Fake or Fortune? Alexander Dorner and the Weimar Reproductions Debate

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_6661
dc.title	Fake or Fortune? Alexander Dorner and the Weimar Reproductions Debate
dc.contributor.author	Balbi Camilla
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/venezia-arti/2021/1/fake-or-fortune-alexander-dorner-and-the-weimar-re/
dc.description.abstract	Between 1929 and 1930 the Der Kreis journal hosted a debate among art historians and museum directors on how art copies were changing the museum landscape. The so-called Hamburger Faksimile-Streit constitutes a crucial moment in the Weimarian theoretical debate on the categories of copy and original, culminating a few years later in Benjamin’s well-known essay on the work of art. After examining the theses of the main participants in the debate, this article focus on the position of curator and museum director Alexander Dorner – the only one advocating for the non-superiority of originals over copies in art museums – and on his relationship with Walter Benjamin’s later theories.
dc.relation.ispartof	Venezia Arti
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 30 \| December 2021
dc.issued	2021-12-21
dc.dateAccepted	2021-08-24
dc.dateSubmitted	2021-07-09
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2385-2720
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2021/07/006
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Alexander Dorner
dc.subject	Alexander Dorner
dc.subject	Art copies
dc.subject	Art copies
dc.subject	Hamburger Faksimile-Streit
dc.subject	Hamburger Faksimile-Streit
dc.subject	Museum Studies
dc.subject	Museum Studies
dc.subject	Weimar Art Theory
dc.subject	Weimar Art Theory

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Camilla Balbi Università IULM, Milano, Italia

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abstract

Between 1929 and 1930 the Der Kreis journal hosted a debate among art historians and museum directors on how art copies were changing the museum landscape. The so-called Hamburger Faksimile-Streit constitutes a crucial moment in the Weimarian theoretical debate on the categories of copy and original, culminating a few years later in Benjamin’s well-known essay on the work of art. After examining the theses of the main participants in the debate, this article focus on the position of curator and museum director Alexander Dorner – the only one advocating for the non-superiority of originals over copies in art museums – and on his relationship with Walter Benjamin’s later theories.

Published

Dec. 21, 2021

Accepted

Aug. 24, 2021

Submitted

July 9, 2021

Language

Keywords: Art copies • Weimar Art Theory • Alexander Dorner • Museum Studies • Hamburger Faksimile-Streit

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2021/07/006

Copyright: © 2021 Camilla Balbi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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