Multiples in Pre-Modern Art
| Autoren/Herausgeber: |
Walter Cupperi |
|---|---|
| Publikationsart: | Publikationen Kunstwissenschaften 2014 |
"Multiples – we are often told – lack of uniqueness, invention, authorship. They can be virtually substituted with each other as if they were broken coffee cups. Indeed, multiples can be powerful “multipliers” – in that they enhance the “aura” of the originals which they replicate – but they remain more or less secondary indexes pointing to an original imbued with significance. Yet, what happens if the multiples do not link to an original but rather to other multiples, and refer to each other horizontally rather than vertically? And what happens when serially-made multiples are not quite identical to each other (as it is the rule in pre modern artifacts)? What shapes their identity and their being identical?
This collection of essays explores different forms of interaction between the making of multiples in art and their pre-modern reception. More specifically, these contributions highlight different strategies through which artifacts made in more than one original were imbued with a special significance, with or without reciprocal interplay between virtually identical versions. The book’s selection of well-known as well as unexpected cases (spanning the antiquity to the nineteenth century) aims to assess the distance as well as the tricky affinities that make early printed books and hand-chiseled candle-sticks so crucial for art history in the age of its indexicality."
Berlin/Zürich: diaphanes 2014
ISBN 978-3-03734-374-6
304 Seiten