A brief philosophic and art historical essay on theories of the difference between copies and originals. It was originally published as “From Copy to Forgery and Back Again,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 33 no. 2 (1993): 113–20.
This essay is about the conceptual side of the issue: what counts as “original” and “copy,” and how they are related. There is also a practical side, involving questions of actually producing copies. For more on this see “Why Art Historians Should Learn to Draw and Paint.”