Transient Permanence

Abstract

There are few places where the tenacious dichotomy of copy and original deconstructs itself more forcefully than in the trajectory we refer to as classical sculpture. This process is intrinsic to the assumed origins of the classical and the idea of the antique original, and despite the existence of celebrity pieces such as the Venus de Milo, the Laocoön, or the Farnese Hercules, objects that crowds have lined up for centuries to see in Paris, Rome, and Naples, respectively. Few statues can be authorized as first, original versions: the history of classical sculpture is as much a history of the serialized original as of the serial copy, as Salvatore Settis and his team exquisitely displayed in the concurrent exhibitions Portable Classic and Serial Classic at the Prada Foundation in Venice and Milan in 2015. While the Milan edition revolved around seriality, materiality and surface, the Venice exhibition displayed antique repetitions through scale, miniaturization and portability. Hackneyed conceptions of origins and originality collapsed in the line–up of a Farnese Hercules series in Palazzo Corner della Regina on the Grand Canal, and in the numerous antique variants and derivatives of iconic statues such as the Discobolus and the Crouching Venus in Milan. Entering these two spaces was a profound bodily experience of the repeatability, versatility, and adjustability of the classical tradition.