Challenges of Digital Reproduction
By Olga Chemokhud Doty
In the present day environments of virtual galleries, digital imaging, and communication via e-mail a whole new set of challenges arise for the artists working in traditional two-dimensional mediums of painting or drawing. "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be," Walter Benjamin wrote in his essay, "The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Though the statement was written more then seventy years ago, the rise in volume in visual communications is making its more of an issue then ever.
It is startling to get to know an artist through the images they present on the website and then see the original. I came across work by Carol Caputo on the Internet, and it touched me with its sophisticated interplay of bright colors and harmonious arrangements of composition. Carol Caputo’s website is well designed and the works are presented in a way that gives a viewer an understanding of artistic thought. But when I saw her work in the gallery for the first time I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I had almost missed the essence of the artist from the impressions on the computer screen. Her large canvas, Street Study, (68×68") gave me an emotional lift, with its combination of textures, colors and the unprimed softness of the canvas. The idea of street rubbings that can be observed in the gallery are completely lost in the small size of the reproduction on the site. When placed on the wall, the work takes over the room, penetrates the environment and asks you to look at it from all sides.
I relived this experience again at the Whitney Biennial, which got extensive coverage in press. This year it presented a good number of paintings in its show. It happened that my first impression of the Laura Owens painting came from a reproduction in the New Yorker magazine and on the Whitney Biennial website. Both of the reproductions where accompanied by intelligent articles that mentioned the artist’s intentions and the scale of her work. The words unfortunately failed to describe the visual statement of the painter, who executes her work with the large scale in mind. Reproduced without the reference to the space, they lose their original meaning and take on an illustrative nature.
It seems that multi-dimensional work benefit from a possibility of making external references to environment. Sculptors and architects, for example, rise to the challenge of having limited means of presenting their work in reproductions by using models. Certain paintings and drawings can also benefit from being alternatively reproduced, as in photographs that show them integrated into a surrounding space. This is evident in another illustration of the Biennial Show, published in The New York Times May 30th 2004 by Jerry L. Thompson, which shows one of the galleries at the show were the paintings can be seen in their intended settings making clear reference to the scale of the room.
For any artist and publisher reproduction of the original work of art can present a challenge. The contrast of the images, the colors, the scale – many aspects have to be taken into consideration. I am sure that there are no means to reproduce an original without losing some of its indented qualities, but there are some ways to think about the best possible way to reference the work without warping its meaning.
