Diogenes articles from September 1998

Diogenes archives from September 1998

Foreword.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... The word "copy" is shedding the negative connotations that adhered to it during the period when artistic avant-gardes triumphed. Its historical importance, its fundamental role in the conservation of models, and its function in revealing...

Masterpiece and Mass Product.(ancient Egyptian art)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... The Original and the Copy in Ancient Egypt Spanning the course of three millennia, the art of ancient Egypt stands out for its unique continuity. The fundamental rules of Pharaonic art were established around 3000 BC. The proportions of the...

Copying in Imperial China.(art)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... "Copying": this practice, in China as elsewhere, was and still is the first exercise of every apprenticeship at the same time as an irreplaceable technique for spreading know-how, talent, and innovation; but the place and interest accorded to...

The Unique and the Multiple in Africa.(creating and reproducing art)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... Among the tricky questions posed by artistic creation, some relate in particular to the capacity of human beings to reproduce things and to the right they have (or grant themselves) to act in this way. This activity, when aimed for example at...

Greek Statuary, Roman Portraits.(ancient art)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... The Problem of Copies(1) The originals of great classical Greek statuary--cult idols (agalmata) raised in the cella of a temple, or ex-voto (anathemata, offerings) dedicated in a sanctuary, or even, more rarely, political dedications...

Model and Copy in Byzantium.(artistic reproduction)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... Few aspects of social behavior tell us more about a culture than those practices that involve the roles it assigns to models and copies. Under interpretation, such conduct reveals its attitudes toward authority and antiquity, its sense of...

The Fantasy of the Imperishable in the Modern Era.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... Towards an Eternal Painting At M. Bernard's I saw several magnificent paintings on porcelain by Monsieur Constantin. In two hundred years, Raphael's frescoes will be known only through Monsieur Constantin. Stendhal, Voyage en France,...

The Fetish of Art in the Twentieth Century.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... The Case of the Mona Lisa(1) The Theft: The Naked Museum Wall(2) The old idea of the masterpiece, the bane of artists throughout the century that is now drawing to a close, is barely recognizable any more. For the general public, this...

Virtual Multiplicities.(computer generated virtual images)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... The word "virtual" comes from the latin virtus, virtue, which itself comes from the latin vir, man. As for the word "real" it comes from the latin res, thing. One could say that the virtual is the man and the real is the thing. How does one...

Roger Caillois or Aesthetics according to Sisyphus.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 1998... From the jumping bean controversy, through his jousts with Malraux,(1) to his charge against Picasso,(2) Roger Caillois's attitude remained the same: a fear of the seductions of misunderstood originality, a condemnation of the fear of influence...

Sculpture and its Reproductions.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft, eds., Sculpture and its Reproductions, London, Reaktion Books, 1997 University of Leeds lecturer Anthony Hughes and expressionist sculpture specialist Erich Ranfft have compiled nine essays on the role of...

Effigies. La notion d'art et les fins de la ressemblance.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Daniel Payot, Effigies. La notion d'art et les fins de la ressemblance, Paris, Galilee, 1997 "Let someone carve out a marionette so that they can see the strings.... Fiddle them out an opera which reproduces the rising and sinking of the...