On Sep 24, 1996 08:31:15, 'Murph the Surf <[log in to unmask]>' wrote:


>Interesting that the WebMuseum's Mona Lisa is a reproduction of the
>image, like one you would find in a book and the way we usually picture
>the painting, while the Louvre reproduces Mona as a framed object with
>natural lighting on their site. While it's probably a way around the
>whole use issue for them I find the Louvre's image much more interesting
>and informative. Never hurts to remind people that paintings aren't
>slides but physical objects that exist in space.

--How interesting, given that in "real life" poor Mona is encased in a huge
plexi box.  Fighting to see it in real life is decidedly less of a pleasure
than looking at it in reproduction, alas.  On my last visit, not willing to
bully my way through the throngs of adoring tourists, I satisfied myself
with a glimpse of Mona through the electronic viewfinder display of a
camcorder held by a near-by fellow worshiper.

Original or reproduction: Indeed, there is already a body of literature on
the effect of reprography on art images.  Interested readers may consult
Andre Malraux's "Museum without Walls" and Walter Benjamin's essay on the
art object in the age of mechanical reproduction (Is that the title?).
Further, there is an essay that discusses this problem, among others, by
Maryly Snow (U.Berkeley, Architecture Slide Collection) that will be
published in the forthcoming issue of Visual Resources to be dedicated to
copyright and fair use in images.  This issue is becoming ever more
significant today, when the use of images on the Web and in other forms of
reproductive media is beginning to give to reproductions a kind of
unnatural embodiment, a pseudomateriality.  The resultant dialogue that
ensues between the physical and the reproductive realities, in what we may
call this post Warholian age, is a most interesting one, filled with
significance.  And while we might like to criticize the role and power of
the reproduction and the way it distorts and debases the object it
represents, the very fact that it has gained such an importance, as seen in
Ms. Keshet's assertion that it is the *photograph* that is being licensed,
not the art object, we must perforce acknowledge the influence these images
do have on our lives.

Obviously certain images have "star" quality, and tourists and admirers
flock to make contact with the original, as fans gather around movie stars
or sports stars.  In some essential, even primative way, I believe this
attraction resembles the ancient need to collect pieces of the true cross
or be near a relic of an important saint, to collect mementos of the Statue
of Liberty or of Athena Parthenos.  On one hand these reproductions are
token representations, intended to remind us of the original (as Maryly
Snow notes), but on the other they form the fabric of what must be the
mystical connections we all need that ally us to those myths of community,
origin and power which we use to define and identify ourselves.

In such a view, reproductions, web presences, weblouvres, books, slides,
art historical studies, museums and exhibits and the like are the
capillaries and veins that direct us back to the core (coeur) of self
definition.  The significance of these impulses is not difficult to fathom.
 As in the 16th century, when publishing was clearly understood to have a
clear influence on the spread of new religion, so, too, today, the
explosion of reproductive technology is causing its net of influence to be
cast further and wider than ever before.

I believe that proof that the above is true (in one way or another) may be
had in an analysis of the popular backlash against the arts in American
Society today.  The arts are undoubtedly viewed as a threat to modern
political and religious institutions by many who cannot quite conceive how
our current administrations can fund the creation and dissemination of the
products of artistic creation.  Why so fearful?  In a word, like the
Protestant use of the printing press in late 15th and early 16th century,
the arts are dangerous, seditious and blasphemous -- or so perceived.  And
the means of this revolt, if not its cause is the arts reproduction -- the
power of media.

So when we talk of copyright and who owns rights to use this or that, we
are not just discussing issues of economic and expressive self interest.
The techno-blab and legal jargon of reprography and media management are
just eruptions, epi-currents or, perhaps, the metaphors we must use to
express needs of fundamental but hidden significance and importance.
--

Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont N.Y. 10538
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