Authentication
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I recently came across Mark Tansey’s painting in the Contemporary Art wing of the Metropolitan Museum. I cannot remember the title, but I don’t believe it gave a clue, so I’m left with my own interpretation.
Here we see, I believe, an attempt by a circle of art specialists (or patrons?) to authenticate a newly revealed painting, by exposing its subject, an animal, to an authentic live version of the same species.
Recognition across the barrier of the medium, going from 3D space into simulated 3D space, I suppose, would validate the likeness of the rendering, though I’m wondering aloud, having seen cows in real life, what form that recognition would take.
As I’m looking at the painting containing the other painting, I’m also aware of watching the people engaged in the bold experiment, and being able to recognize them as part of my own species.
I’m wondering if there is an intended allusion to Myron’s Cow, invoked by a reflection by Goethe. Myron, a famous sculptor, allegedly made a sculpture of a cow with such likeness that real bulls attempted to jump it.
[See my short story “A Timely Death” where I have Goethe ruminate about Myron’s cow while trying to lay his hands on his visitor’s, a young woman’s breasts]
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