ABSTRACT
Copies and originals are distinguishable and they are distinguished by aesthetically relevant features, like the quality of brush work or colour, and not just 'invisible' features like the age or provenance of the canvas. It is part of the interest of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon that it was the first cubist painting, and when people look at it, their interest is in the evidence the painting provides of Picasso's struggle to create cubism. It is relevant to our interest in the painting that it is dateable and attributable. A subsequent copy cannot be looked at as the first cubist painting, but merely as a copy of it. Rather, the idea of a copy of a painting indistinguishable in point of aesthetic interest from its original is analogous to the idea of two identical but independently composed works of literature or music. In the literature of aesthetics Nelson Goodman, in Languages of Art, sharply distinguishes between autographic and allographic arts.
