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Kunstwerken
Patrick Waterhouse United Kingdom, 1981
The Unknown Masterpiece, 202231 paintings: oil on canvas40 x 30 cmUnique setPW 240Further images
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To create the oil paintings in this series, each participant was given a portrait and instructions to copy only what was immediately before them. The painting they produced would then...To create the oil paintings in this series, each participant was given a portrait and instructions to copy only what was immediately before them. The painting they produced would then be passed onto the next painter to copy as accurately as possible. None of the participants had any knowledge of the paintings that came before the one they were copying. Despite attempts to copy precisely, through this process, natural shifts in line and form occur. Viewing the paintings collectively, we see the adaptation of forms, mirroring the history of art itself. As something inevitably changes through misunderstanding, interpretation or translation, it becomes something new.
''The project explores the process and possibilities of copying, and in doing so, it calls into question the notion of pure originality: the idea that ideas form in a vacuum, in one individual alone, rather than broadening our understanding of creativity as something gathered – all we’ve read, heard, felt and seen. It acknowledges the way ideas bloom from a lifetime’s collection of other people’s ideas.'
These paintings were copied by students of Sichuan Fine Art Institute, local artists and artisans in Chongqing, China. -
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