Reproduction Technology. From Replica to Brand

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the works by the French artist of American origin Man Ray. The objects of the first New York period were studied, later they repeatedly have been reproduced by the author. We consider prints of non-preserved objects as the author’s version of a photographic readymade. Reproductions and replications have become an important part of the artist’s strategy in Paris and especially in America. These practices represent an example of the branding technology traditionally associated with Andy Warhol. Man Ray invented it long before the commercialization of pop art. The idea as the main artistic value, regardless of the method of its implementation and originality, becomes not only the basis of conceptual art, but also the quintessence of the phenomenon that we call an art brand. We define it as an ideology that includes the characteristics of the artist’s personality, his work and general strategies, including the marketing ones. Ray’s experiments as a modernist, artist and photographer significantly expanded the spectrum of theoretical and practical issues related to the relationship between art and commerce in an era when the aesthetic value of a work depended not only on the conditions and on circumstances of the order, but on the novelty and radicality — the time when the experiments have being absolutized. In the avant-garde, this criterion has become an indicator of the artist’s talent and success. If we define a brand as a mental cover of a product, then the application of this term to a work of art is quite justified, especially since the 20th century approved the priority of design methods of creativity, the cognitive value of an artwork became more important than the retinal one. The artist required a certain amount of ingenuity to remain a radical and be part of the market system, transforming the symbolic value of his work into an economic one. Seeming independence from the artistic conjuncture turned into a skillful balancing act between creativity and commerce.