The Replica Art
The word art has linguistic relationship with artifice and artificial, this seems quite obvious, it is dealing with making, with representing something from the real world with a human endeavor or creation. Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is art in its representation of a human woman, but is a framed poster of Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” art?
I ask this in all seriousness of contemplation, and without having a definite answer. The strangeness of something like a poster of a famous painting or a replica sculpture is that these objects are artifice of the original art. They are not the real thing (that being the the art that they represent), thus they are artificial. I am not supposing that everything that is artificial is necessarily art, Styrofoam boxes are artificial and certainly not a work of Van Gogh (though, and we often over look this, somebody, somewhere did put in the time to design those Styrofoam boxes, as many people design countless other everyday products in our lives. They may consider their work a kind of art). If somebody has a beautifully framed poster of “Starry Night” in their house are they decorating with art or are they just decorating? There is a complexity to this, a layering of sorts. To a degree it reminds me of the complexities of Jean Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation in which he discusses the concept of hyper-reality and how all human endeavors have become nothing more than simulations of some underlying real. In Baudrillard’s perspective the poster of a famous painting would be a perfect example of the way we are constantly creating a context of simulation.
Personally I love a nice poster of a famous painting (mostly because I can afford them) but I also would love to own some original artwork. The Reconstruction may still display the image and portray the beauty but it lacks in not being the original. There can only be one original. And yet what is the cultural commentary on the market for replica art? Art it seems is such an essential and profound aspect to defining what it is to be human that the presence of even the replica art is comforting. We hold admiration for the works that constitute art and thus enjoy the presence of representation’s of the art around us. I do not believe owning a poster of a paining makes us any less cultured than owning an original work of art, in actuality I see the existence of replica art being very essential to understanding the cultural values at the core of all human society.
~Nathaniel
