3. The value of
reproductions
The work of art has an admirable quality in that it
invites reproduction. First of all, in the mind of the
observer. But the mental process of recollection is not a
copy but a reconstruction. The psychology of the
twentieth century has made us aware of the subtle
mechanisms for coding and decoding visual images, of the
time scale involved in a short and transient memory or a
long and a permanent one. Malraux questions the role of
memory in many of his books, in particular in his
Antimémoires. He is conscious of its limitations
and deformations. That is why he analyzes with the
greatest care the difference between the original work
and its reproduction. We have forgotten, but the visitor
to an European museum in 1900 had very few copies or
engravings at his disposal and only black and white
photographs. It was therefore not easy to establish
comparisons. The geographic distance between museums was
also a "mental distance." As Malraux so admirably
states,
the comparison of a picture in the Louvre with one
in Madrid or Rome was between a picture and a thing
remembered. (14)
The cultivated visitor was a great traveler to the
celebrated museums and the rich could buy engravings of
the masterpieces and the others made do with photographs.
All had to appeal to their memory, some took written
notes or sketched a drawing. Artists, in their turn, went
to the museums to copy from genius as part of their
education and also as a source of income. There were
copies for all tastes and pocketbooks. But, in truth,
many reproductions were faulty and inadequate.
One knew the Louvre (and only some sections at
that) which we remembered as best we could. Now we have a
greater number of significant works to remedy the
weakness of our memory than are stored in the largest
museum. (14)
The situation continues to improve constantly thanks
to new digital techniques for mass reproductions of the
highest quality. Some of the great museums have projects
for digital format reproductions, accessible via the
internet, of the whole of their collections. Thus the
Hermitage
already has 2000 works in a high-resolution digital
format. Such reproductions constitute the enormous and
magnificent heritage of the imaginary Museum which
extends today to the virtual Museum, a museum that did
not exist and was certainly unthinkable in the nineteenth
century. At the end of this millennium, as Malraux
said,
an imaginary museum has opened that will push to
extremes the incomplete confrontation imposed by real
museums. In response to this, the fine arts require being
printed (14)
What is that printing? The answer for Malraux's
generation could only be photography. For us there is
another answer, digital reproduction. To verify this we
must now travel the road from the imaginary Museum to the
virtual Museum. The concept of "virtual reality" was
unknown in Malraux's time but it will be this virtual
reality - and no other - that "will push to the extreme"
our confrontation with the "original reality" of the work
of art. "Art printing" for the twenty-first century will
be decidedly "digital" and bits will replace the written
word and pixels the grain of photography. The computer
with its accessories and networking is the printer of the
new digital era, of the new virtual culture.