Sculptural Multiples Theory and Practice

Abstract

A critical evaluation of the character of the sculptural multiple often begins, simply, with a consideration of the techniques of its production, followed by a more complex discussion about ethics, authenticity and authority. Exploring the relationship between the notions of ‘authentic original’ and ‘multiple copies’ with reference to the work of Auguste Rodin, Rosalind Krauss1 touches on the role of the artist as a form-giver who celebrates the concept of individual originality relative to the process of creation through repetition. The sculptural multiple is revealed as a paradox. On the one hand ‘original’ is considered authentic and ‘duplication’ is discredited, while on the other hand, the copy reinforces the value of the concept of original. Although sculpture had been reproduced as multiples of an originating form for centuries, by the late nineteenth century artists began to integrate the ethos of mass-production into their processes and aesthetic. The sculptural multiple became a tool used by artists to critique prevailing ideology and the distinction between non-art and art, mechanical technology and manual craftsmanship, became blurred. The artist became an organiser of a machine aesthetic, moving away from the role of individual creator of hand-crafted objects, and distancing artistic authority from the process of production and the object produced. Seriality emerged as a system of ordering multiples so that meaning was made out of the relationship between one object and other similar objects. Thus a discussion about issues of the authenticity and originality of sculptural multiples begins with the mechanics of production - not just who makes the art work and how it is made, but also how it is perceived in its context. The discussion continues, however, with artists from Rodin to Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg and Donald Judd to Elizabeth Thomson, Eddie Clemens, Gregor Kregar and Antony Gormley, who have each developed aesthetic conventions whereby individual, visually similar objects gain relevance in their relation to each other, and to the united logic of the whole. As a paradox the sculptural multiple exists at the interstice of corresponding opposites, the individual and the group, identity and anonymity, singular and multiple.