![]() ![]() These now hang in Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Tokyo. The artist made three close copies of the earlier works in January 1889. ![]() The crop of genuine Van Gogh sunflowers does not stop there. Two can still be seen in art galleries in Germany and England, one is in a private collection, and the fourth was burnt to ashes during a 1945 US raid on Japan – coincidentally on the same day as the Hiroshima bomb. Van Gogh made four studies of the golden blooms, each called “Sunflowers”, in the summer of 1888. If I told you that this famous canvas had been destroyed in Japan during the Second World War, you probably wouldn’t believe me. Take “ Sunflowers”, by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Later artists would continue the tradition. Every noble would want to hang a portrait of the king or queen to display loyalty or sycophancy. Portraits were particularly prone to repetition. At least 40 copies, some of which have been tweaked or updated, can be found around the world. The practice continued into and beyond the Renaissance.Ī 15th century “Madonna and Child” by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), for example, was painted so many times that it could muster into a regiment. Such duplication was common in medieval times, when artists would copy the same biblical scene for several clients. ![]() Other times, the painter just fancies exploring a subject in subtly different ways. Sometimes a work becomes so successful that the artist is commissioned to make further copies. It is quite common for a painter to make additional copies of his or her work or turn out a series of very similar variations on a theme. The same artist’s “ The Kiss” exists in three large-scale marble copies, numerous plaster casts, and hundreds of bronze casts – and that’s just officially sanctioned versions created in Rodin’s lifetime.*Ī sculpture might be simpler to replicate, but paintings can also be duplicated or produced in multiple versions. The most famous work by Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), “The Thinker”, can be viewed in dozens of museums, from Buenos Aires to Jakarta, with at least 25 in Europe alone. Sculptures are often cast multiple times. Duchamp’s very first “readymade” – an off-the-shelf snow shovel given the enigmatic name “ In Advance of the Broken Arm”, was also lost. The idea of producing more than one version of a work is nothing new. ![]() At the time of writing, one of these masterpieces is on sale for £3,500 plus postage. The artist made hundreds of copies of this work (which needs no further description) in the mid-1990s. 88”, a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball by Martin Creed (born 1968). One of the more eyebrow-raising examples is “ Work no. The practice of making numerous copies of a sculpture or print (known as artist’s multiples) is common in contemporary art. But a surprising amount of art has more than one form of existence. We like to think of creative works as unique – set down by the artist once and for all time. The story illustrates an intriguing side to art, which is not often considered. “Fountain” has repeatedly been voted among the most important works of art of the 20th century.Īnd yet nobody has seen the original for a century. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.” The upturned urinal may seem simplistic to the point of banality or mere jest, but it represents a revolution in artistic thought. By submitting his “readymade” work to an art salon, Duchamp was challenging the very notions of what art could be, simultaneously making us reappraise the form and function of an everyday object (everyday, that is, to half the population).Īs avant-garde magazine The Blind Man put it at the time: “Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. In form, it is simple – nothing more than an upturned urinal with the addition of a few pen marks on the side (“R Mutt, 1917”). The below is an extract from Matt Brown’s just published book, Everything You Know About Art Is Wrong ![]()
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