Semanticly speaking, all "originals" are copies of the artist's
conscious conception.  The original is therefore, an encoding, if you will,
of the art inspired within the artist's consciousness, which in itself is
an encoding, at least in part, of the artist's unconscious mind.
 
        The perception of the original is itself a copy of the original.
The observer encodes and decodes the original in the process of perception
thus creating third and fourth generations of the art "original".
 
        The above encoding is in a manner of speaking an analog process and
suffers all the degradation in fidelity that all analog copies suffer.
The "true" original conceived within the artist's mind (both conscious and
unconscious) will never be completely known by second party observers.  The
closest one can ever get to the "original" art is the "art object" itself.
All generations from that "original" will be degraded as respect to
all the information contained in the "original".
 
        The "original" contains much information that can not be completely
copied unless said "original" is digital.  Scholars must have art originals
to advance scholarship.  Nevertheless, copies have their place as
instructional aids for the appreciation of the original.  It's a matter
of economy in a finite space-time universe.
 
        Viva la original, viva la copy ;-)
 
G. J. Jerry