Dorothy Moss

In 1858 Nathaniel Hawthorne lamented that copies after Raphael lacked “the subtle mystery of the original.” Since then the copy has had a contested critical reputation in the United States, particularly in the decades around 1900 when paintings were being reproduced in all media imaginable. During this watershed moment in American art, as major museums defined their missions and new media emerged and evolved at a rapid pace, heated debates about the meaning and uses of copies played out in popular literature, newspapers, and museum boardrooms. My project will investigate the value of copies and originals through a series of representative case studies, including museum acquisition policies, the intersection of forgery with trompe l’oeil painting, tableaux performances, silent film, and photographs of paintings in university galleries. These examples will allow me to disentangle the various meanings attached to reproductions at the dawn of mass culture and will provide the foundation for understanding the copy’s oscillating critical status today.