Can a Copy Be as Good as the Original? 摹本能跟真跡一樣好嗎？

🔊No one has seen it since. What every student of calligraphy has studied for thirteen hundred years is a set of copies: tracings made at the Tang court, free copies by the great calligraphers of the day, and rubbings from stone engravings of those. The one thought closest to the original is a tracing attributed to the court copyist Feng Chengsu. The work that sets the standard for the whole art is known only through reproductions, and the tradition has not felt this as a scandal.

從那以後，沒有人再見過它。一千三百年來，每一個學書法的人所學的，是一批摹本：唐代宮廷裡做的雙鉤摹本、當時的大書法家的臨本，以及根據這些刻石再拓下來的拓本。被認為最接近原蹟的一本，是相傳出自宮廷拓書人馮承素之手的摹本。為整門藝術立下標準的那件作品，只能經由複製品被認識；而這個傳統並不覺得這是一樁醜聞。

🔊European painting had the opposite experience. In 1937 a newly discovered Vermeer, The Supper at Emmaus, was bought for a Rotterdam museum. Abraham Bredius, the leading authority on Dutch painting, had called it the masterpiece of Vermeer. It had been painted the year before by Han van Meegeren, an artist whom the critics had dismissed. He used old canvas and pigments of the period and hardened his paint with a synthetic resin so that it would pass the tests for age. More “Vermeers” followed, and one was sold during the war to Hermann Göring.

歐洲的繪畫有過相反的經驗。1937 年，一幅新發現的維梅爾〈以馬忤斯的晚餐〉，被一家鹿特丹的博物館買下。荷蘭繪畫的首席權威亞伯拉罕・布雷迪烏斯，稱它是維梅爾的傑作。它是前一年由漢・凡・米格倫畫的；這位畫家曾被評論家看不起。他用了舊畫布與那個時代的顏料，並且用一種合成樹脂使顏料變硬，好通過年代的檢驗。更多的「維梅爾」接著出現；其中一幅在戰爭期間賣給了赫爾曼・戈林。

🔊After the war van Meegeren was arrested for selling a national treasure to the enemy, a crime that could carry the death penalty. He saved himself by confessing to a lesser one. The Vermeer was his own work, he said, and he painted another in custody to prove it. He was sentenced to a year for forgery and died before serving it. The paintings had not changed by a single brushstroke. Their price fell to almost nothing, and the experts who had wept in front of them now found them clumsy. The case raises the question of what, exactly, had changed.

戰後，凡・米格倫因為把國寶賣給敵人而被捕；這項罪名可以判死刑。他招認了一項較輕的罪，救了自己。他說，那幅維梅爾是他自己畫的；為了證明，他在拘留期間又畫了一幅。他因偽造被判一年徒刑，還沒服刑就死了。那些畫一筆也沒有改變。它們的價格跌到幾乎一文不值；而曾經在畫前落淚的專家，現在覺得它們很笨拙。這個案子提出的問題是：到底是什麼變了？

🔊One answer is that nothing of aesthetic importance changed. If beauty lies in what can be seen, and two pictures cannot be told apart, they are equally beautiful. The collapse in price shows only that buyers pay for names, rarity, and the right to boast. On this view the experts were right the first time and are snobs now.

一個答案是：在審美上要緊的東西，一點也沒變。如果美在於看得見的東西，而兩幅畫分辨不出來，它們就同樣美。價格的崩跌只顯示了：買家付錢買的是名字、稀有，以及炫耀的權利。照這個看法，專家第一次是對的；現在他們是勢利眼。

🔊Nelson Goodman replied in 1968 that “cannot be told apart” hides a question. Apart by whom, and when? That I cannot see a difference today does not show that I never will. Knowing that one of two pictures is a forgery gives me a reason to look for differences and trains my eye, and once Vermeer’s real paintings and van Meegeren’s were hung side by side the forgeries came to look obviously of the 1930s. Goodman added a distinction that explains why the question arises for some arts and not for others. A novel or a symphony is defined by a text or a score, and any correct copy is the work itself. He called these arts allographic. A painting has no such notation. Its identity depends on the history of its making, on its having come from a particular hand. He called these autographic, and only they can be forged.

尼爾森・古德曼在 1968 年回應說：「分辨不出來」這句話藏著一個問題。誰分辨不出來？什麼時候？我今天看不出差別，並不表示我永遠看不出。知道兩幅畫當中有一幅是偽作，就給了我一個去找差別的理由，也訓練了我的眼睛；而維梅爾的真蹟與凡・米格倫的畫一旦並排掛出來，那些偽作看起來就明顯是 1930 年代的東西了。古德曼還補了一個區分；它解釋了為什麼這個問題在某些藝術裡出現，在另一些藝術裡不出現。一部小說或一首交響曲，是由一份文本或樂譜界定的；任何一份正確的複本，都是那件作品本身。他把這些藝術稱為「他書的」。一幅畫沒有這樣的記譜。它的身分取決於它被製作出來的歷史，取決於它出自某一隻特定的手。他把這些稱為「親筆的」；而只有它們能被偽造。

🔊Walter Benjamin, writing in exile in 1935, gave the missing quality a name. Even the most perfect reproduction, he said, lacks one thing: the work’s presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it is. He called this its aura. An original has been through things. It was touched by its maker, has aged, changed hands, and hung in particular rooms, and all this history is present to a person who stands before it. Photography and film, he saw, were producing art that has no original at all, since it makes no sense to ask for the authentic print of a negative. Benjamin thought the result a loss and also a liberation. Art that can be copied without limit belongs to everyone and is no longer an object of worship.

華特・班雅明 1935 年在流亡中寫作，為那個缺少的性質取了一個名字。他說，就算是最完美的複製品，也少了一樣東西：作品在時間與空間裡的在場，它在它所在之處獨一無二的存在。他把這叫做作品的「靈光」。一件原作經歷過事情。它被它的創作者碰過，它老了，它換過主人，它掛在過某些特定的房間裡；而這整段歷史，對一個站在它面前的人來說是在場的。他看到，攝影與電影正在產生一種根本沒有原作的藝術；因為問一張底片的「真正的」那一張相片是哪一張，是沒有意義的。班雅明認為這個結果是一種失落，也是一種解放。可以無限複製的藝術，屬於每一個人，不再是膜拜的對象。

🔊A later writer, Denis Dutton, put the point in terms of achievement. A work of art is the trace of something a person did. When we admire the Lanting Preface we admire what Wang Xizhi brought off in one morning, with wine in him, and no chance to correct. A forgery lies about what was achieved. Van Meegeren did not solve the problems Vermeer solved in 1660. He solved the easier problem of imitating the solutions three centuries later, and it is this false claim, more than any visible fault, that makes the forgery worth less.

後來的一位作者丹尼斯・達頓，用「成就」來表達這一點。一件藝術作品，是一個人做過的某件事留下的痕跡。當我們讚賞〈蘭亭序〉的時候，我們讚賞的是王羲之在一個早晨、帶著酒意、沒有機會修改的情況下完成的那件事。偽作在「成就了什麼」上說了謊。凡・米格倫並沒有解決維梅爾在 1660 年解決的那些問題。他解決的是一個比較容易的問題：在三個世紀之後模仿那些解答；而使偽作比較不值錢的，與其說是任何看得見的毛病，不如說是這個不實的宣稱。

🔊Dutton’s account also explains why the Tang tracings of the Lanting are treasures. They make no false claim. Feng Chengsu’s achievement was fidelity, and everyone knows it. Chinese connoisseurs kept four words apart: to trace, to copy freehand, to work in someone’s manner, and to fabricate. Only the last deceives. Xie He had listed “transmission by copying” as the sixth principle of painting, and every calligrapher still learns by copying models stroke by stroke. In this tradition a good copy is how a work survives the loss of its paper.

達頓的說法也解釋了，為什麼〈蘭亭序〉的唐摹本是珍寶。它們沒有做出任何不實的宣稱。馮承素的成就是「忠實」；而人人都知道這一點。中國的鑑賞家把四個字分得很清楚：摹、臨、仿、造。只有最後一個是欺騙。謝赫把「傳移模寫」列為繪畫的第六法；而每一位書法家至今仍然靠著一筆一筆地臨摹範本來學習。在這個傳統裡，一件好的摹本，是作品在它的紙張失去之後繼續存在的方式。

🔊Japan’s Ise shrine carries the idea further. Its wooden halls have been taken down and rebuilt on the adjoining plot every twenty years for some thirteen centuries. No timber in them is old, and the shrine is counted among the oldest in the country. What is preserved is the form, the craft, and the unbroken act of rebuilding. Whether the same holds for a painting depends on what one thinks a work of art is: an object, a design, or something done. Wang Xizhi ended his preface by imagining its future readers: “Those who come after will look on us as we now look on the past.” He did not expect the paper to last, and it has not. The words and the gesture have reached us through people who cared enough to copy them.

日本的伊勢神宮把這個想法推得更遠。大約一千三百年來，它的木造殿舍每二十年就被拆掉，在相鄰的那塊地上重建一次。殿舍裡沒有一根木料是舊的；而這座神宮被算作全國最古老的神社之一。被保存下來的，是形制、是工藝，以及那個不曾中斷的「重建」的行動。同樣的道理對一幅畫成不成立，取決於一個人認為藝術作品是什麼：一件物品、一個設計，還是一件被做出來的事。王羲之在序的結尾，想像著它未來的讀者：「後之視今，亦由今之視昔。」他並不指望那張紙能留存；而它確實沒有。那些字與那個姿態能傳到我們手上，是經由一些「在乎到願意去摹寫它們」的人。