The Paradox of Style as a Concept of Art

Darren Hudson Hick & Reinold Schmücker, edd., The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying. London: Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 211–23

I have walked pass this sculptural structure several times and without giving it much thought or any contemplation I have just assumed – subconsciously – that it was the one of many brickworks by Per Kirkeby. For some reason that I don’t remember, I came to talk to an artist friend and colleague of mine in the vicinity of the brickwork. He informed me that the sculpture was not a sculpture by Kirkeby, but one created by a professor in architecture. My artist friend was quite upset by the sculpture and told me that he and other artists for a long time without success had tried to convince the schools of architecture to remove the structure, with the argument that it parasitised on Kirkeby’s brick sculptures.
Warning: imagesx() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/www/portheim.org/pub/imagecopyresampled.php on line 18

Warning: imagesy() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/www/portheim.org/pub/imagecopyresampled.php on line 19

Warning: getimagesize(/home/www/barnabooth.portheim.org/museum/sculpture/xxi/dadk_brick-structure.jpg): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/www/portheim.org/pub/textbild.php on line 63

Brick structrure in the style of Per Kirkeby by a for me unknown artists/architect.

At a later occasion I recounted this to two theoreticians of architecture, who knew of the maker of the ‘Kirkeby-like’ structure. Not unsurprisingly, they saw nothing in the line of Kirkeby in it, but just, as intented, a piece of architectural research in brick structures of high interest, but unrelated to art. I believe they are right, underlining that the question of stylistic copy or plagiarism is first and foremost related to the developments of the concept of art, that is, the institutions, markets, history and discourses of visual art.
   I got the name of the author, but I don’t remember it. I could, of course, find it out, but as a crucial part of my argument is that this namelessness – seen from the perspective of visual art – is intrinsically linked with a positive assessment of plagiarism, I will let the author remain anonymous and authorless; had my focus been theory of architecture, I would have looked upon an authored structure, and the subject of my discourse would be fundamentally different.
   Of course there exist a great number of ‘stylistic copies’ within the field of visual art. We have all seen them, but we don’t remember them, as they linger in the periphery, at inconsequential and local exhibitions, and they never ‘get a name’, precisely because they are so blatantly embarrassing in their crime against art, in not understanding the first rule of artistic production that you should develop your own uniquely identifiable style. Now, ‘artist’ is not a protected title, and art is not a static discourse. One of the most dramatic changes in the art world during the last decade has undoubtedly been the inclusion of practices never intended to be seen as art, but in the light of different recent developments suddenly makes perfect sense within the institutions, markets and history of art. Some cases in point would be the inclusion of projects like those of Erkki Kurenniemi, Anton Zeilinger or Korbinian Aigner in the Documenta 13 (2012) or the even more extra-artistically inclusive Biennale di Venezia of 2013, but can be observed in the vast majority of any major trend-mapping exhibition of the 21st century.
   Thus the indignation of my colleague is not only understandable, but furthermore orthodox to our views of art and artistic integrity. As an artist, you may very well copy other artists’ works, as appropriation art has demonstrated. This is because appropriation art is another style, however contradictory it may sound. Appropriation is a double signing – ‘a Walker Evans by Sherrie Levine’ or ‘a Warhol by Sturtevant’ – and articulates a different artistic enunciation than the work appropriated, even if the works in question are aesthetically or physically indiscernible. As a non-artist, on the other hand, the first rule of artistic creation does not apply and you may – of course – use whatever style you might find appropriate in your extra-artistic project, as for instance our Danish architect. But as soon as a work makes a claim (intentional or non-intentional) towards art, or can be confused with art, the reaction of the art world will show that style has in reality become an unregistered trademark.
   Technically, we call this unacceptable and non-discursive (as opposed to the acceptance and discursiveness of appropriation art) form of artistic parasitism plagiarism, that is: issuing another’s work as your own, in opposition to forgery, which is issuing your own work as another’s. My argument here will, on the one hand, be to assess why plagiarism of an artistic style must necessarily be the most embarrassing thing an artist can do, and on the other hand why plagiarism is artistically necessary as well. As the argument is not an ontological one, but a historical one, the paradox proposed here is a question to the future of art.

Image and Style

An artistic style that can be plagiarised is one that can be the subject of copying. As we know from the studies of Hans Belting (1990) and others, style, as we understand it, was, if not invisible, then at least an unobservable during late Middle Ages. This invisibility can be tested with the help of an example, taken from Alexander Nagel,1 of a painting, brought home to Cambrai from Rome by a Flemish prelate in 1440. This was a Madonna and Child attributed to St. Luke – not necessarily because it was believed that St. Luke himself had conducted the brush, but because it was believed that it was a true and authentic copy, that is, an original image of Our Lady and the Christ Child. When it was painted was irrelevant: the image was authentic. Today we know that the image was painted in the mid-14th century, probably in Siena, in a byzantine style, and even a copy of this type, Virgo Eleousa, was regarded as an original image by St. Luke as well. The Cambrai-Madonna, in its turn, was copied at least 15 times, among others, by Petrus Christus, Hayne from Brussels, and Rogier van der Weyden. The image was, of course, never signed, as its authority was self-evident, St. Luke being the only one who had ever painted Our Lady.
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare resize() (previously declared in /home/www/portheim.org/pub/imagecopyresampled.php:17) in /home/www/portheim.org/pub/imagecopyresampledpng.php on line 44