The Original in Art

[Ghoulish Delight]

To me, it's the same thing that makes attending a live performance more valuable than seeing or hearing a recording. No matter how accurately reproduced, it still lacks the complete seonsory information one gets from actually being there. And while a show's performance varries from night to night, the gulf between night 5 and night 9 of a show's run is insignificant compared to the gulf between night 9 and a video recording of night 1.

Only by viewing an original painting are you sure that you are truly seeing the colors as they are, how the light reflects off of it, how it really looks as you change your angle of viewing. A reproduction, no matter how accurate, doesn't guarantee it.

So what is it we hope to posses with an original work?

Uniqueness, I suppose. If you can make one copy, you can theoretically make countless others just like it, with any variation being error, not art. There will always be only one original.

Did Andy Warhol's Factory ever produce an original?

Here painting tends more towards the performance arts model. Surely there was some original master image, just as there are original manuscripts. But its intent was to be reproduced, so reliance on those nuances of physicality is purposely avoided by the artist. Some similar cases are photography, prints from wood cuttings (Dali loved those), and sculpture from molds. In those cases, I'd consider an original one personally done, or personally supervised by the artist.

and also what makes an original, original.

My own definitiaion (though not perfect) boils down to a piece of art in the form (or as close to it) in which the artist intended it to be viewed as "complete".