Certified Copy

I watched a brilliant film in my French and Italian cinema class this week called Copie Conforme or Certified Copy. It follows a man and a woman through the Italian countryside and we watch as James, the celebrated author and the unnamed single mother develop a rather peculiar relationship.

What piqued my interest most, besides the heart wrenching storyline (my summary does the film no justice by the way), was James' initial lecture. James, an author, is on a book tour where he argues that there is value in the copy of a work in that it leads us to the original, therein certifying the value of the archetypal piece. He says that we associate the word "original" with the authentic, the genuine, the reliable in such a way that it possesses tangible intrinsic value, and that really what matters is what you believe about the piece. If you believe it's an original, that's what counts. Say the original piece was completely destroyed and the copy was all we knew of it. Would that work of art be any less valuable?

I was taken by the film (spoiler alert, kind of). Though our two protagonists began as strangers, they spent the second half of the film working out their relationship as an old unhappily married couple. I almost walked out because their heartbreaking portrayal of two people who just can't seem to make it work, cut me. When the movie ended I was left wondering whether they really were strangers or if they truly were that unhappily married. Now I ask myself if it matters.

Thanks to Google and a lovely blogger, I know that this is
what I can expect to see. 

Prints of original masterpieces are marked up from the amount of money it takes to produce it. We don't typically mistake prints as originals and we are usually only moved to the point that it points us to the original.

So how much are my reproductions worth? Few outside the art community have heard of Anton Mengs, what is the value of my painting to them? What is it worth to those who can't make it to Vienna to see the original? Am I arrogant enough to propose that seeing my painting could elicit the same power as seeing the original in person?

I hadn't heard of this painting before I began working on it, but I have learned the most from reproducing this painting than any other work of art I've undertaken. I still know very little about its history, and I assume that the painting hanging in the Kunsthistorisches is the one painted by the hand of Anton Mengs. Even if it wasn't, I know what it would mean to me to see what I'd believed to be original in person.

Frankly, I think I'd cry.

Love \\ Christelle