Three-Toed Sloth

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Attention conservation notice: 800+ words of inconclusive art/technological/economic-historical musings.

This thread over at Unfogged reminds me of something that's puzzled me for years, ever since reading this: why didn't prints displace paintings the same way that printed books displaced manuscript codices? Why didn't it become the expected thing that visual artists, like writers, would primarily produce works for reproduction? (No doubt, in that branch of the wave-function*, obsessive fans still want to get the original drawings, but obsessive fans also collect writer's manuscripts, or even their typewriters, as well as their mass-produced books.) 16th century engraving technology was strong enough that it could implement powerful works of art (vide), so that can't be it. And by the 18th century at least writers could make a living (however precarious) from writing for the mass public, so why were visual artists (for the most part) weren't artists? (Again, it's manifestly not as though technology has regressed.) Why is it still the case that a real, high-class visual artist is someone who makes one-offs? I know that reproductions have been important since at least the late 1800s, but for works and artists who first made their reputation with unique, hand-made objects, which is as though the only books which got sent to the printing press were ones which had first circulated to acclaim in manuscript.

Some possibilities I don't buy:

1. Aesthetic limitations. There are valuable effects which can be achieved with a big original painting which prints just can't match. Response: there are effects you can achieve with an illuminated, calligraphic manuscript which you can't match with movable type, either. Those weren't valuable enough to keep printed books from taking over. Why the difference? Why not a focus on what can be done through prints, which is quite a lot? (Witness the experience of the 20th century and later, when most art lovers know most works of art they enjoy through reproductions.)
2. Color. A real limitation; even today, getting color done well in mass visual media is not entirely trivial (cf.), and early modern Europe certainly couldn't do it at all. Response: What makes color so important? We know that some great art was made without its benefit, and we don't really know how much better it could have gotten had that prints been the medium of choice. Even if color was all that, it just pushes the shift to the late 19th century.
3. Artists too expensive. Whether you are producing one painting or a thousand prints, there is a considerable fixed cost to the artist's time and training. (The first print is very expensive.) Individual patrons could afford this; the mass public could not. Response: The same argument would apply to books. Besides, high fixed costs usually drive towards seeking a wider market, so that the fixed costs are distributed over a larger number of people. The argument would have to be one of failure of demand — that where there was one man willing to pay 100 guilders (or whatever) for a painting, there were not, say, 120 people willing to pay 1 guilder for prints. Why not?
4. Paintings too cheap. There have always been too many people wanting to be visual artists for them to all make a living as original artists. One of the things they could do instead was paint copies. Response: The economy of scale problem still applies.
5. States too weak. In a competitive market, market prices equal marginal costs. The marginal cost of producing another copy of a print is very, very low, so low that the fixed costs of drawing and designing it in the first place aren't recouped. As usual, then, competitive markets fail massively at producing informational goods. The modern solution is to institute and vigorously enforce intellectual property rights. These are monopoly privileges which the state grants to certain individuals; if anyone tries to compete with these favorites of the powers that be, then "goons with guns" (as my libertarian friends like to say) come to stop them. Doing this requires a really massively powerful and intrusive state, which is a relatively recent phenomenon, and not to be deployed on behalf of artists, of all people. Artists who tried to go the mass-production route would've been even more starvation-prone than those who didn't attempt it. Response: An exactly parallel argument would explain why writers didn't embrace printing.
6. The revolution has happened. The overwhelming majority of visual artists do aim their work at reproduction; it's just a small minority which continues to produce one-offs. This minority has, however, a lot more cultural prestige. Response: There's some merit to this, but it's bizarre and anomalous; it's not as though our really high-class literature was still illuminated or calligraphic manuscripts, and printing was reserved for declassé "commercial" work.

The most convincing argument I've been able to come up with has to do with how visual artworks were and are used. Even in manuscript, books were for reading: private consumption, or near enough. European culture, however, provided a steady stream of demand for works of visual art for public display, which is rather different. It were just a matter of pictures you'd like to look at for your own enjoyment, perhaps prints would serve. But if it's about decorating the church/guildhall/imposing estate, then you need a unique painting of St. Jerome/the burgomasters/the master of the house. The main point is that the owner has the resources to command their very own artwork, not the work's intrinsic aesthetic properties (which good reproductions would share). But even then, why not develop a second stream of reproducible artwork for private rather than conspicuous consumption? And indeed why not try to achieve similar effects in print, thereby broadcasting the message?

*: With apologies to the blogger formerly known as "the blogger formerly known as 'The Statistical Mechanic' ".

Writing for Antiquity