Casting the Canon: Plaster Casts as Global Dissemination Media During the Long 19th- Century

GALLIPOLI, MILENA

Proceedings of the 34th World Congress of Art History Terms

The Commercial Press

Lugar: Shanghai; Año: 2019; p. 2238 - 2243

Canon as a concept has the feature of being a fixed hierarchy made up of exemplary objects. The canonical piece is a model, called to be reproduced through a range of non-canonical media in order to access to it. Canonicity depends on its copying and its capacity to reproduce itself. The aim of this presentation is to analyse the media of plaster casts and their peculiar insertion in the problematic of canon consolidation and dissemination. During the long nineteenth-century plaster casts consumption had their heyday and samples of these works could be found in a global scale. A literal canon was fostered given by a passage from the unique canonical artwork to a potential infinite serialization enabled by the objectual imprint of plaster cast?s production technique. A striking resemblance arises, the transposition is almost indiscernible yet crucial. Far from being degrading, these reproductions reinforce the power of the canon. They spread it acting as canonical devices that functioned due to the establishment of an illusionary unproblematic relation between copied and copy. Nonetheless, the problematic arises when thinking critically the determination of plaster?s controversial matter. When materiality is revealed, the danger of no longer working as canonical devices becomes exposed.