Multiple Art and Original Print: Printmaking Definitions and Problematics in the Argentine Art Scene of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper proposes aperspective on the conceptual and terminological problemswith the term original print, defining engraving as a multiple art from its technical characteristics and its possibilities of plural circulation.The name ?original print refers to that graphic artwork whose conception and realization belongs to the same artist; however, being engraving an inherently multiple art, the combination of the terms original and print stablishes an a priori contradictory definition: there is no original from which the image is multiplied.During the first decades of the 20th century, the usage of this term implied a differential qualitative definition in comparison to mechanically reproduced images, due to the fact that the multiple prints obtained from the matrix created by the artist carried a specific symbolic weight: a validation of engraving as work of art in the face of the printed productions generated by the reproduction industry. In this sense, the key importance of emphasizing the original character of this multiple art appeared as a guarantee of its artistic quality in the midst of the emergence of the technology of reproduction.The conceptualization of original print as a phenomenon of the 20th century was contemporary to the problematization of the expansion of the multiple art, the reflection on the reproducibility of art and the loss of the aura by Walter Benjamin and the formulation of the idea of musée imaginaire by André Malraux; in addition, it wasconcurrent with the growth of the art market and the consequent need for regulation.In synchronicity with the debates on the term original print in the European and American art scene, but with regional peculiarities of its own, in the Latin American case and particularly in Argentina- the consideration of ?original engraving as multiple art was a product of different processes of cultural validation and institutional and political recognition. In this sense, this presentation will focus on the variety of discourses and reflections regarding the definition of original print as a multiple art in the Argentina of the first half of the twentieth century, considering some cases which are particularly significant to reflect oncultural modernity in Latin America.