPS tracking); solo completion of the Monas without motorised transport; travelling between galleries using the various vehicles and flying machines from Leonardo's notebooks; completing the Monas carrying a very large supper table...etc etc.

In reply to felt:

I came here just to link that

In reply to Godwin:

For other people!… Just like social media.

’I’ve seen the Mona Lisa’ kinda bollocks in the pub, like people give a shit

In reply to Robert Durran:

Exactly this. I went to the British Museum a few years ago specifically to see Cyrus' Cylinder. I might have had a look at a replica but I wouldn't have be overly fussed and certainly wouldn't have made a special trip. 

In reply to Godwin:

If an exact replica of 'Three Pebble Slab' could be produced indoors, could someone tick it as climbed?

In reply to john arran:

I think this only applies if the audience is not aware that the work is a copy. As soon as you are made aware that it isn’t the original piece, no matter how accurate a representation of the original, it loses a large amount of significance.

In reply to slawrence1001:

I completely agree. But that shows how limited the intrinsic value of art can be compared to the social value we attach to notable pieces.

If 100% identical replicas ever become popular (and I suspect they will), the only remaining advantage of seeing an original, rather than a similarly displayed copy, will be the knowledge that you're in the presence of something notable or historic, which is a pretty intangible thing and I suspect it has little or nothing to do with the art itself.

In reply to Niall_H:

I don't think it's about expectation exactly. Maybe some people feel that with the Mona Lisa et al but I have no interest in the ML.

There is something in the sense of history/fame, yes - going round the Musee d'Orsay and finding so many pictures you studied in great detail at school, just hanging out behind a pillar - but also there is something unique in being in a place dedicated to getting swept away by art. This only works if the art itself is interesting and good of course, and plenty isn't.

There is something like a flow state, for me, when I go to a gallery with art that grabs me, particularly art I haven't already seen too many times before, and can go from room to room to see what's next. It's a rare moment when I'm not thinking about much else, and probably most poignant because it's pulling me back to a part of myself that gets very little airtime these days. I appreciate a lot of people of a less artistic bent don't experience this (presumably in the same way that I'd never have appreciated Hendrix live as much as someone who played the guitar), but for me that definitely isn't replicable online - as someone turning a wind machine and a supersoaker on me and passing me a copy of Summit magazine wouldn't convince me it was the same as being in the mountains.

In reply to john arran:

I also completely agree. I am of the mindset that the majority of the value of art is not held intrinsically and is based more upon the emotion brought about upon the viewer. Maybe when attitudes change, an original will no longer bring about the heightened emotion. I personally however always feel like the original will have more emotional value due to the connection it provides.

In reply to slawrence1001:

I would have thought that the entire value of art is in the response of the viewer. 

In reply to slawrence1001:

Absolutely. All of the value, in fact. Anything else would suggest objective quality, which is hard to credit. But to the extent that emotion is brought on by the uninfluenced observation itself, without regard to the fame of the artist or of the painting, I'd class as intrinsic value. Knowing something has a social status is bound to influence one's perception (maybe not always positively).

In reply to Godwin:

My studio art degree from 35 years ago has been neglected, yet I feel more present as an artist, than any other "profession."

The recent book by Rick Rubin, "The Creative Act," is surprisingly fresh and in the moment, regarding what anyone with a creative urge or instinct should pay attention to - and what all can get in the way, or even contaminate what he considers the "purity" of the process of creating.
  He dismisses the marketplace as irrelevant to the creative act, and worrying about what others think, or tell you, or pay for anything is never going to lead to creative authenticity.
  For myself, I see music, visual art, as just another means of communication, and allowing our word-dominant culture to dictate or frame value or quality misses the relevant essence of works that in the end need only be appreciated, to the extent they touch something in the viewer/listener. We evolved to respond to expressions, colors, sounds, thousands of years before written (possibly even spoken) language appeared. Think of art as another plane of communication, and you can find it much easier to differentiate works you can respect, from those that leave you cold. Everything else is just irrelevant wrapping and marketing.
  Sadly, the commoditization of "Art" has badly clouded the situation, where too many cannot just let a work be sufficient, without some BS story to tell them what to feel -and a lot of moderately successful "artists" make commercial, yet vapid works, which sell because they can spin an interesting story around themselves. I can name scores of wealthy artists I would not care to own, except to sell ASAP, while nameless others resonate, indescribably - and if words could adequately describe it, any artwork would be superfluous.

In reply to seankenny:

Absolutely Sean. Turner (one of my favourite artists) was after what he saw as a depiction of nature in the raw. He lashed himself to the mast of a ship in a storm before painting “Steamer in a snowstorm” and the Impressionists who followed him were the same.

I believe good art shows us something of ourselves and the world around us and in many cases seeing an original in the flesh so to speak is a profound experience. Constable makes more of an impression in the real world than he does on the lid of a chocolate box.

However when looked at across the broader field of art boundaries about originality and even the artist become blurred. We have Andy Warhol who deliberately made reproducible art as a response to American commercialism. If you have a print of Marilyn using one of his original screen prints is that an original or not? Does matter if Andy scrapped the paint across it himself or an assistant? In some cases the desire is for something that has been touched by the artist, but that is separate from the art itself.

Totally agree with your last comment. You need to immerse yourself in art sometimes to appreciate it.