Theorizing Imitation in the Visual Arts

The theory and practice of imitation has long been central to the construction of art and yet imitation is still frequently confused with copying. Theorizing Imitation in the Visual Arts challenges this prejudice by revealing the ubiquity of the practice across cultures and geographical borders.

• This fascinating collection of original essays has been compiled by a group of leading scholars
• Challenges the prejudice of imitation in art by bringing to bear a perspective that reveals the ubiquity of the practice of imitation across cultural and geographical borders
• Brings light to a broad range of areas, some of which have been little researched in the past

6 Notes on Contributors

8 Chapter 1 Why Imitation, and Why Global?
Paul Duro

30 Chapter 2 Post-Western Poetics: Postmodern Appropriation Art in Australia
Ian McLean

50 Chapter 3 Essentially the Same: Eduardo Costa’s Minimal Differences and Latin American Conceptualism
Patrick Greaney

68 Chapter 4 Like Father, Like Son: Bernini’s Filial Imitation of Michelangelo
Carolina Mangone

90 Chapter 5 Navajo Sandpainting in the Age of Cross-Cultural Replication
Janet Catherine Berlo

110 Chapter 6 Copying and Theory in Edo-Period Japan (1615-1868)
Kazuko Kameda-Madar

130 Chapter 7 Original Imitations for Sale: Dafen and Artistic Commodification
Vivian Li

146 Chapter 8 The Temporal Logic of Citation in Chinese Painting
Martin J. Powers

166 Chapter 9 Ingemination
Richard Shiff

186 Chapter 10 The Image Valued ‘As Found’ and the Reconfiguring of Mimesis in Post-War Art
Alex Potts

208 Chapter 11 History Lessons: Imitation, Work and the Temporality of Contemporary Art
Jonathan Bordo

229 Index

Paul Duro is Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, NY. He has published articles on the theory and practice of imitation, the sublime, art institutions, frame theory, the hierarchy of the genres, and Heidegger and travel writing. He is also the author of The Rhetoric of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork (1996) and The Academy and the Limits of Painting in Seventeenth-Century France (1997).

From antiquity to the present, the theory and practice of imitation have been central to the construction of art. Yet despite a growing body of recent work, imitation is still commonly confused with the practice of copying. This misunderstanding is detrimental to the many kinds of replication that are negatively compared with notions of originality and authenticity, such as appropriation, quotation, reproduction, citation and reference. Nevertheless it is the act of repetition that confers the quality of originality and authenticity on the model in the first place – a paradoxical gesture of demarcation that serves to establish a representational hierarchy between imitation and model. This reinforces the perception that all forms of imitation necessarily run counter to the idea of innovation or emulation.

This collection of essays challenges these prejudices by bringing to bear a perspective that reveals the ubiquity of the practice of imitation across cultures while underlining the homology of theories of imitation from within the various historical and geographical positions that are investigated. Leading scholars bring light to a broad range of areas, some of which have been little researched in the past, providing an invaluable text for undergraduates and scholars of art history, visual studies, and aesthetics, and museum professionals.