How to Cite

Knaller, Susanne: Always Dealing with Reality but Never Too Close to It: Original and Copy in Modern Aesthetics, in Forberg, Corinna and Stockhammer, Philipp W. (Eds.): The Transformative Power of the Copy: A Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Approach, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2017 (Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality, Volume 2), p. 69–83. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.195.c1629

License (Chapter)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Identifiers (Book)

https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.195.260
ISBN 978-3-946054-15-3 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-946054-16-0 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-3-946054-14-6 (Hardcover)

Published

07/28/2017

Downloads

Download chapter (PDF/1MB)
Read chapter (HTML)
Statistic

Authors

Susanne Knaller

Always Dealing with Reality but Never Too Close to It: Original and Copy in Modern Aesthetics

Abstract The following essay deals with the idea that 1) the concept of copy is a most basic one in Western epistemology and still forming the ground of artistic and aesthetic notions up to today. Furthermore, the thesis that 2) the discourse of copy is always a discourse on the quality of reality of artistic and aesthetic works. Therefore, the notion of copy can give insights into the precarious but unavoidable relationship between art and the ideas of reality at its basis. While departing from a very contemporary point of view regarding this relationship and taking into consideration new techniques and theories, it can be demonstrated that the question of copy (and original) can be of help to overcome concepts of binarity as, for example, underlying the dichotomy of materiality-immateriality, material-form, thing-representation etc.—an approach dominating discourses throughout Modern aesthetics.

Keywords Original, originality, reality, authenticity, facsimile