Michael Lissack been hugely enhanced. The argument that ease of reproductions will kill off the "real thing" makes as much sense as to say that with the advent of film and television, theater must cease to exist and actors themselves, those living, physical entities, must cease to be the object of anyone's affection. Recordings, by the same logic, must empty flee concert halls; televised sports events must empty the stadiums. But the universal experience of modern times gives the lie to this prediction. If anything, the ability to re- produce an object a million fold has caused the original to seem more holy than ever. The excitement of standing in front of the Mona Lisa itself, seeing it perhaps through the eye of a camera, with a blizzard of bulbs flashing around you, is very like the excitement of meeting a real celebrity, previously known secondhand, but now encountered in the flesh. It is no great exaggeration to say that in the past decade the art world has been transformed into a massive, glorified autograph market. The only honest way to admire a work of art, at least at the initial stages of our expe- riencing it, is to disregard its date, provenance, and authorship and to admit that, in theory, a forgery could be better and more interesting than the authentic object. This view does not deny that an imitation by definition lacks originality and that originality can be a part of art's excellence. Nor can we deny the satisfaction that we humans, sentimental as we are, take in the knowledge that the divine Michelangelo once touched that sheet of paper. But we must admit that this is very different from objectively admiring the visible object before our eyes. It is the aesthetics of autograph collecting, not the anesthetics of art. Modern technology has altered the situation by making available to almost everyone reproductions - postcards, CD's, vid- eos, books, computer bulletin board prints. You name it. In the same manner, laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock-exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared. But so obsessive is it that you go on hearing it behind the voice of Reagan or the Marines disaster in Beirut. Even behind the advertisements. It is the monster from Alien prowling around in all the corridors of the spaceship. It is the sarcastic exhilaration of a puritan culture. In other countries, the business
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