468860

Representation, Copying, and the Technique of Originality
Author(s): Richard Shiff

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 2, Interrelation of Interpretation and Creation
(Winter, 1984), pp. 333-363
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468860
Accessed: 31-03-2015 18:05 UTC
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Representation, Copying, and the Technique

of Originality
Richard Shiff
there is much discussion of the
modern period as a distinct era, perhaps now past, a time
characterized by an ideology and style of its own. For most
of the art historians who take part in this speculation on the nature
of modernism, the modern period begins well back in the nineteenth
century; for some, its roots are clearly in the eighteenth century.
Accounts of the rise of modernism tell a story of conflicting theories
and practices: there are academics and antiacademics, painters of
"idealized" history and painters of "real" nature, painters of allegory
and painters of the symbol. Some of the more erudite scholarship
reveals significant differences even among members of relatively cohesive groups-one
finds, for example, that academics wrangled
without resolution over the proper procedure for imitating the
Greeks. And if indeed the nineteenth century belongs to the modern
period, it may be that not all of its artists wanted to be modern; or,
to put it another way, at the very least they did not all want to be like
each other. Of course, persuasive arguments have been made which
encourage considering this pervasive contrariness as an aspect of the
modern.
I do not wish to classify various artistic manners as modern or
antimodern, or as radical or conservative in any absolute sense. Nor
do I intend to claim that one attitude or manner displaced another
as if fluids of ever-increasing density in the mainstream of history.
In many ways I see the art of the modern period as quite homogeneous. Nevertheless, I will attempt to make a general distinction between the academic and the antiacademic artist in terms of modes of
representation; and to this purpose I will investigate the notion of
copying and what I call the "technique of originality." The course of
my study will pass through a number of familiar topics, including
realism, idealism, and simple naivete.
My emphasis is very much on processes of making-techniques.
Accordingly, by representation I refer to an act of depiction, both
(iconic) figuration and (symbolic) configuration. I do not use the term
representationto signify the adequation of re-presentation, that is, some
AT
THE PRESENT MOMENT
334
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
second presentation bearing the full "presence" of the original. The

nineteenth-century sources whom I cite seem very much aware that
representations may at times seek to approach re-presentation but do
not attain that end. Curiously, the reforming modernism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (associated with impressionism,
to choose one example) has sometimes seemed more naive than the
academicism that it tried to obliterate, attempting to eradicate all of
its codes. To many this modernist art has appeared as engaged in a
(vain) struggle to re-present an origin, an original truth. I would
argue instead, however, that the contemporary historian's rearview
mirror often causes him to see modernist art reversed, with ends and
means exchanged: the historian mistakes a self-conscious representation of "naive" or "original" vision-doubly internalized in a medium
within a historical context-for
what its maker knew it was not very
to
a
naive
be,
likely
re-presentationof original "truth," found as if
external to any particular discourse. At times it is not so much the
historian's faith in the possibility of re-presentation that gives rise to
this problem of interpretation, but his assumption of good faith on
the part of the artist, a good faith that may have led to acts of artistic
self-deception. Indeed, through the historian's perspective, with its
mediating factor of distance or "error," the artist's act of deception
often succeeds (that is, his vision is taken to be naive); but this is no
proof that the artist had been deceiving himself, had believed in his
own naivete.
To the extent that pictures communicate semiotically and can become objects of interpretation, theories of pictorial representation
can be extracted from pictures of pictorial representation. Such pictures both form statements of theory and exemplify practice. I begin
then with some preliminary remarks prompted by consideration of
two pictorial representations of an artist engaged in painting his
model (figs. 1 and 2).1 (The authors of both works are FrenchI will refer repeatedly to
Ingres [1814] and Matisse [1917]-and
French theory and criticism of their time.) In both pictures the model
that is represented in the process of being represented is a woman;
but, of course, in accord with the more generalized use of the term
in the field of the visual arts, this "live model" (modelevivant) could
be any subject in "nature," even a still life (nature morte).As long as
the model is some sort of observable thing-a source to be drawn
from as the canvas is drawn upon, and an object of vision regardedas
external to the artist-one may (rather conventionally, at least) speak
of its representation in a relatively unproblematic way.2 Yet it is to
be expected that the pictorial representation may not look exactly like
REPRESENTATION,
COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE
335
the model, that there may not be perfect congruence of effects but
rather any of many types of differentiation that result from the imaginative transference and technical transformation as the model is
shifted from an external world to its place within a pictorial rendering, within culture.
This rule of interpretive difference or metaphor has an obvious
exception: if the model is not a real person or a real bowl of fruit or
a real landscape but a picture of one of these things, the representation will seem likely to resemble the original all the more closely,
perhaps even quite exactly. In such a case there might still be some
imaginative or conceptual transference, but no technical transformation. To paint a representation of another painting does not
present the same technical obstacles associated with painting a
woman. The question of illusion or deceiving the eye does not arise
in the same way; for both the original and its representation belong
to the same class of object, and the replication is achieved by a technical procedure very much like that which produced the original.
The attempt to represent another representation created in the same
medium can be considered as an act of copying. In theory, copies
may appear quite indistinguishable from originals so long as the artist-copyist has mastered the craft or technical procedure which generated the original and will generate the copy. Nevertheless, a familiar objection can be raised-namely,
that perfect copies are never
made, at least not by human hands, because the stylistic identity of
the individual maker can never be entirely suppressed. If the author
of the original and the author of the copy are different people, original and copy will differ. Now, if it is agreed that one artist cannot
copy another, can one go so far as to say that an artist can never
succeed in copying himself, can never repeat his own artistic performance? This question should be deferred, since its context expands
considerably as my argument progresses.
Although it is often useful to indulge in regarding a given representation as if it were the real thing-or at least a re-presentation of
its object-and to act as if its appearance(s) were the only appearance(s) its model could display, the histories of academic disciplines
(fields of interpretation) indicate that Western culture does not regularly put such absolute trust in images, that the admonitions of Plato
have been heeded during the centuries and still are. The discipline
of art history is no more trusting than any other. I grant that many
art histories have been written as if their authors were unaware of
the ideological content that skews the images of the past. It may be,
however, that art historians have chosen to ignore such vectors of
signification despite the fact that (to a degree) they were conscious
336
of them. In other words, art historians have simplified matters by

viewing much of the art of the past as if from the inside, while simultaneously assuming that their inside informants were naive concerning their own process of representation. Whether deliberate or
unknowing, this duplicity works to the scholar's advantage; he becomes free to interpret pictures as veracious visual statements recording a historical past without being overtly committed to a theory
of representational resemblance of his own. And such an interpretive
course is not a hard act to follow; it facilitates either of two kinds of
creditable scholarly revision: finding the "content" of a work supposedly unknown even to its creator; demonstrating the "advanced"
state of the historian's own understanding of pictorial images. The
historian-interpreter establishes his authorityby revealing the hidden
things that his method initially colludes to conceal.
A more straightforward strategy might be to assume that only endemic naivete--not the naturalized or recaptured naivete of convenience-would
enable an artist to hold that a representation replicates all appearances of its model. Perhaps some comfort can be taken
in the fact that those who eventually write histories of the later twentieth century will have to acknowledge a certain sophistication, if not
among artists, at least on the part of theorists. E. H. Gombrich,
Nelson Goodman, and others have argued emphatically that representation does not depend on resemblance and, moreover, that resemblance itself may depend on representation. For example,
Goodman writes: "Representational customs, which govern realism,
also tend to govern resemblance. That a picture looks like nature
often means only that it looks the way nature is usually painted."3
Taking Goodman into account, I would define "realistic art" as an
art which has something creditable to say about the appearance and
structure of the world, an art which is authorizedwithin its culture to
make statements about "truth-to-nature." But how does this authorization in the field of artistic creation come about? Who has the authority? Is it better to regard the artist-creator as naive or as knowledgeable? Any answers will emerge only gradually, in fragmentary
form, and must involve a fusion of the concept of the "ideal" with
the concept of the "real."
Many critics and theorists of the nineteenth century were no more
naive than Gombrich or Goodman; they, too, understood that a realistic art, if desired, could not depend on a replication of appearances
(unless appearancewere to be given quite a sophisticated sense). Specifically, they held that the character of the maker is somehow reflected in any creative representation, and that artistic processes (both
REPRESENTATION,
337
materially and intellectually) are necessarily transformative or metaphorical. Yet within artistic circles, individuals acted much like today's
academic scholars, continually accusing one another of the fallacy of
advocating an extreme "objectivity," of suppressing the ideal for the
sake of the real. It may be that no one was truly guilty. Baudelaire
claimed that those he called "positivists" wished to render the world
as if the influence of the observer were null.4 Positivists such as Comte
or Taine, however, sound much more like the type Baudelaire would
call "idealists," at least when they are allowed to speak for themselves.
Comte, for example, asserted that "art is always an ideal representation of what exists."5 Perhaps the legislators of the French Academy
of Fine Arts may serve as representative of the most typical view on
this matter. In 1867 Charles Blanc, a major academic theorist, wrote
that "the ideal and the real have one and the same essence"; the artist
must transform the one into the other without losing the sense of his
origin in reality.6 Artistic creation necessarily involved a willful manipulation that one might think of as interpretation. Creation was not
an act of finding, a spontaneous expression of feeling; to create was
to make with an intellectual as well as a physical action.
In 1823 Quatremere de Quincy, an academician who was soon to
become closely associated with Ingres,7 had produced an elaborate
and distinguished example of this type of argument. He stressed the
active role of imagination as he opposed simple finding or discovery
(trouver)to invention (inventer): "What exists can be found [but] one
invents only what does not exist."8 Artistic invention or creation entailed representing "what exists as it could and ought to be"-in an
imperfect world, artistic activity would be transformative. Any representation limited by an existing reality would resemble reality too
closely; in its extreme, it would be identical to reality, a mere copy.
But an idealized realism, on the contrary, would resemble reality with
a necessary and welcome difference. This idealization would come
about quite naturally as the artist's own technical procedures effected
the transformation from what Quatremere called "reality" to what he
called (with sophistication) "appearance." In sum, for Quatremere an
art which might resemble (imperfect) reality perfectly would be an
inhuman art; for not only did proper technique transmute the model,
so did the mark of the individual artist. Ultimately, the artist's style
accounted for the difference between a made or created art-a nature transformed-and
the unanimated nature that one might consider as the environment in which a totally passive being would find
itself.9
Thus when theorists of the nineteenth century spoke of the ideal
to be derived from the real, this ideal carried a double signification:
338
it was both a general cultural ideal reflected through canonical artistic

procedures (conventions) and an ideal associated with the individual
who had formed it, a personal ideal. Given this complex sense of the
ideal, great artists were to be distinguished from lesser ones by the
degree to which their personal or particular ideal corresponded with
a universal or general ideal (a "perfection") that served to inspire
others. In a healthy and stable society-such as that, supposedly, of
the ancient Greeks-the great artist might appear as a very typical
personality, one who represented things as others saw them and who
would be readily recognizable as realist as well as idealist.'0 Such an
artist might seem simply to render, with an unusual facility, what he
saw; he would be no seer or visionary. In contrast, in a degenerate
or decadent society, the great artist might appear abnormal or excessively idiosyncratic, since his own ideal vision of the world would
diverge from the general perception of his culture. As if providing a
formulation to be applied in any conceivable creative or interpretive
situation, Charles Blanc stated bluntly that nature becomes for the
artist "what he wants it to be."" Consequently, in a society thought
to have gone awry, one might expect great art to appear among the
alienated, those whose wants or desires were deviant from the degenerate norm and whose (idealized) reality would seem only a
dream, fantasy, or hallucination to others. The familiar conflict between artist and society, "original" creation and interpretive convention, haunts these reflections on the representation of the real and
the ideal.12
Much has been said to dispel the myth of the innocent eye, the eye
that records external reality without interpretive comment, without
any factor of what I will now proceed to call "idealization." On this
matter one can consult both recent theorists such as Gombrich and
Goodman, and also those such as Ingres' colleague Quatremere de
Quincy and others of earlier periods. In this context of an awareness
of pictorial transformation and the conventional nature of picture
making, Ingres' Raphael and theFornarina (fig. 1) must raise a question
(one raised also by many similar images): Why, within this complex
representation, does the woman sketched in on the canvas on the
easel resemble as much as she does the presumably real woman
resting on the man's thigh? Is this a case where real and ideal cannot
easily be distinguished, perhaps because the model is already ideally
beautiful, already like a picture, like a work of art, in her symmetrical
features and fine contours? Or is Ingres attempting to illustrate the
reciprocal notion: that the man depicted in the picture is himself, as
a painter, a master of a realistic resemblance that approaches identity?
REPRESENTATION, COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE
339
Fig. 1. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Raphael and the Forrnarina.1814. Courtesy of

the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Grenville L. Winthrop Bequest.
Or is the resemblance there because Ingres can paint in one manner

only-nature is for him (only) "what he wants it to be"-and therefore he must paint both the image of the real model and the image
of the painted model in the same style?13
In Raphael and the Fornarina two factors may account for the close
visual or stylistic identity between Ingres' image of the painted woman
and his image of the real woman. First-as Goodman's argument
about prevailing modes of representation suggests14-a body of conventions for realistic depiction is serving to determine resemblance.
340
Although Ingres' own manner is personalized (and hence, at least in

a nineteenth-century sense, idealized), his representation exhibits the
linear clarity, degree of modeling and detail, and perspectival coherence which combine to evoke a reliable image of tangible objects
disposed in space. This is not the only realist mode, but an acceptable
one. One assumes in consequence that the artist whom Ingres represents is concerned to make a relatively realistic image of his model;
for when Ingres renders both painted model and real model in a
similar manner, he is asserting that the artist whom he represents
succeeds at realistic representation. To put it another way: Ingres
asserts that the real world conforms to the personal vision of this
artist, that this painter somehow understands the world, interprets it
in a normative manner-his
vision is true and can serve in turn as
the model for any painter for whom "truth" has become problematic
or simply obscure.
The second factor which leads to such a close identity between the
represented model and the real model in Ingres' painting is more a
matter of art history. Ingres not only represents a subject in the external world (an artist engaged in a certain activity), he also represents-or perhaps exemplifies-this
artist's own style. The artist in
can
be
identified:
he
is Raphael.15 The model is
Ingres' painting
known
as
La
Fornarina, the baker's daughter. Her
Raphael's mistress,
in
appearance
Ingres' painting derives from another painting, Raown
phael's
portrait of La Fornarina.16 Since the actual model for
Ingres' representation is not a real woman but seems to be a painting
of a woman, the issue of copying should now be reconsidered. Although Ingres must set his own representation of the Raphael
painting into perspective within his picture of Raphael's studio, he is
indeed representing another representation, painting another
painting; it would seem then that a high degree of resemblance might
be achieved.
seen as RaFurthermore, the appearance of the model-now
of
La
conforms
to
the manner
phael's painting
Fornarina-already
of visualization associated with the artist-Ingres-who
represents
this model. The mediating factor of Raphael's style (his vision) determines the relationship between what might be called the style of
the model or subject matter and that of the artist: the source image
for the figure of La Fornarina exemplifies not Ingres' style but Raphael's, at least as Ingres understood it. Ingres, however, emulated
and adopted many aspects of Raphael's manner as his own. He was
to an extent Raphael's copyist. Consequently, only minimal imaginative or conceptual transference is required for Ingres to render a
picture of Raphael in his studio which includes a painting in Raphael's
REPRESENTATION,
341
own style.17 This style is not alien to Ingres; it is familiar to him. As

Ingres appropriates Raphael's style, the two artists become members
of the same society; and the passage from model (Raphael) to representation (Ingres) will demand neither major technical transformation nor appreciable imaginative transference.
When all these factors are taken into account, some additional conclusions become evident. Ingres' emulation of Raphael renders the
resemblance of La Fornarina to her image on the easel unproblematic; and any other model depicted by Ingres might also resemble
La Fornarina because Ingres' vision registers that of Raphael-the
two views become quite congruent. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically,
Ingres can picture La Fornarina both in terms of realism and in terms
of his personal idealized style, despite the fact that the original model
on which he bases his copy is neither a real woman nor the artist's
invention but a representation by another painter, by Raphael.
Ingres' ability to absorb Raphael made his personal style comprehensible to most of his contemporaries even though the charge of idiosyncrasy was leveled at him throughout his career; and hence, as
many of his admirers insisted, his style was both "realistic" and normative.18 In other words, critics praised Ingres for both his realism
and his idealism. As a result he was defined as an exemplary "academic" artist, one whose style could represent the world as it was
known and would be known-such
representation both depicted a
world iconically and symbolized that world all at a stroke. Ingres'
academic art seemed in accord with rules and principles, seemed part
of a tradition, and could generate its own school. Indeed, others
might join the tradition of Ingres as they succeeded in imitating him,
just as he succeeded in imitating Raphael. But the establishment of
such normative excellence was not without its drawbacks. One critic,
presenting an argument against this academic or textbook aspect of
Ingres' art, noted that "every one of Ingres' pupils is capable of simulating any work whatever of his professor to the point of our
mistaking it for the original."19 From this point of view, academic art
might seem to generate a sequence of perfect copies; and the factor
of difference between the model and its representation (which all
academics suggested must be present in a work of art) strangely disappears from the most typical or representative of academic works.
Needless to say, Ingres did not inaugurate the tradition that became his own; he was not the first academic. His painting, rendered
in a style shared to a great extent with Raphael, could appear both
realistic (individual) and idealized (in the sense now of universal),
since it accorded well with standards of academic art already established. The argument may seem to have become suspiciously circular
342
or even vertiginous; for the "real" is not only the product of individual vision but a reality for all to behold, a universal source to which
one returns; and the "ideal" (as I have stated) is bothparticularizedand
generalized.Familiar questions arise. Does one become realistic on the
strength of one's personal observations, or can reality be discovered
only with the aid of an artistic tradition of (idealized) representations?
Need an academy or pantheon of great artists exist before one can
represent the real, or does every great artist re-form the academy?
For the academics, all answers lie in art itself: the path to immediate
truth, to original nature, leads through the conventions and styles of
art. The academic could offer a certain social and historical justification for his reliance on the vision incorporated in antecedent representations. If modern society had become degenerate (as so many
nineteenth-century theorists claimed), original truths might be revealed only through an identification with those for whom such original or "true" reality was congruent with (personal) artistic style; this
was certainly the case with the Greeks, and also, according to many,
with Raphael. To attain the vision of the Greeks or of Raphael, one
would appropriate their manner of representation; as Ingres knew,
the principle of congruence put no limit on the number of successive
overlapping layers that a culture might acquire. By necessity the
its standardizationteaching of proper artistic technique-indeed,
would become the academic concern, simply because technique
served as the means of appropriation.20 Ingres himself wrote of instruction for students in such a way that any conflict between pupil and master would be effaced from the palimpsest of academic
"imitation":
I send you [to the Louvre] because you will learn from the ancient works to
see nature, because they are themselves nature: you must live off them,
consume them.... Do you think that in directing you to copy them, I would
make you copyists?No, I want you to partakeof the sap of the plant.
Address yourselves, then, to the masters, speak with them; they will reply
to you, because they are still living. It is they who will instructyou; I myself
am only their assistant[leurrepetiteur-the one who repeatsthe doctrine].
There is no misgiving in copying the ancients. ... [Their works] become
your own when you know how to use them: Raphael, in imitatingendlessly,
was alwayshimself.21
Along with other "modern" artists, Ingres was put at a certain disadvantage by the date of his birth (1780). He inherited the teaching
of David, said to have degenerated into dry convention and pedantry,
a failed academicism. At the same time he suffered from the temptation of a Romantic innovation which professed sincerity but which,
REPRESENTATION,
343
according to Ingres' supporters, offered no more than novelty for

novelty's sake. Ingres' appreciative critics noted the difficulty of his
historical moment and his successful extrication from it: the painter
"steered the middle course between the icy idealism of the false
classicists and the brutal realism of the false innovators [the
Romantics].S"22
In general, critics made the following claims in reaching a positive

assessment of Ingres' art: (1) Ingres returned to the source in nature
in order to "particularize" and "individualize" his images; (2) he returned to the source in classical art (the Greeks, Raphael) in order to
repeata proper formulation; and (3) he understood that the real and
the ideal converge in great art.23 Any stylistic or figurative element
which could not readily be related to the conventions of traditional
art, any detail not to be seen in other paintings save those of the same
master (unusual features of a human figure, noncanonical proportion, unusual color, etc.), signified a "realism"-at least within the context of the medium of painting, for academics patently construed
meaning in terms of a medium. The presence of forms, motifs, proportional or compositional relationships, and so forth, which were
proper to the tradition signified "idealism." The "ideal" and the "real"
coexisted when the particularities characterizing the artist's vision
(and signifying immersion in nature, personal experience, and a
unique point of view) figured in a style which seemed in accord with
artistic principles configured in the works of past masters. The principles of ideal representation were not at all mysterious to those initiated into academic practice; they included such notions as compositional unity and the hierarchical organization of elements. Like
proper syntax and good diction, they gave to works of visual art an
authoritative tone. In a curious way, Ingres' Raphael and the Fornarina
seems to satisfy the demand for the confluence of the real and the
ideal automatically; for it refers to the details of the everyday life and
visions of its dual subject (the life of Raphael and the life of Ingresboth painters of the human figure) and patently conceives that subject
only through representations belonging to the academic tradition.
The final conclusion with regard to Raphael and the Fornarina takes
a twofold, complementary form. (1) The resemblance between the
depicted model and the depicted painting of the model can be considered a factor of Ingres' academicism. He seems to manipulate objects of the external world within his personalized artistic representation without doing violence to the world that his viewers and critical
interpreters, familiar with a language of representations, would
imagine to lie before themselves. The academic enlarges the communal property of the "real" by way of making representations in an
344
unproblematic or "transparent" style. (2) Ingres must be very selfconscious about the nature of representation and about the external
characteristics of artistic styles; he studies the techniques of others;
he is by no means a naive artist.
If I were to say the same of Matisse as of Ingres, I would do so
only at the risk of seeing his art as an attempt at public deception. I
can argue that Ingres was not naive (although he may have represented the naive) and feel that he would be pleased that I had reached
this conclusion. Academic theorists such as Charles Blanc and Quatremere de Quincy appreciated the fact that this artist was a selfconscious maker who set about to create certain effects and succeeded
in achieving his ends. Creation and interpretation follow the same
logic in academic works. Matisse's art, in contrast, seems to suggest
no advance planning. Matisse did not make a point of manipulating
references to history, to the styles of other artists, or to the ironies of
artistic practice. He may have done these things, but he could not
easily admit to this type of reference. He would prefer that his art be
discussed in terms of simple, immediate expression.
In his own theoretical statements, Matisse claimed that his technical
procedure could not be preconceived; it must follow, or even flow
from, or along with, his feeling. For this reason he stated that he
could not imagine having done his early works in any different
manner. He did not wish to imply that these works were technically
perfect, but only that they had succeeded in expressing his immediate
state of being at a given time, and as such could not be tampered
with. Matisse would contend that his art is autobiography: as he lives
out his life, his art seems to evolve, not because it must improve or
progress, but because it must simply change as he himself changes.
Technique cannot be learned in an academy and then applied; it must
develop along with the expression which constitutes the art. Techniques of expression become known only in acts of expression.24
If Matisse depicts a reality, it is not of the same sort as Ingres'. Yet
to consider Matisse's representation as idealization would now be misleading, since I have associated idealization with the academic loss of
innocence, the willful act of interpretation. The categories "real" and
"ideal" do not seem germane to a discussion of Matisse's style, unless
perhaps one views but one side of the double-faced coin of idealism,
the side engraved by the unique style that identifies the artist. Indeed,
the terms ideal and idealize were often used during the later nineteenth century to refer primarily to personal stylistic expression. This
usage reflects a shift in the dominant conception of the artistic process: external reference yields to internal expression; mediated
REPRESENTATION,
345
making yields to immediate finding. To put it another way-the inherent intertextuality of artistic representation is suppressed, and a
most extreme privileging of self-generated originality is encouraged.
Matisse's The Painter and His Model (fig. 2) depicts an artist along
with both his model and her representation. The model and the
painting of the model exhibit a remarkable resemblance. They share
the same style despite the fact that one should be seen as a volumetric
body and the other as a flat rendering. Any analogy with Ingres'
Raphael and the Fornarina must end here, however, for one cannot
conclude that some sense of reality has been reinforced; the figures
look like paintings but not also like (conventional representations of)
real things. The model and her representation are faceless abstractions, as is the depicted painter. Matisse's distinct style marks the
painting on the easel, but if the depicted painter is supposed to be
Matisse himself, this identification cannot be made-Matisse should
have a beard and wear spectacles. In sum, this painting of an artist
in his studio offers very little specific information about appearances.
Instead it displays multiple (indexical) references back to the originating artist-not to the generic artist represented in the studio but
to Matisse himself, with whom one identifies the idiosyncratic style in
which all the elements of the painting are rendered. The entire
painting becomes a (symbolic) reference to the artist's self-expression.
With some irony, this painting might be called Matisse's self-portrait.
The same would not hold in the case of Ingres' painting (at least not
in the same way); for although it exhibits Ingres' style, it both directly
and indirectly portrays Raphael; its origin is patently in Raphael as
well as in Ingres. And its scope is broader still-it is part of a communal academic tradition. Raphael and the Fornarina may represent
Ingres' vision and Raphael's vision, but it also signifies (external)
"reality."
Proceeding along this line of reasoning in reverse, one might refer
to all of Matisse's paintings in their narrowness as self-portraits, traces
of the "self," self-expressions, since all exhibit pronounced stylistic
idiosyncrasy; apparently, preexisting academic principles cannot account for the moves Matisse's brush will make. One's own sense of
the real seems to diverge from Matisse's personal ideal, with the result
that his vision cannot be regarded as a source of general knowledge.
The disquieting alternative is to assume that one's cultural norm requires some corrective reorientation. Yet when he paints, just as when
he theorizes, Matisse is not alone: he can be recognized as a member
of a generation of modernists either by the style of his imagery or by
the style of his argument. Is there then some convention in Matisse's
self-expression? Is there a specific technique which generates his pro-
346

II
C~IIIYr(()sPss3111PUa
i
:I
i1
r
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Fig. 2. Henri Matisse. Le Peintre et son modele. 1917. Musee Nationale d'Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou. ARCH. PHOT/VAGA, New York/SPADEM.
nounced (and desired) originality? To state the question another way:

Could Matisse's manner be taught in an academy? Is it regular
enough to be imitated, even to the point of being copied?
REPRESENTATION,
347
To return to the related, more general form of the query: Can

copies be made, either by others or by the artist himself? Perhaps
not, if an ever-present factor of self-expression insures originality and
eliminates any possibility of imitation. But does the act of imitationresult
in a copy(perfect or otherwise)? Phrased in this manner, the question
may seem tautological; for a distinction between imitating and
copying is not usually made today.25 This lexical practice is the legacy
of critics of the nineteenth century, who may have been the first to
conflate the two notions habitually. For some theorists of that period,
however, the division was central; and they sought to remove any
potential for confusion. Ingres' admirer Quatrem&re de Quincy offered the necessary bifurcating definition: "To imitate in the fine arts,
is to produce the resemblance of a thing, but in another thing which
becomes the image of it.... [The exact identity of works of mechanical reproduction] is precisely that at which the imitation of the fine
arts ought not to aim." In other words, according to Quatremere,
imitations should aim at being different from, not identical to, their
originals. This distinguishes the imitation from the copy, the artistic
representation from the mechanistic reproduction.26
One question must lead to another: What accounts for such artistic
resemblance with a difference, the difference of "imitation," which
curiously seems not to have been clearly represented in Ingres' and
Matisse's paintings of the act of artistic representation? As I have
indicated, the difference, according to Quatremere and others, derives from either technical transformation or stylistic idiosyncrasy,
from either the generality of convention or the particularity of personal vision. With regard to the art of Ingres, which seems to be part
of an academic tradition in that it resembles works of other masters,
it can be assumed that technical convention would account for the
major part of any visible difference between painting and model.
Furthermore, to consider a particular case, if Ingres represents Raphael and Raphael's art, his picture must differ from the appearance
of Raphael's style. That style, however, is not only the life model for
Ingres; it presents itself in conventional form and serves also as his
art model, his guide to technical procedure. The difference between
Ingres and Raphael becomes relatively slight because Ingres' model
(Raphael) offers him both the end and the means of his imitation.
In contrast, one sees a great difference between, on the one hand,
Matisse's dual image of a woman and her representation and, on the
other hand, Ingres' normative depiction of a similar dual subject.
Matisse's deviance from the Raphael-Ingres norm indicates a degree
of individualization which signifies in turn that personal vision has
looked beyond "realism" into the "self." As if the realities of personal
348
self and social world could not coincide, Matisse's image becomes one
of self-expression. This distinction between individualized expression
(Matisse) and conventionalized representation (Ingres) parallels Quatremere's opposition of Romantic art to classic art. According to Quatremere, the Romantic foolishly rejects the traditional classical ideal
conveyed by academic principles. While the classical artist uses a
system or body of conventions that others can profitably share, the
Romantic forges ahead as if without any predecessors and in his extreme irregularity remains inimitable, unsuited to serve as a model
for any followers. Quatremere concludes that the art of the Romantic
is overly particularized, too closely identified with one and only one
vision; it cannot enrich culture. Using his terms pejoratively, he notes
that one of the forms that Romanticism takes is an excessive "realism,"
a mindless copying of the model in nature which must draw the real
apart from any generalized ideal.27
A large group of artists and theorists-who can be identified with
the nineteenth-century movements known as Romanticism, realism,
and impressionism, and even with various arts of expressionism in
the twentieth century-turn
Quatremere's argument around. They
are not interested in a representation like that of Ingres, one both
real and ideal; their interest lies instead in the act of representation.
A master's fixed image will not serve them as a cultural model, even
if regarded as the result of mimesis in the Aristotelian sense, an imitation of an action. Instead, artistic activity itself becomes an epistemological norm. The imitation of the artist's way of seeing serves as
the means to truth-not what he sees or represents, but how he sees.
In other words, the mimetic act-as expression-becomes
more significant than any given mimetic representation.
In order to make this point, some critics of the mid-nineteenth
century tended to give to the term copya positive sense that had been
reserved previously for the term imitation. They wanted to stress the
value of a naive act of seeing which might result in the copying of an
aspect of nature. This may be the origin of the modern version of
the "myth of the innocent eye."28 Indeed, the naive eye which copies
is presumed innocent of tradition, convention, and even intention.
But an innocent copydoes not becomean exact replica-the realism of the
naive representation, antiacademic in its avoidance of conventional
technique, can be no more definitive than the realism of Ingres' academic rendering. For the Romantic, the realist, or the impressionist,
the copy of nature will be characterized all the more obviously by the
personal expressive style of the artist. This distinction between academic imitation and antiacademic copying (as understood during the
nineteenth century) can now be summarized. The visible difference
REPRESENTATION,
349
between an "imitation" of the model and the real model will be due
primarily to technical convention and secondarily to individual style;
academic works will resemble one another because the controlled or
made element of convention dominates the uncontrolled or found
element of personal style. In contrast, the difference between a
"copy" of the model and the real model will be due primarily to
individual style and only secondarily to technical convention; in fact,
technical convention should be suppressed in this "innocent" art of
copying. (This distinction between the modes of imitation and
copying holds without the presumption that the real model ever appears the same to any two viewers or at any two moments.)
Of course, for those who regard the "innocent eye" as a myth,
technical convention cannot be suppressed, as perhaps some "copyists" wished it could-but one can remove referencesto convention's
efficacy. The art of Matisse, as well as that of Manet and Cezanne
and many others before them, displays conventional signs that indicate a lack of convention. Ultimately, such signs reveal a feigned
innocence, a pretense to copy and avoid imitation; they are the
products of a technique to signify originality in the form of extreme
self-expression.
A notion as aberrant as a copying that strays from its model demands the stabilizing orthodoxy of historical documentation. This
sense of "copying" appears in statements concerning the seventeenthcentury painter Poussin, made by a number of French critics of the
nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. These critics wanted to
divorce the French master from any bond of dependence to the art
of Raphael and other Italian classicists. Poussin's own classicism was
to be inherently French, a product of the painter's direct contact with
nature and with those ancient sources which were themselves intimately bound to nature and as if without foreign nationality. All
clouded filters were to be removed from the clear line of his sight,
including that interposed by a degenerative academic technique.29
When the reevaluation of Poussin went to an extreme, this academic
master became an example of an antiacademic originality rooted in
a personal experience of nature. In 1867 the painter and theorist
Thomas Couture wrote: "It is generally believed that [Poussin] interprets, creates a style that recalls nature somewhat, but which is nevertheless conventional. No, he copies."30 Copying was thus conceived
as a kind of artistic creation involving no interpretation, nothing of
the transformation that a preconceived artistic method would entail.
Although a "perfect" copy might represent its original with no transformation whatever, Couture and others located the copy's originality
in the inconstancy of human sensation; hence copying, while repli-
350
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
cative, escaped the danger of standardization. The tradition of the

copyist would be that of similar acts of copying, not similar pictorial
styles of copy. The copy did not necessarily afford a greater resemblance to the model in common view. It performed instead the function that Quatremere had assigned to "imitation"-to depict "appearance" rather than "reality." And whatever the relationship of
representation to model might be, copying could not be defined in
terms of some repetitive conventional transformation. Technical convention would produce a leveling of differences; copying would not.
As if to deny his own activity as a teacher of standardized method,
Couture put great emphasis on the relatively passive discovery of a
"self," a discovery inherent in the essential automatism of the process
of representation-no
model existed independently of a human act
of seeing; every true vision (and copy) must be personal.31 In contrast,
academic theorists (although they, too, believed in the particularity
of vision) established the fiction of the "perfect" copy which standardizes in every banal detail the external appearance of the (present
but undesirable) model; they claimed that to a great degree the science of photography had realized such mechanistic copies. And so
when Charles Blanc discussed Poussin (at the same time that Couture
did), he stressed the painter's willful transformation of his model in
nature. The end result of Poussin's art for both Couture and Blanc
becomes "what the artist wants it to be."
may be the same-nature
But Blanc argued against the passive copying of nature's effects and
advocated instead a preconceived artistic choice: "True, it is the sun
that illuminates the painter's canvas; but it is the painter himself who
illuminates his picture. In representing at will the effects of light and
shadow he has chosen, he makes the light-ray of his intellect fall
there."32 Blanc's artist makeswhat he wants; Couture's artistfinds it.
Critics interpret artists, and artists can return the compliment by
interpreting the critic-as-model. When artist and critic both advocate
copying of the passive sort, the resultant interpretations paradoxically
draw "creation" away from "interpretation" itself-the created images become more expressive than referential. To be specific, in 1867
Emile Zola published a laudatory essay on Manet, and in turn the
artist painted the critic's portrait early in 1868 (fig. 3). Subsequently,
Zola described the creation of this portrait as an act of copying, and
he repeatedly noted that Manet's style was characterized by a natural
and unreflective idiosyncrasy; the painter did not employ the usual
conventional devices for rendering nature and for organizing pictorial composition. All of this led not so much to a more objective view
of nature, one potentially corresponding to that of others,33 but to
Fig. 3.
351
Edouard Manet. Portrait d'EmileZola. 1868. Louvre, Galerie du Jeu de Paume.
an image of Manet himself, what might be titled, as in the case of

Matisse, the artist's self-portrait. The Portrait of Zola, in other words,
becomes Manet's self-expression, his own vision and his own portrait.
According to Zola, Manet professed a kind of visual innocence;
supposedly he admitted to his critic: "I can do nothing without nature. I do not know how to invent. As long as I wanted to paint
according to the instruction I had received, I produced nothing of
352
merit."34 And, as Zola observed Manet at work on his portrait, he

stressed the same passive absorption in nature which Couture had
claimed for Poussin: "[Manet] had forgotten me, he no longer knew
that I was there, he was copying me (il me copiait) as he would have
copied any human animal whatever, with an attentiveness, an artistic
awareness that I have never seen elsewhere."35 The painter seems to
concentrate on the surface appearance. He is copying a portrait. Traditionally, portraits had indeed been called "copies" and had been
associated with a direct or "realistic" representation. But there is more
significance to Zola's choice of the term copy in his description: Manet's copying characterizes his style or technical procedure and refers
to his act of vision, not the simple genre of his subject matter. What
would today be called the subject matter of this portrait is actually
quite complexly presented; Manet depicts Zola surrounded by identifiable works of visual art and literature, signs of the mutual interests
and the relationship of the two men. There are even references to
some sources of artistic inspiration, as there are in Ingres' Raphael
and the Fornarina. Zola, however, chose not to discuss such things. He
focused instead on Manet's attempt to remain apart from any technical tradition; the painter's representation does not belong to a sequence of canonical imitative works as does Ingres' portrait of Rato
phael. The only sources to which Manet can openly refer-or
which Zola, speaking for him, admits-are the model in nature and
that which cannot be separated from it, the artist's own vision, the
expression of his "self."
Can the "self" be revealed in, or even influence, a copy? Zola could
speak of copying and could reintroduce notions of interpretation,
translation, and expression and make these all seem compatible
terms. Copying would assure strict adherence to nature; it would
eliminate the influence of other artists by obviating access to the
works of art that might serve the more academic painter as models
for his own image of reality. Nevertheless, in the "copy" (as in Quatremere's competing sense of the "imitation") there would always be
a difference; this difference, this individual identity, was not to be
found in the appearance of things but in a man. Zola wrote: "The
artist places himself before nature ... he copies it in interpreting it
... he is no more or less realistic in his own eyes; in a word ... his
mission is to render objects for us as he sees them (tels qu'il les voit),
relying on such detail, creating anew.... A work, for me, is a man."36
Zola's description of artistic activity has two broad implications. First,
the modern artist becomes the absolute origin of his work to an extent
never openly advocated by academicians; had they done so, they
would have been undermining their academic function in society,
REPRESENTATION,
353
their transmission of technical and philosophical principles transcending individual artistic expression. Second, as a result of the identification of the quality of the work with the quality of the man, the
modern critic, to an unprecedented degree, must yield normative
standards of technical evaluation to some vague sense of artistic integrity or sincerity.37
The academic accepts life in a mediated world; he attains the naive
and the original only by way of acquired technique. Old classic masters serve as the authority behind new academic works, and conventional technical procedure assures that the presence of this authority
continues. In the return to original antique sources (accomplished, it
was said, by Raphael, Poussin, and Ingres), one regained the lost
originality of a naive vision that saw the real and the ideal as one and
the same. Nineteenth-century academic theorists gave instruction in
how to representnaivete, as if assuming that no artist, as a master of
technical mediation and metaphor, could have naivete.38
Antiacademics were no less conscious of naivete and sincerity as
postures; in moments of candidness, they spoke of these effects as
products of specific technical means. In 1868 Jules Antoine Castagnary advised "naturalist" painters (such as Manet) that they might
manipulate their compositions so long as the representation appeared
in the end to be a simple, direct copy; for anything that seemed an
unmediated copy would seem "sincere."39 The antiacademic art of
self-expression, with its cultivation of naivete or the "innocent eye,"
sought to project its originality, its independence from the past and
from a culture which offered inadequate behavioral models. The act
of naive vision, the process of knowing one's "self" in one's immediate
response to a surrounding environment, became the exemplary act
of the artist. His created image would not necessarily serve as a model
for others, as Raphael's had for Ingres, or as Ingres' had for his own
academic followers; rather, his way of seeing would be emulated. But
without reference to a tradition of representations, how could the
painter be recognized as an authority?
To attain the painter's aim of projecting original, independent vision required a (conventional) technique, a "technique of originality."
Zola once observed that Manet used no "composition" whatever, indicating that no one would discover the expected in this painter's
pictorial organization.40 In general, the technique of originality
showed itself in a manner that approached the normative, but from
the direction of opposition; it was revealed as the antithesis of conventional practice. If the academic appeared willful and deliberate,
the antiacademic appeared spontaneous; if the one was orderly and
354
Fig. 4. Claude Monet. The Beach at Sainte-Adresse.1867. The Metropolitan Museum

of Art, Bequest of William Church Osborn, 1951.
systematic, the other seemed haphazard; if the one seemed to make,

the other seemed to find.
The technique of originality can be described with great detail, but
I will confine my remarks to three observations. (1) The systematic
character of academic technique depended on composition, the hierarchical ordering of discernible parts of an image into a unified
whole; the antithesis of this hierarchical unity was uniformity, a sameness as opposed to a difference.41 Such uniformity characterizes
paintings such as Monet's Beach at Sainte-Adresse of 1867 (fig. 4),
dating from the earliest years of the impressionist movement, and
Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoireof around 1900 (fig. 5), produced toward the end of that movement. These works exhibit an unprecedented unity of effect, which approaches a uniformity of color and
illumination. This is perhaps evident only when one understands that
in these paintings color (the quality of hue) performs in the place
normally assigned to chiaroscuro (the quality of light and dark)-and
this color is, so to speak, an inadequate substitute for chiaroscuro; it
cannot create the same illusion.42 Impressionist paintings of this type
seemed to lack the differentiated space (or perspective) traditionally
indicated by a progressive gradation of chiaroscuro values from high
355
Fig. 5. Paul Cezanne. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire.ca. 1900. The Cleveland Museum

of Art, Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.
contrast in the foreground to low contrast in the background. These

paintings displayed instead an atmospheric brightness that was also
a flatness, an undifferentiated expanse, a surface plane of sight. It
was as if an immediate and naive vision had been presented just as
seen, without any compositional (re)structuring. Such immediacy conveyed a sense of independence, sincerity, and self-expression.
(2) Academic artists followed a hierarchy of technical procedures
which ranged from those involving the most highly intellectualized
and orderly elements to the least orderly; they concerned themselves
first with the general composition, then with chiaroscuro, and lastly
with color and brushstroke.43 The antiacademic artists seem to have
reversed these priorities and relied primarily on color and brushstroke as expressive devices. These elements evoked speed of execution and, once again, the quality of immediate, naive vision.
(3) Additionally, the technique of originality called upon the artist
to avoid reference to any other artist, even one who seemed to have
developed a technique of originality himself. With the extreme concern for originality, the styles of various authoritative classic masters
were reinterpreted to appear naive rather than learned and self-con-
356
Fig. 6. Nicolas Poussin. St. John on Patmos. 1645-50.

of Chicago, A. A. Munger Collection.
Courtesy of The Art Institute
scious. So when Cezanne's admirers described him, around 1900, as

the new Poussin, they did not intend to suggest that his work had
been influenced by some study of the style of this master of the
classical tradition. Instead, they saw Cezanne as rediscovering in his
own naive manner universal truths evident also in Poussin's classic
art. Cezanne, too, became a classic, and an original one-he drew his
classicism forth from his "self"; his classicism, according to his admirers, was a form of self-expression. Somewhat later, when the
British critic Roger Fry noted striking similarities between Cezanne's
style and Poussin's (fig. 6), he added without hesitation that Cezanne
must have been led to this manner of representation unknowingly,
even unconsciously.44 Cezanne's critics might be willing to say that he
sought to copy nature, but never that he had imitated another artist.
The authority he derived from Poussin did not inhere in the conventions of Poussin's art; rather, Cezanne was said to reiterate Poussin's mode of representation-he
drew only from a very special kind
of model, an "original" source. In his case the source was not Poussin
or any classical art, but nature itself, experienced directly; indeed, his
source was experience, "sensation."
REPRESENTATION,
357
The various strands of my exposition of the early modernist discourses of the real and the ideal, the naive and the knowledgeable,the
original and the copy, and the found and the made have been intertwined; yet a certain singularity of interpretive direction has been
indicated in the weave: in each case, (I have allowed) the opposing
concepts (to) exhibit a tendency to converge. It is only the collective
effort of the parties to the general discourse (the performing theorists, critics, and artists) which forces an interpretive wedge between
these polarities and pushes them back apart. Artistic discourse prevents these antithetical couples from reaching any final conceptual
union, as if in fear of the breed of perfect beings that might result
(perhaps bringing an end to the discourse). Despite the attractive pull
of perfect synthesis, each pair remains as separable elements available
to represent the differences by which both artistic meanings and critical stances become determinable. For example, even though the
modern artist's "naivete" is normally quite self-conscious, artistic discourse has found it useful (even self-sustaining) to label some artists
genuinely naive and others knowledgeable or academic; and this distinction continues to generate polemical debate.
A similarity-as opposed to either an extreme opposition or an
absolute sameness-is
a likeness not strong enough to avoid being
also a kind of difference. When a modern master (Cezanne) is seen
to resemble a predecessor (Poussin), the perceived relationship between the two figures can determine some meaning or artistic "content." Deciding whether this similarity constitutes more sameness or
difference can be quite problematic for those who study (or "appreciate") modern art. Given my own theoretical construction, I would
be inclined to argue that Roger Fry created (made) in his interpretive
commentary whatever resemblance he discerned in the styles of
Poussin and Cezanne; but perhaps he merely discovered (found) this
resemblance. Whichever the case may be, as a modern critic Fry had
some subsequent explaining to do-he
invented a Cezanne who
created his Poussinesque compositions "unconsciously."
Just as Fry and other critics of his time were in the habit of noting
stylistic similarities, so, on the basis of resemblance, and for the purpose of defining meaning, the modern art historian identifies pictorial and literary sources for the works of art which seem modeled
after them. But just as Fry resisted charging his hero Cezanne with
any lack of originality (despite the apparent link between his art and
that of others-a similarity, even a sameness), so the academic discipline of art history schizophrenically elevates an artist to the status
of master when it discovers in his work some core of innovative or
difference. "Sources" or pictorial referidiosyncratic originality-a
358
ences (likenesses) are sought out to aid in the interpretation of paintings, but the ultimate value often lies in those aspects that seem original in the most radical sense-not
merely rediscovering original
truths but originating exclusively in the artist, in the self-expression
of unique difference. After having pursued all decipherable meaning,
the historian delights in a residue of incomprehensibility. To cite two
remarkable examples of such "critical" interpretation: Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbeis said to engage the past in an "unresolved" manner
yet is praised for being "intrinsicallyexpressive"; a painting by Kandinsky is regarded favorably as having "density and vitality, and a
radiant freshness of feeling that impresses us even though we are
uncertain what exactly the artist has expressed."45
Not all terms of modern (or modernist) criticism have exhibited
the tension that arises from continuous attraction and withdrawal:
creativityand originalityappear quite habitually and freely united. But
they do not couple in artistic discourse as equals; originality dominates to the detriment of creativity's factor of conscious making. In
other words, ultimate artistic meaning is conceived as original selfexpression, as something found rather than made. In his deceptively
straightforward manner, R. G. Collingwood once wrote that "expression is an activity of which there can be no technique"-the artist
finds his meaning only in the act of expressing it; it is new to artist
as well as to viewer.46 Under such a condition, critical evaluation
cannot master its own concept of originality; it cannot discriminate.
Any "found" expression is original, even if it has been found many
times before; for a find is not made (or composed) from antecedent
elements; it appears spontaneously, immediately. An emphasis on the
presentation of an originality that is found rather than made can lead
to an innocence of a second order-not the innocence of the eye but
of the artistic act. Lacking technique, the artist becomes a child in
society, naive and untutored in the academy. A knowledgeable maker
must bear responsibility for his creation; but a finder, like a child, is
always innocent.
Yet the child acquires language (an especially important issue for
Collingwood) and becomes an adult member of society. The modern
critical discourse distinguishes between the use of language as discovery of the "self" and the use of language as manipulation of
others: the one is "art" (finding expression); the other, "craft"
(making reference, with rhetoric).47 Common sense suggests the validity of E. H. Gombrich's view of the limited power of craft or skill:
"Skill consists in the most rapid and subtle interaction between impulse and guidance, but not even the most skillful artist should claim
to be able to plan a single stroke with the pen in all its details."48 Yet
a question arises: Might the most skillful artist, whose craft extends
REPRESENTATION,
359
beyond the reach of all others, appear justified in claiming full control? His claim could be challenged only by those willing to invoke a
theory sanctioned by an ideology of (found) originality. In such an
evaluative face-off, relative mastery would suffice; an artist's skill
need only surpass that of others. Picasso, proud and arrogant, spoke
of the artist's need to "know the manner whereby to convince others
of the truthfulness of his lies."49 Despite his personal liberation from
academic technique, Picasso's authority may rest (ironically) in the
excellence of his craft, not in his sincerity. I would conclude that a
masterful ability to makedistinguishes artistic representation from less
authoritative, less convincing configurations. As a result, artistic mastery is not absolute but competitive, and can be challenged more
effectively by the "craftsman" than by the theorist. Of course, modern
artists often challenge themselves; they reject their own previous
styles as if to prove that their originality not only lives but grows.
To return finally to the question already asked twice: Can the artist
copy his own art? Is his technical skill sufficient for the repetition of
his own (perfected) performance? The ideology of originality replies
in the negative: it disassociates art and repetition. Certainly, Matisse,
Monet, Cezanne, and other modern painters of originality would
have bristled at the thought; their living art of self-expression demanded continual change. But if they had valued the made more
than the found and had divorced the two concepts that married most
easily of all-creativity and originality-they might have entertained
the notion of an art in which a success or a perfection once achieved
could be attained repeatedly by means of the technique-not
the
had
which
it
been
originality-from
generated.
In fact, the great modern artists did repeat their successes. Cezanne
serves again as an obvious example: although the inherited critical
tradition values his art for its incompletion, its sense of artistic search,
one is told that this painter created many "masterpieces." Perhaps
Cezanne, despite his own disclaimers, was able to produce multiple
valid examples of his art simply because he possessed a valid artistic
his case, a "technique of originality." He may indeed
technique-in
have struggled to eliminate technical mediation. But if the focus of
criticism is shifted away from internal expression toward external
reference (a reference more symbolic than iconic), the meaning of
Cezanne's paintings need not be sought in an unveiling of his hidden
"self"; meaning can be seen right on the surface of his canvases. The
artist will succeed merely by representingoriginality.50
UNIVERSITY
OF NORTH CAROLINA
AT CHAPEL HILL
360
NOTES
1 I concentrate on the relation of depicted model to depicted representation to the
exclusion of related fields of meaning to which attention might be directed: for example, views within views-the representation of windows, mirrors, paintings, and so
forth.
2 Alternatively, if the model were considered first as an object of desire or appropriation rather than as a thing observed, its specific identity as a woman would raise
numerous issues of psychological and sociological import. With regard to Ingres' wellknown painting, many of the matters of interest which I neglect have been touched
on by others (but not to my knowledge discussed exhaustively). See especially Eldon
N. Van Liere, "Ingres' 'Raphael and the Fornarina': Reverence and Testimony," Arts,
56 (Dec. 1981), 108-15.
3 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1976), p. 39. See also pp. 31-33.
Cf. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton, 1969), pp. 87, 296-300, 305, 324, 328.
4 Charles Baudelaire, "Salon de 1859," tcrits sur l'art, ed. Yves Florenne (Paris, 1971),
II, 36-37.
5 Auguste Comte, Discours sur l'ensembledu positivisme(Paris, 1848), p. 276. Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
6 Charles Blanc, Grammairedes arts du dessin (1867; rpt. Paris, 1880), p. 21.
7 As an opponent of Romanticism, Quatremere took delight in Ingres' entry to the
Salon of 1824, Le Voeu de Louis XIII, a painting which paid direct tribute to Raphael's
style (to the point, for some critics, of plagiarism). Ingres' monumental work stood as
an example of the classical manner and implicitly condemned the Romantic desire for
novelty. Quatremere published a biography and critical appraisal of Raphael at the
same moment (Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Raphael [Paris, 1824]). From this time
on, Quatremere and Ingres were engaged in mutual admiration. On their relationship,
see Rene Schneider, Quatremerede Quincy et son interventiondans les arts (1788-1830)
(Paris, 1910), pp. 408-17.
8 Antoine Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy, Essai sur la nature, le but et les moyens
de l'imitation dans les beaux-arts (Paris, 1823), p. 178. Quatremere's discussion of the
active making in invention is prompted by a passage from Plautus. Unlike many of his
Renaissance predecessors, Quatremere considered imitation as an intellectual construction analogous to invention.
9 Quatremere de Quincy, Essai sur ... l'imitation, pp. 11-14, 23-24, 182, 189-90,
238.
10 For the view that the vision of the great artist would appear most typical or
"normal," see Hippolyte Taine's introduction to the second edition of his Essais de
critiqueet d'histoire(Paris, 1866). See also Gustave Planche, "L'Art grec et la sculpture
realiste," Revue des deux mondes, 2nd per., 5 (1 Oct. 1856), 533.
11 Blanc, Grammaire,p. 532.
12 On the definition of the "ideal," see Hippolyte Taine, Philosophie de l'art (186569; rpt. Paris, 1921), II, 258; and Richard Shiff, "The End of Impressionism: A Study
in Theories of Artistic Expression," Art Quarterly,NS 1 (Autumn 1978), 365-74. Taine
strove to relate an artist's work to its social and environmental context and stressed
the fact that an artist "n'est pas isole" (Philosophiede l'art, I, 3). In disputing Taine, the
symbolist Albert Aurier chose to call the great modern artists "les isoles," and discussed
Van Gogh as an alienated individual living in a hostile environment: "Les IsolesVincent Van Gogh" (1890-92), in Oeuvresposthumes(Paris, 1893), pp. 257-63.
13 The several versions of Raphael and the Fornarina provoked relatively little extended commentary from Ingres' early critics and biographers; usually this work was
REPRESEN'TATION,
COPYING,
AND
TECHNIQUE
361
mentioned only briefly, along with other historical genre scenes of the "troubadour"
type. Charles Blanc frankly admitted that Ingres' rendering of this subject did not
appeal to him. He saw it as an image of amorousness rather than of pictorial representation; as such, it was disappointingly "cold" and "formal," with the figures appearing to have been "posed ... to be seen" ("Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages," Gazette
des beaux-arts,23 [1 Sept. 1867], 194). Blanc might have been more comfortable with
his observations had he shifted the painting's field of meaning from emotional interaction to pictorial transformation. The two fields, of course, occupy some common
territory.
14 Goodman, pp. 34-39.
15 The image is derived from a work Ingres believed to be a Raphael self-portrait,
now known as Raphael's Portrait of Bindo Altoviti (National Gallery, Washington).
16 Raphael, La Fornarina (Galleria Nazionale, Rome). This painting is sometimes
attributed to Giulio Romano; see Cecil Gould, "Raphael versus Giulio Romano: the
swing back," Burlington Magazine, 124 (Aug. 1982), 484-85. One might imagine a
dispute between Ingres and Hippolyte Taine over the beauty of "La Fornarina," both
the painting and the real woman. Taine chose Raphael's La Fornarina as an example
of derivative lifelike portraiture in order to demonstrate that the Renaissance master,
in greater works, would idealize such banal reality. The portrait, according to Taine,
showed a woman with stooped shoulders, unattractive arms, and a dull expression; if
La Fornarina became the model for Raphael's acknowledged masterpiece, the Galatea,
she was depicted there "entirely transformed" (Philosophiede l'art, I, 43-44).
17 To be more precise, Ingres' painting represents two paintings by Raphael. The
background reveals Raphael's Madonna della Sedia (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), for which,
according to legend, La Fornarina had posed. It is generally regarded as an alternative
source for the appearance of La Fornarina in Ingres' painting.
18 See, e.g., Charles Blanc, "Du Style et de M. Ingres," Gazettedes beaux-arts, 14 (1
Jan. 1863), 13; E. Amaury-Duval, L'Atelierd'lngres (1878; rpt. Paris, 1924), p. 189.
19 Ernest Chesneau, Les Chefs d'cole (Paris, 1862), p. 269.
20 Academics commonly argued that the imitation of works of "original" genius
would not inhibit originality in any sense. They stressed the perfection of received
"original" ideas through a technical mastery of representation and discounted innovation as an indication of a willful and insincere individuation. See, e.g., E. J. Delecluze,
"Salon de 1827,"Journal des debats,2 Jan. 1828, p. 2; E. J. Delecluze, Les Beaux-artsdans
les deux mondesen 1855 (Paris, 1856), pp. 303-5; and Jacques Nicolas Paillot de Montabert, Traite completde la peinture (Paris, 1829-51), IV, 272. For David's views, see E. J.
Delecluze, Louis David, son ecole et son temps(1855; rpt. Paris, 1863), pp. 61-62.
21 From notes of ca. 1813-27, rpt. in Henri Delaborde, Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa
doctrine (Paris, 1870), pp. 139-40. See also Delaborde, pp. 116, 146-48; and Ingres
d'apresune correspondanceinedite, ed. Boyer d'Agen (Paris, 1909), pp. 91-92.
22 Charles Blanc, "Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages," Gazettedes beaux-arts,25 (1 Sept.
1868), 244.
23 See, e.g., Blanc, "Du Style et de M. Ingres," p. 23. Correspondingly, Ingres' detractors argued that he carried either his realism or his idealism to excess, or they
claimed that he failed to integrate the two; see, e.g., Theophile Silvestre, Histoire des
artistesvivants (Paris, 1856), pp. 32-33.
24 See Henri Matisse, "Notes d'un peintre" (1908), in tcrits et propos sur l'art, ed.
Dominique Fourcade (Paris, 1972), pp. 39-53.
25 See, e.g., Goodman, pp. 9-10, 31. Cf. entries for "Copy, To" and "Imitate, To"
in Jules Adeline, The Adeline Art Dictionary, ed. Hugo G. Beigel (1884; rpt. New York,
1966), where the terms are regarded as synonymous.
362
26 Quatremere de Quincy, Essai sur ... l'imitation, pp. 3, 7-8. This point and the
related problematics of artistic originality and the "classic" are discussed in greater
detail in my essay, "The Original, the Imitation, the Copy, and the Spontaneous
Classic," Yale French Studies, No. 66 (1984), pp. 27-54.
27 Antoine Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy, Essai sur l'ideal dans ses applications
pratiquesaux oeuvresde l'imitationpropre des arts du dessin (Paris, 1837), pp. 42-44; Essai
sur ... l'imitation,pp. 79-81. Cf. Delecluze, Les Beaux-arts dans les deux mondesen 1855,
p. 305.
28 At least as it developed in France. In England the notion of the innocent eye can
be associated with John Ruskin; see his Elements of Drawing (London, 1857), pp. 2728n.
29 Theophile Thore and Paul Mantz set this issue into clear relief around the middle
of the century. On the one hand, Thore argued that Poussin's French genius had been
corrupted by his dependency upon Italian stylistic conventions. On the other hand,
Mantz insisted that Poussin had avoided the problem of stylistic interpretation by
copying only the ancients, the "origins." Poussin thus absorbed classical style directly,
independent of mediating conventions. See Theophile Thore, "De l'Ecole francaise a
Rome," L'Artiste,4th ser., 11 (6 Feb. 1848), 216; and Paul Mantz, "Un Nouveau Livre
sur le Poussin," L'Artiste,NS 4 (23 May 1858), 41.
30 Thomas Couture, Methodeset entretiensd'atelier(Paris, 1867), p. 247. Couture contrasts Poussin to his follower Le Sueur, who renders the world "as it ought to be and
not as it is" (p. 250).
31 Thomas Couture, Paysage, entretiensd'atelier (Paris, 1869), pp. 51-54.
32 Blanc, Grammaire,pp. 20-21, 546.
33 Nevertheless, those who claimed that common people possessed a vision distorted
by convention also often claimed that the idiosyncratic forms of artistic representation
were closer to nature.
34 Emile Zola, "Mon Salon" (1868), in Mon Salon, Manet, Ecritssur l'art, ed. Antoinette
Ehrard (Paris, 1970), p. 142.
35 Zola, "Mon Salon," p. 141.
36 Emile Zola, "M. H. Taine, artiste" (1866), in Mes Haines (Paris, 1879), pp. 229,
225.
37 Cf. Richard Shiff, "Miscreation," Studies in Visual Communication,7 (Spring 1981),
57-71.
38 See, e.g., Jacques Nicolas Paillot de Montabert, Theorie du geste dans l'art de la
peinture (Paris, 1813), pp. 114-28.
39 Jules Antoine Castagnary, "Salon de 1868," in Salons (Paris, 1892), I, 291-92.
40 tmile Zola, "tdouard Manet" (1867), in Mon Salon, Manet, Ecrits sur l'art, p. 102.
41 See, e.g., Blanc, Grammaire,pp. 500, 555. During the nineteenth century the term
compositionusually referred to both the arrangement of depicted figures and the ormotifs, areas of light, color, and so
ganization of specifically visual elements-linear
forth.
42 Cf. Cezanne's letter to Pissarro, 2 July 1876, in Paul Cezanne, correspondance,ed.
John Rewald (Paris, 1937), p. 127; and Richard Shiff, "Seeing Cezanne," CriticalInquiry,
4 (Summer 1978), 798-807.
43 See, e.g., Jacques Nicolas Paillot de Montabert, L'Artistaire,livre des principales initiations aux beaux-arts(Paris, 1855), pp. 119-20.
44 Roger Fry, Cezanne, A Study of His Development(1927; rpt. New York, 1958), pp.
53-54.
45 James Ackerman, "On Judging Art without Absolutes," CriticalInquiry, 5 (Spring
1979), 459 (his emphasis); H. W. Janson, History of Art (1962; rpt. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J., 1977), p. 651.
REPRESENTATION,
363
46 R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938), pp. 110-11. On Collingwood's theory, perhaps the most sophisticated argument for art as expression, cf. Shiff,
"Miscreation," pp. 57-59.
47 From the modernist perspective I have been observing, the Lacanian critique of
language considers a third formulation: language as the manipulative vehicle of the
(generic) "Other." Under this condition, does one find oneself or make oneself? It
seems that one finds oneself-or
rather, one is found, is a foundling-in
language.
Although I have altered the terms, the question is suggested to me by Shoshana
Felman, "The Originality of Jacques Lacan," Poetics Today, 2 (1980/81), 45-57. Felman
concentrates on decentering the concept of the self so that one can no longer conceive
of one's own masteryof self-conscious discourse. Ironically, her conclusion accords with
the sense given to originality in theories of artistic finding (or self-expression): "Originality is what comes as a surprise: a surprise not only to the others, but also to the
self" (p. 56). Despite the power that discourse may exercise to form (and deform)
consciousness, is it not agreed that Lacan's own "mastery" of discourse (the Other's,
Freud's, his) was sufficient to have established a psychoanalytic technique and even an
academy? The "originality of a return" to "renew contact with . . . strangeness," and
perhaps even a "dialogic" originality (Felman's phrases), can characterize not only
Lacan's return to Freud but also Ingres' return to Raphael and to the Greeks. Such
formulations would serve to define artistic classicism if Freud's, Lacan's, Felman's Copernican revolution (again, Felman's image) were performed, that is, if the discourse
of artistic representation itself replaced the great artist as the center of classicism. I
am not certain that such has not always been the case, but Copernican revolutions are
like that-one cannot always see the difference, especially from inside.
48 Gombrich, p. 357.
49 Statement to Marius de Zayas, 1923, rpt. in Dore Ashton, Picasso on Art: A Selection
of Views (New York, 1977), p. 3 (emphasis added).
50 Research for this paper was supported by a grant from the University Research
Council, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Representation, Copying, and the Technique of Originality

Author(s): Richard Shiff

Representation, Copying, and the Technique

THE PRESENT MOMENT

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

second presentation bearing the full "presence" of the original. The

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

of them. In other words, art historians have simplified matters by

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

it was both a general cultural ideal reflected through canonical artistic

REPRESENTATION, COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

Fig. 1. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Raphael and the Forrnarina.1814. Courtesy of

Or is the resemblance there because Ingres can paint in one manner

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Although Ingres' own manner is personalized (and hence, at least in

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

own style.17 This style is not alien to Ingres; it is familiar to him. As

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

according to Ingres' supporters, offered no more than novelty for

In general, critics made the following claims in reaching a positive

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

nounced (and desired) originality? To state the question another way:

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

To return to the related, more general form of the query: Can

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

cative, escaped the danger of standardization. The tradition of the

REPRESENTATION, COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

Edouard Manet. Portrait d'EmileZola. 1868. Louvre, Galerie du Jeu de Paume.

an image of Manet himself, what might be titled, as in the case of

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

merit."34 And, as Zola observed Manet at work on his portrait, he

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Fig. 4. Claude Monet. The Beach at Sainte-Adresse.1867. The Metropolitan Museum

systematic, the other seemed haphazard; if the one seemed to make,

REPRESENTATION, COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

Fig. 5. Paul Cezanne. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire.ca. 1900. The Cleveland Museum

contrast in the foreground to low contrast in the background. These

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Fig. 6. Nicolas Poussin. St. John on Patmos. 1645-50.

Courtesy of The Art Institute

scious. So when Cezanne's admirers described him, around 1900, as

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

COPYING, AND TECHNIQUE

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