Unique artefacts

anyone have any idea what i'm on about?

you are saying you like art that is or when it is mass produced?

So, if you see a painting a book you are more likely to like it than if you saw it in the flesh?

The singular artefact and emotional attachment? yeah...I think I get it.

something like that. i mean i don't really get a special kick out of seeing the original. i'll go "oo, look" and then I'll notice stuff you don't see in reproductions.

I really think I'm trying to justify to myself a completely stunted aesthetic appreciation of artistic creations. i tend to over intellectualise about this stuff -- and it saddens me that I might be basically compensating for that missing appreciation. (In the unlikely event that anyone has read Tales of the Beanworld, there's a character in there that seems to have a similar problem)

if the copy isn't better then the original was no good

Actually, I get it...being underwhelmed by the art gallery or the live show often happens. Not all the time, but quite often. "the Mona Lisa didn't look as good as it did in the book" "they are better on record" "God, the Statue of Liberty is much smaller than I thought it would be, and I had to queue for ages". (these are just random examples, no offence intended).

So, maybe the mass production of art, leads to unreal expectations. Nothing is ever as good as you hope it will be.

Its interesting because benjamin predicted a reaction exactly like Alan Ts , but it seems like the original object is become more and more fetishized. Theories would be welcome, as for me, i am obsessed with the creation of objects. Although I enjoy reproduced and emphermal objects,the chiselmarks,brushstrokes and various printing and production processes fascainte me. For example what blew me away about Yves Klien in the tate was the absensce of Brush strokes

I think that the reason why most people festishize the object is that everyone has seen it, and it is a goal in late market capital to be the one that owns something that everyone else has seen. The cock mesuaring of objects.

(Brush Strokes vs Diff'rnt Strokes vs The Strokes vs Tankpuss...)

The whole idea of the original has been criticised many times this century, perhaps most notably by Duchamp signing a urinal and exhibiting it (and happily signing a new one when the old got broken) or drawing a moustache on a print of the Mona Lisa and signing that, etc. Then there are artists such as Koons and Judd who may never touch the 'original', and that original is indistinguishable from a second version by the same manufacturers or artisans from the artist's plans. And of course prints are sometimes valuable in themselves, but the concept of an original is an entirely different thing.

For me, the pleasures of seeing an original painting, say, vary. Sometimes, I get no more from it than the original. Sometimes its scale changes how it works. Sometimes you get to see greater detail and get a sense of the physicality of the paint (I think this is very valuable with Pollock and Van Gogh, for instance).

Comics is slightly different from painting, in that the art is prepared specifically and only for a certain kind of reproduction, so there are printers' marks and process white and all that - they do indeed usually look rubbish.

Architecture is an odd example in that it is only the real work of architecture as it is built that can be experienced as it is intended. Blueprints/plans or photos in a book or models in an exhibition, or even virtual reality (we have the Bartlett School's VR suite downstairs from my office) cannot give an experience nearly as close to reality as, say, a good photo of a painting often can.

Everyone come to the US and see our Las Vegas! It has a mini-Venice with a St. Mark's Place, Doge's Palace, and Grand Canal, but ours also has a Sephora.
(And if you really need some authenticity the Bellagio has some paintings.)