- Oct 2018
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mikecosgrave.com mikecosgrave.com
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Notes
The original, plundered by Napoleon in 1797 so it is no surprise the reproduction is seen as better than the original which is in the Louvre. When the reproduction was hung in its original setting — Palladio’s Refectory on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore — on 11 September 2007, the critic Dario Gamboni wrote: ‘It seems that many are still wedded to a fixed idea of originality… I would like you to consider that originality is rooted in the trajectory or career of the object — it is not a fixed state of being but a process which changes and deepens with time.’ For Gamboni, the reproduction in the Refectory was a more complete and authentic experience than the painting hanging in the Louvre. Taken from https://www.christies.com/features/Master-of-reproduction-Adam-Lowe-and-Factum-Arte-6776-1.aspx
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The facsimile was printed on Factum Arte”s purpose-built flatbed printer (figure 34). This is based on an Epson Pro 9600 digital printer. The printer uses pigment inks in seven colors (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, black and light black). The bed is fixed, and the print heads move up and down the bed on linear guides. The movement of the heads is accurate to a few microns, and their height can be adjusted during printing. This made it possible to print the image in pigment onto gesso-coated canvas. The gesso coating, a mixture of animal glue, calcium carbonate, and precipitated chalk, used no metal oxides. The texture on the surface of the 16-ounce Irish flax was made from flax fibers and threads mixed with gesso. Due to its history Le Nozze di Cana has a complex and unusual surface. To reproduce this appearance, each piece of canvas was coated with a layer of animal glue, a layer of gesso and fibers, and then two layers of gesso. Acetate sheets printed with the Phase One photographic data were used, with a pin registration system, to ensure accurate placement of the texture on the prepared canvas. Each panel was then printed twice in perfect register. The first layer to be printed was the information recorded on the Phase One photographs. The second layer was the scanner data. The overprinting resulted in accurate color matching and a control of the tonal values of the painting. The entire image was divided into printing files, with io centimetres of overlap. The printed panels were varnished with a satin Golden acrylic varnish with UVLS (an ultraviolet filter)
fascinating to read how the process of reproducing a copy was created, sounds like it was a far more technical and thought process. perhaps more so than the original, which may take away from the 'aura' had i known this information before seeing the copy.
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Factum Arte built a non-contact color scanning sys tem that uses a large format CCD and integrated LED lights. The system records at a scale of i s i at a maximum resolution of i,2oo dots per inch (dpi). The scanning unit is mounted on a telescopic mast, which is operated by an air pump and can accurately position the scanning unit on the vertical axis.
Charge-coupled device (CCD) with digital imaging sensors, also called Scanography. Find details on http://www.factum-arte.com/pag/38/A-facsimile-of-the-Wedding-at-Cana-by-Paolo-Veronese
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Appendix. The process used to create an accurate facsimile of Le Nozze di Cana by Paolo Caliari (called Veronese)
Technical details of the reproduction
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Veronese’s Nozze di Cana,
The Marriage Feast at Cana can be dated to 1562–3 from surviving documents.
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There is nothing inherently “virtual” in digital techniques-and for that matter, there is nothing entirely digital in digital computers!’ The association of the digital with the virtual is entirely due to the bad habits associated with just one of its possible displays: the pretty bad screens of our computers. Things are entirely different when digital techniques are only one moment in the move from one material entity-Veronese’s Nozze version n – i in the Louvre-to another equally material entity-version n + i in San Giorgio.
Digitally equal material entities?
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facsimiles have a bad reputation-people assimilate them with a photographic rendering of the original-and “digital” is associated with an increase in virtuality. So, when we speak of digital facsimiles, we are looking for trouble.
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three-dimensional
Enhances one aspect of the 'aura'
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Mona Lisa addicts
Destroys one aspect of the 'aura'
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“original location”
The original location is seen as the historical provenance of the artistic work. Latour and Lowe state under the defiantion of Benjamin's 'Aura' that a reproduction should be displayed in its original location, where it belongs historically. It should be possible to be close to the painting without tourists disturbing the environment. Finally the reproduction technique should enhance surface features (like brushstrokes etc) and have a 3D aesthetic feel of the painting.. Therefore a good reproduction should have a good 'aura under these principles.
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ethereal design that could be lifted out of its materiality and downloaded into any reproduction without any loss of substance.
The movability of the 'aura' from the original and how it can move from one material manifestation to another. The 'copy' is its own and should be valued.
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reproduction of the Holbein instead of the Holbein itself to the visitors of the National Gallery-“the Ambassadors” remains behind all successive restorations
Reproductions can be valued more than the original, or at least ensures that its original value is maintained by those that appreciate it.
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Some revivals-the good ones-seem to extract from the original latent traits that can now (or again) be made vivid in the minds of the spectators.
Very true, some artworks that have become destroyed by the ageing process etc, and now that they have a digitally enhanced counterpart, gives us a chance to appreciate at another level. The quality of the digital reproduction is paramount so it is as close a representation of the original
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BRUNO LATOUR AND ADAM LOWE
Latour, Bruno. Lowe, Adam. (2011) The Migration of the Aura – or How to Explore the Original Through Its Facsimiles Switching Codes. Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, University of Chicago Press pp. 275-297
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unlimited fecundity of the original.
Does the several translations of Chaucer's work from Medieval to English mean we cannot consider the translations? If so many of us would have never learnt of his great stories in the Canterbury Tales
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digital reproduction
does digital reproduction not ensure the preservation of an original work. the Brazil museum fire comes to mind
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knee-jerk reaction-“But this is just a facsimile”
A copy can potentially increase the value and appreciation of the original, so we should not dismiss reproductions. Is the real value not attributed by its history
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To stamp a piece with the mark of originality requires the huge pressure that only a great number of reproductions can provide.
So can a painting be judged by the value of its originality, and/or more valued because of the potential value of it through purchasing of its reproductions?
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original possesses an aura,
How can we say that the aura of an artwork is confined to the original? It is not fixed, when you think of all the reproductions made and purchased by visitors to museums , to take home some of the 'aura' they feel from a painting, sculpture etc.
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complex digital processes that Factum Arte, a workshop in Madrid, had used to de- then re-materialize the gigantic Parisian painting: laser-scanning it, A4 by A4, photographing it in similarly sized sections, scanning it again with white light to record the relief surface, and then somehow stitching together the digital files before instructing a purpose-built printer to deposit pigments onto a canvas carefully coated with a gesso almost identical to that used by Veronese. (Adam Lowe describes the process in an appendix to this essay.)
See Appendix below for technical/digital process Also...http://www.factum-arte.com/
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in the Mona Lisa room, although every part of the painting looks just the same (as far as she can remember), the meaning of the painting seems entirely lost. Why does it have such a huge gilt frame? Why are there doors on both sides? Why is it hanging so low, making a mockery of the Venetian balcony on which the guests are crowded? The bride and groom, squashed into the left-hand corner, seem peripheral here, while in Venice, they were of great importance, articulating a scene of sexual intrigue that felt like a still from a film.
Does the reproduction really lose its aesthetic appreciation because it is a copy? Would we not notice unless told?
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No description can replace seeing this original … oops, I mean, is this not the very definition of `aura’?”
The term 'aura' was coined by Walter Benjamin in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Aura is a quality integral to an artwork that cannot be communicated through mechanical reproduction techniques – such as photography
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The Migration of the aura through its facsimiles
Also See....Sally M. Foster & Neil G.W. Curtis (2016) The Thing about Replicas—Why Historic Replicas Matter, European Journal of Archaeology, 19:1, 122-148
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Switching Codes
Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts Front Cover Thomas Bartscherer, Roderick Coover University of Chicago Press, 15 Apr 2011
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