‘Hunters in the snow’
The secretary of the ‘Chelsea Arts Club’, my home in London, made a great observation in support of reproduction art:
“Neil McGregor, the then Director of the National Gallery, was a passionate supporter of reproductions. He believed firmly that, just as it can take a few listens before a new piece of music really takes hold of us, so, often, we need to spend time with great art before we feel its power. It was heartening to those of us in the publishing company to think that someone who was sent one of our postcards might feel just a little of the power of the original – and that in fact their encounter with the real thing might be enhanced by spending time with a copy.
Because nothing compares, does it, with that moment when you see for the first time an original work you have only ever known before in reproduction. I’ve never forgotten the stunned joy I felt when in Vienna I unexpectedly came across Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the snow’, a print of which had hung on the wall throughout my childhood. The sheer thrill of the work’s palpable presence, its numen, was overwhelming. What’s more it was thrilling to know where the painting actually lived, what wall in which room of what building it called home – and it was thrilling, too, to understand the scale of it for the first time.”
by Roland Blunk picture by err Bruegel
Roland Blunk(http://www.rolandblunk.com)