Original (art)

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The noun original , related to a work of art or artifact relevant to cultural history , denotes its originality in contrast to its repetition or imitation. This property is a necessary and therefore of extraordinary importance, regardless of whether the object is viewed in a scientific, aesthetic, cultural-historical, legal or commercial context or whether its "aura" plays a role in the perception of the viewer. The term original is often used as an adjective to distinguish untouched parts of an art object or building from the supplemented or revised parts. Finally, the term original has a clearly different meaning in the sense of "novel, peculiar, independent, creative".

The term must be assessed separately for works of art that were produced in multiplied form from the outset (e.g. prints, porcelain and bronze sculptures).

In this context, it should be noted that throughout history, the originality of works of art has been subject to a repeatedly changing appreciation. Modern reproduction techniques and more recent developments in art have questioned the meaning of the original term.

history

From antiquity to the 19th century, people in Europe had a completely different relationship to the original than they do today. Roman sculptors largely limited themselves to making copies of Greek sculptures. They achieved an extraordinary level of accuracy, but for the customers it only played a subordinate role whether it was a Greek original or a contemporary copy. Even in the Middle Ages, the concept of the original was completely foreign, as was originality as an artistic achievement. Rather , what was decisive (and even more consequently in the iconic art of the Eastern Church ) was the orientation towards iconographic schemes, which does not exclude the fact that stylistic originality and fashion innovations were sought by artists and valued by clients.

A change began with the Renaissance ; the individual artist steps out of the crowd of more or less conformist craftsmen with his work. This corresponds to the fact that on the part of the buyers the works of certain artists move into the center of interest and become coveted objects of representation, whose aesthetic rank is valued and contributes to the reputation of the buyer. The development of the idea of ​​the original , even if the term is still rarely used, is closely linked to the culture of art collecting. The claim to absolute authorship was not necessarily connected with this. The involvement of shop assistants who were trained to follow the master's style was common and, with a few exceptions, was considered negligible.

In the 19th century, the appreciation of the original increased again. The cult of genius , developed during the Romantic period , made it important to recognize the artist's "hand" in the work, to read the immediate traces of his work and to enjoy the aura of authenticity. This explains why artist drawings rose to a new level at that time .

Between 1913 and 1921 , Marcel Duchamp attempted to radically abandon the conventional notion of the original by declaring individual everyday objects to be works of art. Replicas of these ready-mades , of which the copies originally presented by Duchamp have been lost, therefore easily fulfill the meaning intended by the artist in today's exhibitions. The question of the "original" has become obsolete here. In 1935, at a time of rapidly increasing availability of reproductions in high-quality printing technology, Walter Benjamin problematized the relationship between original and replica in his famous, powerful essay The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility . The reproduction removes the uniqueness of the work of art and leads to the disintegration of the aura . The faltering role of the original in art production led to certain varieties of reproduced art that played a role in the second half of the 20th century: multiples , edition objects and other serially produced works in which only the idea with the artist in It was necessary to make a connection, demonstrated an "art without a unique specimen". Consequently, also workmanship other hands was often left, as in the factory of Andy Warhol .

Original and serial work of art

The underlying problem of the "original" did not only become acute in art history with the modern age. Everywhere where the serial production process allowed a barely limited number of repetitions - in printmaking and photography, in bronze casting and porcelain sculpture, in general in arts and crafts - the originality of the art object plays a role. H. the one-time execution exclusively by the artist himself, mostly no longer a role. A "gradual restriction of the original term" is advisable here.

meaning

The authentic work of art has a cultural historical source value; This explains the intensity with which art history tries to verify the authenticity of a work through style criticism , iconographic plausibility, biographical research and scientific methods, and why restorers spend considerable effort in returning historical originals to their original state, maintaining and preserving them, and thus experiencing them as historical sources do. This is the reason for the museums' task, which is able to counteract manipulability through digital communication through critical-scientific research into the originals, their preservation and presentation in times of the dissolution of material culture.

Demarcation

A look at the varieties of the non-original can help to clarify the scope and meaning of the original. In the order of increasing distance from the "original" are mentioned here:

  • Replica , literal repetition by the artist himself. In lexical terms, this definition of the term is usually narrowly expressed, predominantly in the art-historical literature as well. However, in recent times, copies and even reproductions have increasingly been marketed as "replicas". The synonymous term recapitulation is less common than "replica" and rather uncommon today
  • Borderline cases that are close to the original are casts according to original forms that were made without the knowledge, control or consent of the sculptor or modeller; the same applies to prints of prints and photographs (see Vintage Print ).
  • Facsimile , a high-quality reproduction that imitates the model in the best possible way in terms of format, production technology, material, surface and color, mostly produced in certain editions .
  • Pastiche , imitation, reconstruction or forgery using parts that did not originally belong together stylistically, historically or functionally. Second meaning, usually in the form of pastiche : painting in the style of a famous master.
  • Copy , reproduction , replica, repetition of a work by another hand
  • Reproduction , mostly reproduction of a certain work of art by printing , possible in different levels of accuracy, from high-quality facsimile to black and white book illustration.
  • Imitation , a work that imitates the characteristic manner of an artist or even just a style of the time, can strive for different degrees of deception with different goals, for example serving a historicizing taste in art or with deliberate, fraudulent intention to pretend a prominent authorship and historical origin ( forgery , Counterfeit).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Zanker : Imitation as cultural fate , in: Christian Lenz (Ed.): Problems of the copy from antiquity to the 19th century , Munich 1992, pp. 9–24.
  2. ↑ The word appears as early as the 14th century, but is limited to text versions (Duden: Origin dictionary , 1963, keyword "original"). The Grimm dictionary shows how heavily the term was still used in the 19th century.
  3. ↑ Max J. Friedländer : Von Kunst und Kennerschaft , 1946, reprint Leipzig 1992, p. 145, note 16.
  4. ↑ Thomas Zaunschirm: What are original ready-mades? , in: Gottfried Fliedl and Martin Sturm, Wa (h) re Kunst - The museum shop as a cabinet of curiosities , Frankfurt / M. 1996
  5. ↑ chap. 2 in Walter Benjamin : The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility , (1936, reprint :) Frankfurt 1963, p. 16.
  6. ↑ Peter Weibel (ed.): Art without unique / art without the unique. edition atelier 1985-1998, Cologne 1998 (cat. Neue Galerie, Landesmuseum Johanneum, Graz).
  7. ↑ For collectors and dealers of older photography, " Vintage Print " has replaced the original term.
  8. ↑ Klaus Irle: Forgeries - guarantee, testing techniques, typology , Cologne 1909, p. 7.
  9. ^ Jörn Christiansen: Wa (h) re originale , p. 10.
  10. ↑ Article replica in: Brockhaus; Meyer; Dictionary of Art, Leipzig 1978; J. Jahn, Dictionary of Art, Stuttgart (Kröner), 1966 (with the restriction: "or at least in the same workshop")