Sunday, 29 January 2017, 04–05 pm

We usually encounter paintings in the form of reproductions. Viewing an original is the exception: In an exhibition, the studio of an artist, the storage of a museum, or at best in one’s own four walls, we can face a painting directly. Otherwise, what we encounter on websites, art blogs, Facebook, and Instagram are photographs of paintings. And in books, on postcards and calendars, or also framed on the wall, we see printed reproductions of photographed paintings.

Photography has made painting mobile. But it was only the combination of photography and printing that enabled the high editions of reproductions we are familiar with today, thus spurring the dissemination of images. Prior to the invention of photography, paintings were copied not technically but manually by means of drawing and reproduced with the aid of printing techniques. These prints, which can be defined as interpretations of the model that are as accurate as possible, were transportable and thus suitable for trading. It was not the internet, and by no means the social media, that triggered the circulation of images, but clever, business-oriented printmakers who in the 16th century copied and distributed famous artists. The prints found their way across the Alps and facilitated the exchange between the painting schools of the north and south. Digitization and the World Wide Web accelerated and intensified the circulation of images as it had already continuously existed for more than 450 years. And painting in the form of its reproduction has been part of this circulation from the very beginning.
(Text: Matthias Gabi)

This event is taking place in the context of the current exhibition Cantonale Berne Jura.

Image: Matthias Gabi, Supertrumpf, Lecture Perfomance, HACIENDA at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2015