Plesch delivers keynote at conference in Switzerland

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch delivered a keynote address titled “Copies: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” at “La reproduction des images et des textes,” 11e colloque international de l’IAWIS/AIERTI, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, July 10–14, 2017.

In her lecture, Plesch considered the remarkably heterogeneous and unstable way in which copies and the practice of copying have been viewed in Western art and culture, their valence at times positive and at others, negative. With examples ranging from antiquity to today (and in particular a section dedicated to the Belgian comic series Tintin), she considered the vacillating status of the copy and the fluidity between these two poles, including instances in which the perception has shifted, for example, from unfavorable or even damning, to approving and laudatory.