File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9707, message 32


Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:06:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: PLC: Plato and Aristotle on Art


Reg wrote:

> I think malgosia has a very good point here and I think it brings us
> back to some of the appropriations of Kant's 3rd critique by figures
> such as Lyotard and Nancy, namely, if the structure of imitation and
> original begins to collapse such that one has difficulty in indentifying
> the original (might it not be, in a bizarre sense, that case that
> Rubens's copies were more original than Titian's originals?), then it's
> necessary to approach the issue in a different way or with slightly
> different premises.  I think here, in this collapse, the question of
> autonomy Howard introduced becomes important and even more difficult.

I think that the imitation theory of art loses all usefulness not just in
the face of the orginial/copy problem.  There is perhaps a certain amount
of fun and maybe even insight to be gained by claiming that Duchamp's
"Fountain" is an imitation of the process of inserting a work into 
the Institution of Art; or that collage and assemblage are
imitations of ruins or attic-heaps.  But I don't think there is any way
of stretching this line of thought to early performance art, such as
Chris Burden's or Vito Acconci's or Denis Oppenheim's work in the 60s
and early 70s.  Perhaps this coming to a stop is in itself insight-producing,
in that it leads to an understanding of what it was that early performance art 
was successul in refusing to be.  But, like all negative analyses, it only 
goes so far, and probably shows little besides the inadequacy of one's 
framework.


-malgosia 

   

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