4. Fritzi Strauss: Translation, Imitation and Emulation

Nowadays pop art is mass-produced. My attempt to reproduce Roy Lichtenstein’s In The Car, 1963, is just another copy. When I looked up Roy Lichtenstein on Google images not only did 165 000 images come up, but amongst those were t-shirts, mugs, lunchboxes and even a pair of Nike sneakers all baring Roy Lichtenstein prints. Anyone can produce a picture in the style Roy Lichtenstein using Photoshop or a similar program. There are websites with simple instructions on how to convert a picture into pop art in a matter of seconds.

Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, I have to agree with him that reproducing art does diminish the quality somewhat and its sense of uniqueness. I definitely feel that something is more special if only one exists. However, I do believe that those who set a trend: Picasso, Andy Warhol just to name a couple, still receive credit and are still recognized as the original author of that type of design no matter how many copies are manufactured.

Nowadays pop art is mass-produced. My attempt to reproduce Roy Lichtenstein’s In The Car, 1963, is just another copy. When I looked up Roy Lichtenstein on Google images not only did 165 000 images come up, but amongst those were t-shirts, mugs, lunchboxes and even a pair of Nike sneakers all baring Roy Lichtenstein prints. Anyone can produce a picture in the style Roy Lichtenstein using Photoshop or a similar program. There are websites with simple instructions on how to convert a picture into pop art in a matter of seconds.

Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, I have to agree with him that reproducing art does diminish the quality somewhat and its sense of uniqueness. I definitely feel that something is more special if only one exists. However, I do believe that those who set a trend: Picasso, Andy Warhol just to name a couple, still receive credit and are still recognized as the original author of that type of design no matter how many copies are manufactured.