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IMPROVEMENT

She likes to change things. She had a different idea of what she wanted to do with the rocks there.

Oh yeah.

So her point was that she enjoyed inventing. Of all five pictures this one has the most changes in the positions of things.

She spent quite awhile here looking at them.

Ohh.

She had been unaware that all these other copies existed. Her comment was that she changes things to suit herself when she paints something. She pointed out how she'd changed the water and the rocks and a few other things. If we look at each of them we'll see differences in the lighting. Even the two done by Alice Pedersen have a little bit of a different mood.

Did you notice that in the context of the other five how each of them took on a new look when it was with.......

They all look completely different. If you look at them together.

So this is what interests me. To recontextualized work. I will apply for a space to show these in. I'm organizing the show so that visitors will have input.

Yes, Yes. So it was to make a point about that actually. But, yeah, we're so used to the idea of "copy" aren't we? That if we want a copy we can have a copy. But it's interesting that there's not very much value placed on an exact copy such as photographs might give you or some other means of reproduction. Ahm, ....

Except for what is said in a couple of the comments I collected.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah. A lot of them liked Rosie Feist's because it's the nearest

The nearest to the original.

But one painter spoke about how she felt like changing things. She enjoyed changing the rocks and she changed some the background stuff. Her mother is going to make another copy and asked, "Can I do what I want with it? I'd like to change some things. That's what I'd enjoy."

I said, "Oh, yes, do."

She made that one but it's not as much like the original. Later I talked to her about it. She spoke of wanting to put something of herself into it. Her copy has life.

The reason that kind of comment appeals to me is that.....I mean you're dealing with landscape, and that whole thing in terms of the 18th Century and picturesque gardens when a lot of those landscape architects and painters worked together. And they were always aiming to improve the landscape, improve nature.

Through artifacts?

Through painting or you know through landscape architecture. And the different notions.

Yes.

During that time of different creators and different artists.

Yes.

And their differences in terms of improvement. They're very, very subtle but they're also backed up by certain ideologies--political and economic ideologies. And her short statement about how she wanted to basically improve that painting is a very sort of casual comment but the meaning is like, what is improvement?

Yes right.

It's a really, really sort of central powerful notion. I mean especially when you're dealing with notions of originality or authenticity as well. But it just sort of drew me back to a lot of the readings of you know.

It's very interesting, yes.

Price and Ruskin and all those crazy guys who had a notion of improvement. So.

Yeah, yeah. And then of course following that there's the modernist notion of the expression of the individual. I guess I'm subverting that in one sense really by levelling some things while at the same time giving them status or some importance. So it's a kind of a play back and forth between two things.

So you think the painter was dyslexic.

No. She informed me that she deliberately likes to change things.

Right. It's stylized. More so than the rest of them. The waves. Because it's the opposite way. It's not flowing that way. But the rest of it isn't a mirror image.

But she informed me that she deliberately likes to change things.

Right. It's styliized. More so than the rest of them. The waves.

So if you were to take that picture...

If I was to take that picture home.

The original.

The original.

The cracked and broken one.

And I want to make my version of it--if I don't like those three spruce trees, say, standing there the way they are--and f I want to change that does that spoil the value of that picture for your sake?

No.

For what you wanted to do?

It makes it more interesting. You go home and copy the way you'd like to do.


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