Sure. Relatedly, the Mona Lisa currently hanging in the Louvre isn’t the original… that only existed in the early 1500s. All we have now is the 500-year-old descendent of the original Mona Lisa, which is not the same, it is merely a descendent.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
This has nothing to do with biases, although some people might be confused about what they actually value.
(shrug) Fortunately for art collectors, human minds are such that they reliably ascribe more value to the 500-year-old descendent than to the original.
I’d rather have the early original—I’d like to see the colors Leonardo intended, though I suppose he was such a geek that he might have tweaked them to allow for some fading.
Paint or Pixel: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art has more than a little (and more than I read) about what collecting means when some art is wholly or partially digital. Some artists sell a copy of the process by which the art was created, and some make a copy in paint of the digital original.
Strange but true: making digital art is more physically wearing than using paintbrushes and pens and such.
Note: the book isn’t about illustration in general, it’s about fantasy and science fiction illustration in particular.
Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
Sure. Relatedly, the Mona Lisa currently hanging in the Louvre isn’t the original… that only existed in the early 1500s. All we have now is the 500-year-old descendent of the original Mona Lisa, which is not the same, it is merely a descendent.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
This has nothing to do with biases, although some people might be confused about what they actually value.
(shrug) Fortunately for art collectors, human minds are such that they reliably ascribe more value to the 500-year-old descendent than to the original.
I’d rather have the early original—I’d like to see the colors Leonardo intended, though I suppose he was such a geek that he might have tweaked them to allow for some fading.
Paint or Pixel: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art has more than a little (and more than I read) about what collecting means when some art is wholly or partially digital. Some artists sell a copy of the process by which the art was created, and some make a copy in paint of the digital original.
Strange but true: making digital art is more physically wearing than using paintbrushes and pens and such.
Note: the book isn’t about illustration in general, it’s about fantasy and science fiction illustration in particular.
Surely the original, if discovered to be still extant after all (and proved to really be the original), would be even more highly valued if we had it?
Can you expand a little on how you imagine this happening? I suspect we may be talking past one another.
Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation\_about\_Mona\_Lisa#Other\_versions (which is more than just speculation about the original)