SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Edited by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Critical Views In the same series The New Museology edited by Peter Vergo Renaissance Bodies edited by Luey Gent and Nigel Llewellyn Modernism in Design edited by Paul Greenhalgh Interpreting Contemporary Art edited by Stephen Bann and William Allen The Portrait in Photography edited by Graham Clarke Utopias and the Millennium edited by Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann The Cultures of Collecting edited by John EIsner and Roger Cardinal Boundaries in China edited by John Hay Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity edited by Stephen Bann A New Philosophy of History edited by Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner Parisian Fields edited by Miehael Sheringham SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Edited by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft , REAKTION BOOKS Published by Reaktion Books Ltd II Rathbone Place London WIP IDE, UK First published 1997 Copyright © Reaktion Books Ltd, 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. Designed by Humphrey Stone Jacket and cover designed by Ron Costley Photoset by Wilmaset, Wirral, Merseyside Printed and bound in Great Britain by BiddIes, Guildford. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: Sculpture and its reproductions. (Critical views) L Sculpture 2. Sculpture Reproduction I. Ranfft, Erich 11. Hughes, Anthony 73° ISBN 18 6189002 8 Contents Photographic Acknowledgements VI Notes on Editors and Contributors vu Introduction Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft I I Roman Sculptural Reproductions or Polykleitos: The Sequel Miranda Marvin 7 2 Authority, Authenticity and Aura: WaIter Benjamin and the Case of Michelangelo Anthony H ughes 29 3 Art for the Masses: Spanish Sculpture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Marjorie Trusted 46 4 The Ivory Multiplied: Small-scale Sculpture and its Reproductions in the Eighteenth Century Malcolm Baker 6I 5 Naked Authority? Reproducing Antique Statuary in the English Academy, from Lely to Haydon Martin Postle 79 6 Craft, Commerce and the Contradictions of Anti-capitalism: Reproducing the Applied Art of Jean Baffler Neil McWilliam 100 7 Reproduced Sculpture of German Expressionism: Living Objects, Theatrics of Display and Practical Options Erich Ranfft 113 8 Truth to Material: Bronze, on the Reproducibility of Truth Alexandra Parigoris 131 9 Venus a Go Go, To Go Edward Allington References Select Bibliography Index 15 2 168 197 201 Photographic Acknowledgements The editors and publishers wish to express their thanks to the following sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it (excluding those named in the captions, and the individual essayists, who supplied all remaining uncredited material): © Edward Allington and the Lisson Gallery, London: pp. 153, 167; © 1997 ARS, New York/ADAGP, Paris: pp. 142, 145, IS0; © Alan Bowness/Hepworth Estate (photography): p. 139; Michael Brandon-Jones: p. 107; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (Edmee Busch Greenough Fund): p. 120; The Art Institutue of Chicago (gift of Margaret Fisher in memory of her parents, Mr and Mrs Waiter Fisher): p. 137; Don Hall (courtesy the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Canada) (photography); © Bertrand Lavier: p. 159; Robert Hashimoto (photography): p. 137; Friedrich Hewicker: p. 124; Bill Jacobson Studio (photography): pp. 153, 167; Michael Le Marchant (Bruton Gallery): p. 134; G.V. Leftwich: pp. 12 (top right), 16; © Les Levine (photography): p. 134; Courtauld Institute of Art, London: p. 85; Royal Academy of Arts, London: p. 88; © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (photography): pp. 49, 58, 70, 74, 75; Paul Mellon Centre: pp. 82, 87, 9 6 , 97; Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest; photo: © 1997 MoMA, NYC): p. 144; Photo: Alexandra Parigoris: p. 145; The Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena (photography): p. 150; and Wellesley College Museum, Jewett Arts Centre, Wellesley (gift of Miss Hannah Parker Kimball, M. Day Kimball Memorial): p. 12 (bottom). Notes on Editors and Contributors EDWARD ALLINGTON is a sculptor based in London. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; the Tate Gallery, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. He has also shown in public projects including Das Kunstprojekt Heizkraftwerk, Romerbriicken, Saarbriick- en (1990) and Quadratura in Cambridge (1995). He was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at the University of Leeds, He currently teaches at the Slade School of Art and is Research at the Manchester Metropolitan University, who are publishing a collection of his essays, A Method for Sorting Cows (forthcoming). MALCOLM BAKER is Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has written widely on eighteenth-century sculpture and visual culture in many journals. He has co-written (with Anthony Radcliffe and Michael Maek-Gerard) Renaissance and Later Sculpture in the Thyssen- Bornemisza Collection (1991) and (with David Bindman) Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument: Sculpture as Theatre (1996), which was awarded the 1996 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. He is currently writing a book on Roubiliac and the roles of sculptural portraiture in eighteenth-century England. ANTHONY HUGHES is Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Leeds. He has published extensively on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art in Art History, The Burlington Magazine, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes and The Oxford Art Journal, and has written a book on Michelangelo. He is currently writing a book on the theory of sculpture from the fifteenth century to the present day. MIRANDA MARVIN is Professor of Art and of Greek and Latin at Wellesley College. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and Harvard University. She has excavated at Israel and Idalion, Cyprus, and publishes on Roman sculpture. NEIL Mc WILLIAM is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art in the School of World Art and Museology, University of East Anglia. He has published widely on nineteenth-century French visual culture, including A Bibliography of Salon V111 NOTES ON EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Criticism in Paris from the July Monarchy to the Second Republic 1831-1850 (1991) and Dreams of Happiness (1993). He is completing a study of Jean Baffler and nationalist culture in the Third Republic. ALEXANDRA PARIGORIS, formerly Henry Moore Lecturer in the History of Sculpture Studies at the University of York, recently completed a PhD on Constantin Brancusi for the Courtauld Institute in London. She has published on Brancusi, Pablo Picasso and ]ulio Gonzalez. Currently based in Chicago, she is preparing a critical edition of Andd: Salmon's La jeune sculpture franr:aise. MAR TIN POSTLE is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the London Centre, University of Delaware. His publications include (with Ilaria Bignamini) The Artist's Model: It's Role in British Art from Lely to Etty (London and Nottingham, 1991) and Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures (Cambridge, 1995). ERICH RANFFT is former visiting Henry Moore Scholar in Sculpture Studies at the University of Leeds. He has published essays in Expressionism Reassessed (1993), Visions of the Neue Frau (1995) and The Dictionary of Women Artists (London and Chicago, 1997). He has been researching modern German arts and cultures and the practices of women sculptors, and has a forthcoming PhD on Expressionist sculpture from the Courtauld Institute in London. MAR]ORIE TRUSTED is Deputy Curator in the Sculpture Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She has written a number of articles and books on sculpture; her catalogue of Spanish sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum was published in 1996. [...]... and private portraiture and the narrative reliefs that ornamented arches, columns and buildings throughout the Empire are its chief exponents Historical sculpture is thought of as the place where Roman sculptors demonstrated originality and creativity, where they made significant contributions to the history of Western art Roman ideal sculpture, on the other hand (which takes its name from the German... It entails accepting a view of Roman patrons and Roman artists that brings them uncomfortably close to more recent makers and purchasers of sculpture A product of the nineteenth century, the standard hypothesis perfectly accommodates that century's practices and expectations It is less convincing as a reflection of the habits of ancient Romans, and it fits the physical evidence of the existing statues... work and others like it has begun to break down The Copenhagen youth now seems more likely to be a Roman creation than a copy of a Greek bronze and worthy of a label describing what the visitor sees, not just its imagined original 8 MIRANDA MAR VIN Figure in the manner of Polykleiros, second century Ny Carlsberg Glyprotek, Copenhagen AD, marble Much Roman sculpture is Greek in style and subject, and. .. discussing Roman sculpture and its sources The first is that the major centre of marble production in the Roman empire was the eastern Mediterranean The marble-carvers of Greece and Asia Minor never ceded dominance to their competitors in Italy, and in their workshops the language spoken was Greek They are considered to be Roman artists in that they and all their patrons were Roman Sculptural Reproductions. .. obviously commercial to receive open admittance among writers on art, especially during periods and in regions in which the promotion of a proper standard of craft practice was regarded as essential for sculpture if authorial control was to be maintained Oddly, these often authoritarian and elitist ideals went hand in hand with populist ideologies, creating some curious paradoxes One is studied in Neil McWilliam's... view of Roman sculpture reflected on the Copenhagen label is usually said to have originated in the circle of Winckelmann in the eighteenth century.6 As fully developed in German universities in the nineteenth century, it holds that Roman sculpture can be divided into two sharply distinct categories: historical and 'ideal' Historical sculpture depicts historical persons and events? Public and private... from the insights our contributors have offered Our thanks go to them and to others who have supported us before and during the period in which the book was being produced They include Ben Read and Adrian Rifkin at the University of Leeds and Penelope Curtis of the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, 6 ANTHONY HUGHES AND ERICH RANFFT who convened a one-day conference at the Centre on this... by Adolf Furtwangler in the 1890S to be an original of the fifth century Its languorous elegance and youthful androgyny, however, betray its Roman origin and relate it unmistakably to similar figures of beautiful boys used to hold oil lamps to light Roman dining rooms I3 Many more works have been recognized as Roman creations, and the category of literal copies from Greek masterpieces has shrunk dramatically.I4... museums and only a rudimentary tourism industry The art patron of ancient Rome had little in common with his modern successors who pile into tour buses in order to see the canonical works whose appearance they already know from reproductions, and purchase other reproductions on the spot to take home for the mantelpiece Tn discussing Roman sculpture the burden of proof should shift from I2 MIRANDA MARVIN... suggested an environment in which it might have taken place 65 The island of Delos was home to both Greek and Italian traders in the second and first centuries BC The god with the money bag is a popular terracotta figurine there, and on the prosperous island an active group of sculptors produced innovative works with mixed Greek and Roman roots The transformation hypothesis holds that it was in such . SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Edited by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft SCULPTURE AND ITS REPRODUCTIONS Critical Views In. Guildford. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: Sculpture and its reproductions. (Critical views) L Sculpture 2. Sculpture Reproduction I. Ranfft, Erich 11. Hughes,