In the digital age, we need to rethink the relationship between originality and authenticity

In 2007, while discussing on his television program Passepartout the facsimile of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana that we had made for the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore (the place for which the original was intended and painted as a site-specific work), Philippe Daverio threw a copy of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility over his shoulder. He asserted that in the digital age we need to rethink the relationship between originality and authenticity.

There is a vast accumulation of thought around the topic, but the “aura” has remained more or less intact, understood as the thing that separates an original from its copy. Jean Clair, the former director of the Musée Picasso and the Venice Biennale, argued in his book L’hiver de la culture that it is better to exhibit replicas than to fill museums with deteriorated relics. The Victoria & Albert Museum’s exhibition (and related publication) A World of Fragile Parts (2016) took a general look at the value of replicas, while the ReACH initiative, organized by the V&A and the Peri Foundation, led to the publication of Copy Culture, which outlines important issues of data ownership, high-resolution recording, and data sharing. The positions of UNESCO, ICOMOS and other professional bodies are still significantly outdated.

Benjamin’s choice of metaphor, suggesting both halo and radiation, is actually the opposite of the physical evidence that makes an object specifically what it is. Objects are the repositories of compound ideas, thoughts, materials, evidence, transactions and actions of time. They are the counterpoint of today’s ephemeral communications (requiring time and reflection, but providing complex insights), reflecting and redirecting every thought we impose on them.

No copy will ever rematerialize all that is in the original, but the closer the replica comes to the original, the more it can be revealed. In part this will enable us to understand the decisions and materials that make up the original, the way it has aged and deteriorated, and the events that have happened to it over its lifetime. Everything goes through a constant dynamic process of change. Replicas not only help us understand and empathize, but can also encourage us to become aware of our temporal and perspective limitations.

Digital and auras have much in common; they are far from being discrete, stable and clearly defined. Digital was once associated with the virtual, but it is becoming increasingly physical. Digital data depend on electricity and human input. For Benjamin, the aura is intrinsic and emanates from the object; in reality, the aura is projected onto the object by the viewer and is the product of our own perception of value, our beliefs and prejudices. When these change, the aura can reposition itself. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction begins with a quote from Paul Valéry’s La conquête de l’ubiquité: “In the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time have been what they were from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the whole technique of the arts, thus influencing artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an extraordinary change in our very notion of art.”

Digital technology is bringing about that “extraordinary change,” but Valéry’s prediction seems almost prophetic if one reads what follows that quote in the original text: “At first, no doubt, only the reproduction and transmission of works of art will be affected. It will be possible to send everywhere or recreate everywhere a system of sensations, or more precisely a system of stimuli, provoked by some object or event in a given place. Works of art will acquire a kind of ubiquity. We will only have to evoke them and there they will be, in their living reality or recovered from the past. They will not simply exist in themselves, but will exist wherever someone with a certain apparatus is. A work of art will cease to be anything more than a kind of source or point of origin whose benefits will be available and fully available, wherever we wish.”

The digital revolution is introducing an alternative way of thinking that is cumulative rather than sequential: it accumulates like a 3-D print instead of flashing before our eyes like a movie. High-resolution digital recording and secure long-term archiving are the brackets that are shaping the debate about how digital technologies, whether in virtual or physical form, are changing our approach to preserving and preserving material evidence of the past.

If an object is properly recorded, it can be analyzed, studied, shared, and rematerialized for a variety of purposes. Data can then be used in a variety of ways. In its digital form it can be made accessible worldwide where it can be used as both an educational and creative resource. It can be optimized and used for virtual, augmented and mixed realities. It can be scientifically analyzed for forensic purposes. It can become the source material for digital restorations that never touch the original artwork. It can be rematerialized using various 3D output technologies. It can be analyzed with artificial intelligence neural networks. It can inform exhibition visualization and lead to digital knowledge based on a mix of facts and opinions, knowledge and evidence. But it can also recreate a perfect facsimile without ever touching the surface of the original, employing contactless technologies that do not endanger the artwork in any way. We can now make copies at the same scale, with accurate color and surface detail. When we displayed a framed Boucher facsimile next to the original in an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor in 2019 and asked the public to choose which was the original, the question made people slow down. They looked and discussed, experts and audience alike, putting aside their own assumptions. If you are curious, about half of them guessed right....

Facsimiles amplify the importance of the original and reveal why it is considered important. The digital used to be virtual; now it has the potential to be both virtual and physical. The technology is evident in both the mechanics of the hardware and the elegance of the algorithms that shape the software. Both, in the hands of skilled digital artisans, are leading to new insights and understanding. When concepts are separated from physical evidence, they tend to disperse.

Thoughts and ideas have to find their form: this applies to the written word, song, dance, music, performance, architecture, sculpture, painting, and both tangible and intangible representation. They are always rooted in their time but accessible to those who look, listen and question.

This contribution was originally published in No. 18 of our print magazine Finestre Sull’Arte on paper. Click here to subscribe.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.