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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2326832, member: 19463&quot;]Today, while most people here were gearing up for tomorrow&#039;s foot of snow, my wife and I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to see a travelling exhibit on the French sculptor Auguste Rodin.&nbsp; The exhibit consisted of hundreds of pieces that completely muddied my concept of what is original and what is derived in terms of sculpture.&nbsp; Several of Rodin&#039;s most famous works were represented in multiple copies - some whole, some in parts.&nbsp; Some were masters or intermediates in the production of the same work in plaster, clay, marble or bronze.&nbsp; The labels pointed out Rodin himself rarely touched the marble or bronze but worked mostly in plaster.&nbsp; Some were unfinished or just trials as if he wanted to see what a nose would look like and did not care a thing about eyes.&nbsp; Some were probably done by Rodin himself while most were touched only by staff or associates tasked with turning his two foot plaster &#039;thought&#039; into a ten foot bronze statue.</p><p><br /></p><p>All the pieces in the exhibit would be considered originals in some sense but it is obvious that there was no single original work for any of his major works.&nbsp; Comparing this to the attitude we have on original coins not to mention tooled, repaired, cleaned or repatinated items made me really appreciate the coins I love even if none of them would sell for the market value of the plaster left foot of the <i>Thinker</i>.&nbsp; Realizing that our coins are made from dies so might not be considered original and certainly are not one of a kind made me see parallels in the process of a sculpture factory.&nbsp; The concept of casts and aftercasts, electrotypes and outright copies that we find so troubling were part of the process for a sculptor of Rodin&#039;s style.&nbsp; In the end, he legitimized the products of his employees or associates signing his name to work that was part his and part theirs.&nbsp; That is where we are at a loss with coins since it is not always certain where official/original stops and other another status begins.&nbsp; II do not know exactly where I stand on some questions raised by this exhibit but I do have trouble calling original a bronze cast fifty years after an artist died even if it was made from parts created much earlier by a number of hands.&nbsp; Our coins were not the work of just one man but a team, a workshop or a mint.&nbsp; I knew that.&nbsp; What I learned today is that a major decorative art from the mind of a famous sculptor involved so many other hands over a period of years but still can be called original.&nbsp; </p><p>[ATTACH=full]471133[/ATTACH]</p><p>If this exhibit comes to a museum near you, consider seeing it but when you are through go look at the coins where fine workmanship is not ten feet tall but ever so much more fine.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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