James Freeman on thu 17 dec 09
On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Snail Scott wr=
ote:
>
> NO!
>
> Let's clarify the distinction between
> reproductions and 'multiple originals', because it's
> fairly important.
>
>
> Bronze is a similar by analogy to art printmaking. It
> does not have an 'original', but a 'pattern' instead,
> which bears the same relationship to the final artwork
> that a printing plate does to the final print.
> The resulting artwork
> can be one of an edition or unique, just as with
> printmaking, but it is not a copy or reproduction.
> Each is original, within a group of 'multiple originals'.
>
>
Hi, Snail...
"Multiple originals" is an oxymoron.
It is true that in some cases there is no artist made original sculpture.
This would occur where a sculptor sends off a tiny maquette rather than a
true original, and asks the foundry to "make me six of these, 5 feet tall".
In this case the foundry workers sculpt the original. Molds, now often
rubber or silicone, can then be pulled from the original and used to make
foundry patterns from which single use sand, ceramic shell, or other molds
can be made for casting. It is also true that the original can be used
directly as a pattern, especially if it is made of a consumable material an=
d
if only one copy is required, as is often the case with lost wax or lost
foam castings.
In other cases the artist absolutely does sculpt the original, out of
whatever material he or she chooses, be it permanent or impermanent. In
this case, the first molds are pulled directly from the artist's original,
then these molds are used to make the patterns.
All of the resulting castings are reproductions, and the art world typicall=
y
values the various editions by pedigree, those closest to the artist being
more valuable than those further removed. When a sculpture is released in,
say, "an original edition of 20", "original" modifies the word "edition", t=
o
mean "the first edition". The word "original" doesn't stand on it's own,
and the resulting castings are not all originals, just members of the
original (first) edition.
Folks on the list keep bringing up Rodin's The Thinker as an example, so we
can stick with that. There absolutely is an "original" of The Thinker in
the truest sense of the word. It was directly sculpted in plaster as part
of the entry portal to an exposition, and was first exhibited in 1888. It
is still extant. It was originally called The Poet, and was meant to
represent Dante Alighieri, of The Divine Comedy (Inferno) fame. In 1902,
with the growth in popularity of this piece, Rodin had his studio assistant
make an enlarged version in clay. This clay original was first exhibited i=
n
Paris in 1904. Plaster molds were pulled from this original clay
enlargement by another of Rodin's assistants, and plaster reproductions wer=
e
poured. The first enlarged plaster reproduction was shown in London in
1904. These are the so-called "monumental" versions. The first monumental
bronze reproduction was also made in this year, poured in sand molds pulled
from one of the plaster reproductions, which was used as a pattern. This
first bronze was originally commissioned by a German gentleman who then fel=
l
on difficult times and was forced to sell it to the Detroit Institute of
Art. This is the version that I grew up admiring as he sat on the front
steps of the museum. Something over 20 of these first generation bronzes
were poured by various foundries under contract from Rodin, and are dotted
about the world. The plaster foundry patterns which were poured in molds
pulled from the plaster casts, were also sold. These second generation
plaster reproductions are also in museums around the world. They were
originally considered to be of little value, and most were first purchased
to serve as models in drawing and sculpting studios. Many were painted,
vandalized, or merely neglected, and have only recently been reevaluated as
artworks and restored.
Rodin never signed any of the reproductions, either bronze or plaster. The
Rodin signature which sometimes appears was applied by the foundry, along
with their own foundry mark (signature). The presence or absence of the
Rodin signature has no bearing on value of the various editions and
renditions. The foundry mark is used to help determine which edition a
given reproduction belongs to, and thereby it's value. There is even a
famous case of an art dealer obliterating one foundry mark and forging
another in order to pass off a less valuable later reproduction as a more
valuable earlier reproduction.
A book was written about all of this by Albert Elsen. It is entitled
"Rodin's Thinker and the Dilemmas of Modern Public Sculpture". You can get
it used for a couple of bucks on Amazon.
Many further removed generations of this work exist, and their values
decline with distance from the original. The Rodin estate was still
authorizing castings until the 1950s. There are also a slew of knock offs
which possess nothing but scrap value. One such atrocity sits in front of
our local college. It was donated by someone who, so the story goes,
purchased it for himself on the internet, saw how awful it was, and didn't
want it in front of his own house. It was made in China in a mold pulled
from a poor, lifeless copy of a who-knows-what generation reproduction.
As I said before, sculpture is a straw man that is in no way comparable to
pottery. Their market is not even remotely related to ours.
All the best.
...James
James Freeman
"All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should
not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed."
-Michel de Montaigne
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/clayart/
Snail Scott on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 17, 2009, at 10:53 PM, James Freeman wrote:
> "Multiple originals" is an oxymoron.
No, 'fraid it's not. That's like saying that that a
printing plate is the original work of art, and
the engraving on paper that results is a copy.
Of course it's not! The plate is a piece of metal
with grooves in it, never intended as an artwork.
The image that is produced when the plate is
inked and pressed into paper - that's the original
work of art. And if you ink and press that plate
100 times, each of those prints is an original
work of art.
>
> It is true that in some cases there is no artist made original
> sculpture.
> This would occur where a sculptor sends off a tiny maquette rather
> than a
> true original, and asks the foundry to "make me six of these, 5 feet
> tall".
> In this case the foundry workers sculpt the original...
> In other cases the artist absolutely does sculpt the original, out of
> whatever material he or she chooses, be it permanent or impermanent.
> In
> this case, the first molds are pulled directly from the artist's
> original,
> then these molds are used to make the patterns.
I'm afraid I need to correct your technical terminology,
here. The pattern is what the mold itself is made from,
whether we are discussing the initial wax-casting mold
or the subsequent metal-casting mold.
Some artists make a sculpture out of clay or wood or
some such, and then decide to have a reproduction
made from it in bronze. That is indeed a reproduction,
since it is taken from an original, complete work of art.
The result is no more an original that a poster of an oil
painting is, but this is not the normal process for creating
bronze sculpture, and is mainly indulged in by amateurs
funds, or artists in other media thinking to make extra
cash with repros, just as a painter might produce a line
of poster prints.
The vast majority of bronze sculpture IS original. The
pattern is not intended to be a finished work of art, and
is seldom made the way it would be if intended as such.
In fact, the mold-making process generally destroys
the pattern - it's just easier if the pattern need not be
preserved when extracting it from the mold. Sculptors
who work regularly in bronze make their patterns
with the mold-making process in mind, for specifically
that purpose - becoming bronze. And it's better for
that - made with bronze in mind.
The castings are not reproductions, because the
pattern was never a finished work of art. It isn't made
of the same materials, it doesn't look the same; it may
even have been made in parts to facilitate moldmaking.
The pattern is a preparatory phase in a long process,
not an original.
> All of the resulting castings are reproductions, and the art world
> typically
> values the various editions by pedigree, those closest to the artist
> being
> more valuable than those further removed. When a sculpture is
> released in,
> say, "an original edition of 20", "original" modifies the word
> "edition", to
> mean "the first edition". The word "original" doesn't stand on it's
> own,
> and the resulting castings are not all originals, just members of the
> original (first) edition.
How are they not originals? Each casting in an
edition is an original. IF someone (and unscrupulous
dealers do this) decides to cast more sculptures
from the initial mold, exceeding the stated size
of the edition, they are committing fraud, but the
castings are still originals.
If such a person has a new mold made from one
of those castings, the resulting casting is considered
a surmoulage casting, and fraudulent if presented
as an original. That casting is indeed a reproduction.
> Folks on the list keep bringing up Rodin's The Thinker as an example,
> so we
> can stick with that. There absolutely is an "original" of The Thinker
> in
> the truest sense of the word. It was directly sculpted in plaster as
> part
> of the entry portal to an exposition, and was first exhibited in 1888.
Citing Rodin's castings (or Degas', for that matter)
muddy the water tremendously. As you say, Rodin
did not supervise the casting or even authorize the
casting of many of his now-canonical works, and
many people do indeed consider their authenticity
a matter of debate. As for studio assistants doing
much of the work, Rembrandt didn't paint half
the stuff with his name on it, either; that was standard
practice, farming out that sort of grunt work. If you
care about 'handcraft' maybe it matters, but it
doesn't come into the debate about reproductions
at all.
As you say, Rodin worked in plaster and in clay.
This is precisely my point: he made the PATTERNS!
The castings are not reproductions of the plaster,
which (although exhibited) was never intended to
be taken as a finished, complete artwork. The plaster
was intended as a pattern, as well as a presentation
sketch to show people what it might look like if
completed in bronze, but it was not a finished
artwork, and it's the castings that are the originals,
not the pattern.
Many of Rodin's bronzes have had surmoulage
molds made, and reproductions in bronze have
been made from those. This is why Rodin and his
legacy only serve to muddy the waters rather than
serving as an effective example of anything at all.
Just because they are famous and desirable doesn't
mean they are originals. That doesn't mean that no
other bronze castings are originals, either.
This isn't just my definition, by the way; this is
conventional art-world usage.
A story around the foundry when I worked there
related a tale of a guy who came in with a little
bronze sculpture. He wanted surmoulage castings
made from it. Well, that's tacky, but not illegal. He
was the artist, and it was his choice - we just work
for the money. Later, after I had been hired there,
someone gave the boss a book for Christmas. He
was leafing through it in the break room...and there
is was! that sculpture! The guy who brought it in
wasn't the artist - Georgia O'Keeffe was. (Did you
know O'Keeffe did sculpture? We hadn't, and we
were in the neighborhood.) The boss was pissed as
hell to be made a patsy that way, and we contacted
the police. It was in fact a stolen piece, and the guy
had been flogging those surmoulage 'originals' all
over. (They did catch him eventually - for car theft.)
And yeah, we could tell, they had our foundry mark
on them! Mortifying to be associated with that kind
of fraud, even peripherally.
> As I said before, sculpture is a straw man that is in no way
> comparable to
> pottery. Their market is not even remotely related to ours.
And Rodin is a straw man in any discussion of
bronze originals versus reproductions. (That's
like using Milli Vanilli as an example when
defining live performance.) It doesn't invalidate
the distinction, or make the concept of multiple
originals an oxymoron. And I agree that it has
little relevance to the way most people on this
list practice pottery. But I felt a need to clarify
the concept of multiple originals, as it's so often
misused. James may not like the term, but it
does have a specific and recognized meaning.
-Snail
p.s. Anybody seen the old video of an attempt to
cast Rodin's 'Gates of Hell' using the old-school
tech? Buncha idiots buried the investment in
sand that had sat out in the rain, then seemed
amazed when they poured the metal and a
steam explosion destroyed it. Doh!
James Freeman on fri 18 dec 09
Hi, Snail...
Couldn't disagree more, and the answers to your questions were contained
within my last response. I offered a proof source. Here is another that I
just found, as I do not have time to go to the library: www.penseur.org/.
From a quick reading, it seems to say almost the same things I did. Slight
variations perhaps in dates, but no material divergence. These scholars do
not refer to the first bronzes a reproductions, as I did, but rather as
"copies".
Yes, the pattern is what the casting mold is pulled from. I never stated
otherwise. I also stated that sometimes the original is used as a pattern,
though very often it is not. I also acknowledged that sometimes the
original is destroy in the process.
Your printing plate stuff has no relation to this discussion that I can
fathom. The purpose of this discussion was to stop muddying the waters in
the previous discussion with irrelevant talk of sculpture. I likewise have
no wish to muddy this discussion of sculpture with irrelevant talk of
printing.
As I have no wish to repeat myself, and also no wish to start another debat=
e
about the meaning of words, in this case "original" and "reproduction", I
leave you with the last word. You win.
Adieu.
...James
James Freeman
"All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should
not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed."
-Michel de Montaigne
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesfreemanstudio/
http://www.jamesfreemanstudio.com/clayart/
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Snail Scott wro=
te:
> On Dec 17, 2009, at 10:53 PM, James Freeman wrote:
>
>> "Multiple originals" is an oxymoron.
>>
>
>
> No, 'fraid it's not. That's like saying that that a
> printing plate is the original work of art, and
> the engraving on paper that results is a copy.
> Of course it's not! The plate is a piece of metal
> with grooves in it, never intended as an artwork.
> The image that is produced when the plate is
> inked and pressed into paper - that's the original
> work of art. And if you ink and press that plate
> 100 times, each of those prints is an original
> work of art.
>
>
Snail Scott on fri 18 dec 09
On Dec 18, 2009, at 5:21 PM, James Freeman wrote:
> Your printing plate stuff has no relation to this discussion that I can
> fathom. The purpose of this discussion was to stop muddying the
> waters in
> the previous discussion with irrelevant talk of sculpture. I likewise
> have
> no wish to muddy this discussion of sculpture with irrelevant talk of
> printing...
Actually, you're the one that initially brought
up both printing and casting as examples of
reproduction and copying. I didn't even object
to the main core of your discussion; I was just
trying to introduce a more nuanced approach
of the terminology using additional examples.
That's all.
-Snail
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