Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Art Imitating Art, Eric Brook

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Using as a contextual reference my experience of seeing the original and copy of Michelangelo's David in Florence, I briefly introduce how the Platonic legacy has affected that discourse. The Western preference in art and aesthetics is typically in favor of the original over the copy, despite whatever indiscernibility may exist between them. Since Arthur Danto has treated this phenomenon in his text The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, his relevant comments are considered and adapted for the purpose of working through how one understands the relationship between the original and copy in terms of a criterion for defining art.