Abstract

“Copying”: this practice, in China as elsewhere, was and still is the first exercise of every apprenticeship at the same time as an irreplaceable technique for spreading know-how, talent, and innovation; but the place and interest accorded to it throw light on the rather special positions being taken up. Thus, when a Chinese author speaks of copy, he is thinking primarily of the “copy-image,” in two dimensions. Sculpture in China plays a religious and propitiatory role; it only indirectly gives rise to reflections about art. The copies of objects thus found themselves relegated to the sphere of the utilitarian, even of the frankly deceptive (the “fakes”); they held little interest for esthetes, with a single exception: that of archaic bronzes, which I shall be dealing with later since they fall within the scope of an overall reflection on history, ritual, and the foundations of the state. Now the latter, like the bases of painting, flow from an original cultural context, the elements of which that are most resistant to comparison are language and writing.