THE

PHILOSOPHICAL
QUARTERLY

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VOL. 22 No. 86 JANUARY 1972

THE UNIQUENESS AND REPRODUCIBILITY

OF A WORK OF ART:
A CRITIQUE OF GOODMAN'S THEORY1
B Y ANTHONY RALLS

Works of art are essentially reproducible. A poem, a symphony, or a

play can occur at one time in indefinitely many different places. So too,
subject only to rather unimportant technical and cultural limitations, can a
painting, a lithograph, or a piece of sculpture. The creator bodies forth his
conception in the appropriate medium, and produces, speaking generally,
an original object, or an original event : I propose to call it an archetype.
This biographically unique construction will be in some cases an instance of
what is conventionally called a work of a r t ; in other cases it will be an
original score, script, plan, programme, or loosely a recipe for such a work.
Both sorts of creation are archetypal; both bring about the possibility of
producing indefinitely numerous instances or performances of the work in
question, which is some kind of universal- or type-object of which the
archetype may be said to provide, in a sense, an intentional definition.
Specifically in the performing arts, the preservation of work-identity is
facilitated by the recipe's embodiment of the creator's instructions for pro-
ducing performances of a more-or-less determinate character : a conception
which it might be possible to extend non-vacuously to the arts in general.2
Although this kind of synoptic view, which has been with us for some
years, 3 is broadly correct, it still needs important modifications. These will
X
I am indebted to my colleagues, especially Professor G. P . Henderson, Robin
Cameron, and Basil O'Neill, and to m y wife, for their critical encouragement.
2
Some recent developments in experimental sculpture, happenings, etc., might
appear to present certain peculiar difficulties. But see below, note 20.
'See particularly R u b y Meager, " The Uniqueness of a Work of Art ", in Cyril
2 A N T H O N Y BALLS

emerge in the course of a detailed attack on two of Professor Goodman's

central contentions in his recent book Languages of Art :4 (I) that the distinc-
tion we make in painting, lithography, and sculpture between original and
fake is not only aesthetically important, but actually grounded in the kind of
" real definition " that is appropriate for a work in one of those arts (pp. 99,
112, 198, etc.) ; (II) that in those fields—most clearly music, literature, some
dance and some architecture—where all satisfactory copies or performances
are equally authentic, the possibility of fake is ruled out by the existence
of systems for the notational definition, and thus the multiple identification,
of a work of art (pp. 115-122, etc.).5 I shall examine these theses successively,
and conclude with some suggestions, both theoretical and practical, about

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the concept of multiple identity, which should explain why it is essential to
reject Goodmanism in the arts.
I
THE PEBFECT FAKE
In order to see the importance of the role Goodman ascribes to authen-
ticity in painting, consider his answer to " the hardheaded question why
there is any aesthetic difference between a deceptive forgery and an original
work " (p. 99). One might have thought that the production of a perfect
fake was simply extremely difficult : perhaps so difficult as to be practically,
i.e., contingently, impossible. But Goodman argues that it is necessarily
impossible. He supposes a case in which " we have before us, on the left,
Rembrandt's original painting Lucretia and, on the right, a superlative
imitation of it . . . w e cannot see any difference between them " (pp. 99-
100). Nevertheless, they are aesthetically different because, in brief, know-
ledge of their provenance tells us that there may be a perceptible difference
between them, which we should now be trying to learn to perceive ; and
thus our present experience of the two pictures is differentiated (p. 105).
This is inordinately puzzing. Ex hypothesi, Goodman doesn't mean that
we see them to be different, even though we don't know what the perceptible
difference is, for he supposes that " if they are moved while we sleep, we
cannot tell which is which by merely looking at them " (p. 100). So we see
them as different solely by looking at the authentication on the back: why
does that make a difference ? Well, " the information that they are very
different " leads us to expect them to look different (p. 104). But contrari-
wise : it might be more reasonable to expect the perfect reproduction to go
Barrett, S.J. (ed.), Collected Papers on Aesthetics (Oxford, 1965) ; P . F . Strawson, Indi-
viduals (London, 1959), pp. 230-4 ; Jeanne Waoker, " Particular Works of Art ", in
B a r r e t t ; Joseph Margolis, The Language of Art and Art Criticism (Detroit, 1965), p t .
I I ; Andrew Harrison, " Works of Art and Other Cultural Objects ", Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 1967-8, p p . 105-28. Keferences in the text are b y author and page
of these editions. (Margolis replied to Goodman in The British Journal of Aesthetics,
1970, p p . 138-46.)
'Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (London, 1969). All references in the text b y
page alone are to this work.
' I n this paper, I generally use ' notation-al-ity ' in Goodman's sense, except where
the context calls for some obvious modification.
 T H E EEPRODTJCIBILITY O F A WORK OF ART 3
on looking the same as the original, just because it is so well done ; just how
reasonable would depend on technical advances still in the future.6 Again,
if knowing that one is a Rembrandt indicates what sort of scrutiny, what
kind of comparisons and associations to bring to the picture (pp. 104-5),
then thinking that the other is a perfect copy will indicate exactly the same
treatment for it too ; for the biography of Rembrandt, his place in art-
history, and so forth, are equally relevant to an appreciation of the copy
just because it is of a Rembrandt that it is a copy. So this item of know-
ledge—that one is a fake—is aesthetically irrelevant, and fails to differentiate
our expectations.
" But doesn't the (unique) original just feel different ? ". If it does, then

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so also does the manuscript of a poem, a manuscript score, a first edition,
or even an early gramophone record. This kind of uniqueness is not an
aesthetic feature of this painting, but a feeling about the painter, which we
metonymously transfer to the work. We need not, and perhaps we should
not, make this move ; perhaps we should concentrate not on the substance,
but on the essence, of a work of art. (An evaluation tacitly recognized,
not denied, by the entire craft of the art-restorer.) Goodman claims that
my inability to determine authorship just by looking " does not imply that
the authorship makes no aesthetic difference to me ; for knowledge of the
authorship, no matter how obtained, can contribute materially toward
developing my ability to determine without . . . apparatus whether or not
any picture, including this one on another occasion, is by Rembrandt " (end
of paragraph) (p. 110, my italics). If this argument is not due to Andrew
Harrison's " Sotheby effect " (Harrison, p. 121), it at least betrays what I
would call the " Baedeker effect ", and surely disfranchises Goodman's
attack, two pages later, on the " Tingle-Immersion theory " : the theory
that a work's aesthetic potency is measured by the tingle resulting from
immersion in it. The sole difference is that Goodman's tingles come from
knowing that it really is a Rembrandt that he sees before him.7 But the
" symptoms of the aesthetic " that he himself produces in the last chapter
(p. 252) make no mention of this !
" But it must affect you somehow if you know the painting is a Rem-
brandt ! ". It is unclear to me whether Goodman can properly help himself
to the premiss that we know this painting to be authentic ; for we can't
rule out the possibility of subsequently discovering its inauthenticity. So
all our judgments of identity are provisional, and we are fully entitled to
assert (provisionally) the (visual) identity of original and copy.
Goodman's natural move here is to reiterate the impossibility of perfect
"Since Goodman's point is t h a t known works can't be replicated, his reference to
Van Meegeren—whose achievement was to forge the unknown—to demonstrate the
importance of recognizing authenticity is infelicitous. (See pp. 99-111.)
7
A cartoon by Caiman, The Sunday Times, 29 November 1970 : a man looks at a
framed canvas, on which is merely a huge label saying " £2,300,000 ". Caption : " Look
at the exquisite drawing of the figure ".
4 ANTHONY RALLS

reproduction in painting : and this is little better than a Conventionalist

Sulk.8 For perfect replication is commonplace outside a r t ; and pace Good-
man, two castings of the same sculpture, or two lithographs, can be (though
they need not be) aesthetically because perceptually identical. So his claim
ought to be, simply, that the actual canons of art criticism require that we
treat copies of paintings as different works ; and we could then straight-
forwardly formulate objections to those canons. But in fact he also pro-
duces at least two general arguments against the very possibility of perfect
replication, when discussing painting (pp. 106-7), etchings (p. 119), and even
photography (p. 189). These are, roughly, (1) that we cannot be certain
that the original and the copy really do have identically the same pictorial

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properties (esp. pp. 106-7 ; also p. 119), and (2) that nothing less than
uniqueness (or, of course, notationality) will rescue us from the toils of the
Transitivity of Identity (esp. pp. 186-7 and 189).
Against (1) we can, and should, set the Identity of Indiscernibles. What
matters about a painting is how it looks (cf. Wacker, p. 52), and lookers
are the arbiters of identity of looks. So long as copying processes are poor,
then no copy equals its original. But once we can obtain replicas which,
in all the ways we test them, do stand up to the original, then we can stop
worrying ; until someone does detect a flaw, when we revise our judgment,
and try to improve the reproductive technique. Certainly we know that
Goodman would still worry, however perfect the technique. But then Good-
man also worries (because of argument (2) ) about the identity of a musical
performance with one wrong note (p. 186). Since we do in fact cope with
considerable imprecision and even indeterminacy in music and other per-
forming arts (see below, section (II. 1. a)), we are surely able to cope with
minute, residual, unperceivable imprecision in the reproduction of paintings.
At present I neglect the argument that we could so alter our canons as to
permit of (some)'perceivableimprecision in the replication of paintings. See
below, pp. 14 f.)
Finally, against (2) we need a related weapon. Indiscernible looks are
identical; but look-identity is only contingently transitive. (Every school-
boy ought to know that A looks like B and B looks like C does not entail
A looks like G.) The archetypal original painting is of course needed as the
permanent touchstone of correctness of every replica. And any appearance
of paradox about the conjunction of this statement with my general deroga-
tion of unique originals may be partially dispelled by reflection on the nature
of unique prototypes, and further dissipated, as I hope, by my later attempt
(below, p. 18) to generalize and sharpen up this weapon of the Non-Transi-
tivity of Look-Identity.
The upshot of this preliminary skirmish is that paintings are not neces-
sarily unique, non-replicable objects. This entails the falsity of Goodman's
claim that it is only because of this necessary uniqueness that they can be
•See Antony Flew, Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London, 1961), p . 26.
 T H E R E P R O D U C I B I L I T Y O F A W O R K O F ART 5
faked. This of course leaves open after all the presumably correct alternative,
that fake is parasitic upon the purely contingent difficulty of replication
here, with the chance of high profits that this affords to anyone who more
or less surmounts those difficulties. And this yields the conclusion that
fakes are after all, as one might have thought in the first place, simply " a
nasty practical problem to the collector, the curator, and the art historian "
(and, one must surely add, the dealer), but not, thank heavens, an " even
more acute . . . theoretical problem " for the philosopher of art. (Contrast
p. 99.)

II

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SCORES, PERFORMANCES, AND REPRODUCTIONS
Nevertheless, as things now stand, Goodman is right, though for the
wrong reason, about " the rather curious fact that in music, unlike painting,
there is no such thing as a forgery of a known work " (p. 112). This dis-
tinction is generalized by means of a useful definition :
Let us speak of a work of art as autographic if and only if the distinction be-
tween original and forgery of it is significant ; or better, if and only if even the
most exact duplication of it does not thereby count as genuine. . . . Thus
painting is autographic, music nonautographic, or allographic. . . . Now the
problem before us is to account for the fact t h a t some arts but not others are
autographic.
The rationale of this distinction, which eventually introduces the core of
the book, " The Theory of Notation " (c. IV), is summarized at page 122 :
A forgery of a work of art is an object falsely purporting to have the history of
production requisite for the (or an) original of the work. Where there is a theo-
retically decisive test for determining t h a t an object has all the constitutive
properties of the work in question without determining how or by whom the
object was produced, there is no requisite history of production and hence no
forgery of any given work. Such a test is provided by a suitable notational
system with an articulate set of characters and of relative positions for them. . . .
Definitive identification of works, fully freed from history of production, is
achieved only when a notation is established.
Goodman's account of notationality is lengthy and complex, and has al-
ready received considerable attention. 9 I shall confine myself to quoting
his conclusion (p. 156) :
A system is notational, then, if and only if all objects complying with inscrip-
tions of a given character belong to the same compliance class and we can,
theoretically, determine t h a t each mark belongs to, and each object complies
with inscriptions of, at most one particular character.
I propose to argue (II. 1) that for quite fundamental reasons it is not
by means of notationality that work-identity is preserved in (a) music,
(6) literature, and (c) architecture ; (II. 2) that even in painting and sculpture,
not merely is identical reproduction possible, but this could conceivably be
achieved by a scoring, and in certain cases a notational, system. Hence
notationality does not provide the differentia that Goodman is after.
8
In addition to Margolis's paper (above, n. 3), see Kent Bach, " Part of What a
Picture I s ", The British Journal of Aesthetics, 1970, pp. 119-32 ; C. F . Presley, Critical
Notice of Languages of Art, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1970, pp. 373-8 ; An-
thony Savile, " Nelson Goodman's ' Languages of Art ' : A Study ", The British Journal
of Aesthetics, 1971, pp. 19-26.
6 ANTHONY BALLS

(II. 1. a) Music.—Goodman calls this " the cardinal example " (p. 178)
of an art in which " a score is a character in a notational system " (p. 177).
I consider this claim to be almost totally false, and shall here indicate only
some specimen infractions of notationality, none of them merely " plain and
local " (p. 186), some in fact altogether basic. They can be classified, roughly,
for present purposes, under the headings Conventional Imprecision, Com-
poser's Restraint, Tempo Markings, Avant Carde Music, and The Wrong-
Note Problem.
(i) By Conventional Imprecision I refer to the well-known practice, in
various periods, countries and styles, of scoring works in a manner which
was intended to be modified, according to certain often quite precise con-

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ventions, in performance. Seventeenth and eighteenth century music affords
the clearest cases. Francois Couperin wrote in 1716, " What we write is
different from what we play " 10 : as in notes inigales, which are written
equal, but performed either long-short-long-short, or short-long-short-long ;
or again, a particularly familiar aspect of " the French style ", in the regular
lengthening of the dotted note in dotted-quaver semiquaver couplets. Some
ornaments, especially the appoggiatura, were often given a different interpre-
tation from that which the notation would appear to suggest (e.g., minim
for crotchet); and ornaments were often omitted as a matter of course, to
be inserted spontaneously, but not arbitrarily, by the performer. Strict
notationality (one symbol •<->• one compliant) can be maintained here only
by regarding the music of each period, country, and style as written in its
own sub-notation (cf. p. 184). This leaves it mysterious, how the " sub-
notations " so obviously constitute parts of one unified system ; it renders
shaky Goodman's project of divorcing identification of a work from know-
ledge of its history (p. 122), for one needs to know when and by whom the
work was written, and how the composer meant what he wrote to be inter-
preted ; and it makes difficult the recovery of the exact score from the per-
formance—the possibility of which is essential, according to Goodman's
definition of the " compliance " of a performance with its score (p. 178).
(ii) The practice of Composer's Restraint raises the same problems, but
to a more acute degree. At many periods, composers have deliberately left
the manner of rendering certain passages, from a single note to a whole
movement, to the performer's own invention and musicality. The Couperins
wrote preludes11 whose notes are scored entirely as semibreves : the per-
former was to determine every aspect of the rhythm for himself. Figured
bass is an obvious example ; so also are cadenzas and roulades, (quasi-)
improvisations in which the composer's and performer's contributions may
vary within very wide limits. In Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto, the
entire slow movement, to be extemporized or otherwise supplied by the
"Quoted in Jack Westrup, Musical Interpretation (London, 1971), a valuable little
book which amply illustrates m y theme, from which most of my musical examples are
taken for ease of reference.
" A n example due to Ian Bent, BBC Radio 3, 15th April 1971.
 THE REPRODUCIBILITY OF A WORK OF ART 7

performers, is indicated by two chords. Again, many works used to be

written for any of a variety of instruments, or for none in particular : Bach's
The Art of Fugue is a conspicuous example. And much twentieth century
music leaves all manner of things unspecified. In all of these cases—and
the list could be indefinitely extended—it appears just obvious that work-
identity is successfully preserved from performance to performance, but
that this is not achieved by a notational determination of compliance ;
and that, above all, the score is not recoverable from the performance. Good-
man's reply is that such things as figured bass and free cadenzas are represent-
ed in the score in their own notational sub-systems which " must be desig-
nated and adhered to " (p. 184). But of course no such designation actually

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occurs. So the recovery of score from performance in such cases is possible
only if we already know precisely how much specificity or latitude was
present in this particular score. So we can identify the work of which this
is a performance, not by recovering the score from it, but by recognizing
it as having been executed to the composer's instructions. Contrariwise,
on the issue of variable instrumentation, Goodman's account (pp. 182, 206)
would suggest that The Art of Fugue is nothing but a kind of schema for a
number of different, instrumentally specific, scores, and not itself a score ;
thus it would represent not one work, but several : quod est absurdum. Per-
former's freedom is as vital an element in Western music as composer's
specificity, and it is ruinous to such claims for notationality.
(iii) Goodman positively asserts that " the verbal language of tempos is
not notational " because of its ambiguity, and lack of semantic disjointness
and differentiation ;12 and for this reason (alone) he rules that " tempo words
cannot be integral parts of a score " for purposes of work-identification;
consequently " no departure from the indicated tempo disqualifies a per-
formance as an instance—however wretched—of the work defined by the
score " (p. 185). The falsity of this is best illustrated by an experiment.
Ask a competent pianist to play the first movement of the Moonlight sonata
at J = 240 (i.e., extremely fast instead of adagio sostenuto); or again, to
play the first movement of the Waldstein at J = 6 (i.e., intolerably slowly,
instead of allegro con brio). I t will be sufficiently obvious that he has failed
to play the Moonlight, or the Waldstein, but has played merely a series of
notes, which constitute those works only when performed at something
like the proper tempo. (On the organ, because it is a sustaining instrument,
the first note of any work could—if speed is no object—be made of indefinite
duration, thus actually destroying work-differentiation !) Note-lengths being
merely relative, tempo markings—or in some pre-nineteenth century music,
conventional interpretational practices—are absolutely required before the
notes can be executed, so as to constitute a particular work, at all. But
la
B u t Goodman compounds the problem b y inoluding among his examples of " the
vooabulary of tempo " menuetto, rondo alia Pollaca, fantasia, and affetuoso e sostenuto :
indications not of tempo b u t of style and mood (pp. 184-5).
8 ANTHONY BALLS

even metronome markings (which escape Goodman's strictures) are not

notational : only in some exceptional cases (e.g., Bartok) do most musicians
seek to follow them precisely; even if they tried, comparatively few could
succeed in keeping the time perfectly ; and some markings it is impossible,
or absurd, to follow (e.g., some of Beethoven's).
(iv) The theoretical problems of Avant Garde Music are altogether too
vast for me to say anything remotely adequate about them here. But one
thing must be said, since it is here that Goodman's fundamental, and here un-
argued, logicism most perspicuously reveals its forked tail. He suggests that
many scoring systems recently introduced are fundamentally analog ; that

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under them, " There are no disjoint and differentiated characters or com-
pliance-classes " (p. 189). This means, roughly, that it is not conclusively
determinable for which note(-sign) each mark on the paper stands, nor
which note(-sound) counts as a compliant performance of that mark. Con-
sequently, and not merely as a terminological recommendation, he claims
that such a system is " no notation, no language, no score ", and therefore
" furnishes no means of identifying a work from performance to performance
or even of [sic] a character from mark to mark " (p. 189). The extraordinary
conclusion follows, that we cannot decide what is a performance of, e.g.,
Cage's score of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Solo for Piano, or again of
a score for electronic music with continuously variable pitch, volume,
timbre, etc. (pp. 188-91). The empirical answer to such apriorism is that
musicians can and do perform, and audiences enjoy, such works over and
over again on different occasions; their identity is accordingly preserved,
albeit not by Goodmanesque notationality, but by the use of the score as
a recipe for the production of the kind of sounds, or range of sounds, the
composer had in mind. Fortunately Cage, and Gerhard, and Stockhausen,
can look after themselves ; but aestheticians ought not to tell musicians, or
the musical public, that they can't do what they manifestly do. (" But
didn't you say that the public is wrong to make a fuss about original paint-
ings ? ". Exactly. To make that distinction is foolish ; how then could it
be impossible ?)
(v) Finally, The Wrong-Note Problem reminds us that even where we
might appear to have quasi-notationality in a score, even there the preserva-
tion of work-identity does not require complete fidelity to that score. Good-
man says that to avoid moving " by a series of one-note errors . . . all the
way from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to Three Blind Mice ", " full com-
pliance with the specifications given is categorically required " (p. 187).
(This follows from the Transitivity of Identity, with Goodman's doctrine of
the recoverability of score from performance as well as performance from
score.) Alfred Brendel said recently, of Beethoven's sonatas, " One should
live dangerously at all costs. Perfectionism has done enough harm already.
. . . It is not enough to take the text literally. [The question to be asked
is] what did the composer mean to say, and how can I say it today, as nobly
 T H E R E P R O D U C I B I L I T Y OF A WORK OF ART 9
as possible. . . ? [One should] make a work sound a new experience by
taking away the effect of constant reproductions."13 Of course Goodman
knows that he flouts ordinary usage, but he thinks ordinary usage " points
the way to disaster for theory " (p. 120 n.). But the disaster is to Goodman's
own theory, which would render the standard practice of musicians un-
intelligible ; that practice which knows nothing of the necessary recoverability
of score from authentic performance, and which altogether evades the
difficulties of the Transitivity of Identity, since the compliance which is
the prerequisite of work-identity operates in one direction only, to secure
the reasonable conformity of performance with score, and not, save per

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accidens, vice versa. Goodman himself allows us to say " in ordinary dis-
course " that " a pianist who misses a note has performed a Chopin Polo-
naise " (p. 187). But in granting that, he has conceded the case. For ordinary
discourse reflects ordinary practice, and ordinary practice successfully pre-
serves work-identity through wrong notes. Provisionally, it is for the public
to decide what is or is not The Golliwog's Cake Walk.
A score is not, as Goodman claims, a notational definition, having as its
primary function the authoritative identification of a work from performance
to performance. It is a recipe : a schematized instruction from the composer
on how to make the sort of sound he had in mind (the unmystifying reason
why, usually, " the composer's work is done when he has written the score "
(p. 114) ). To be a recipe, a score must have, simply, practical efficacy. It
functions as a recipe, if it is suited to enabling people to produce what its
creator intended, sufficiently closely according to the judgment of competent
judges. (Of course recipes can themselves be mouth-watering, and " many
musicians derive pleasure from reading music without hearing it " (Westrup,
p. 7, but see his subsequent remarks ; contrast Goodman, p. 255).) Good-
manesque notationality is needed neither to get from score to performance,
nor (as might be suggested) for the initial purpose of facilitating the accurate
recording by the composer of his intentions. Painters can be equally adept
at transferring their thoughts on to canvas : but painting is the paradigm
of the " autographic " and " non-notational ". Each phase among artistic
creation, execution, and performance can be seen as a species of intending,
or instructing, or carrying out intentions or instructions. And to intend or
instruct is not to define or identify.14
(II. 1. b) Literary Arts.—Goodman's discussion of literature proceeds at
an even loftier remove from recent work in aesthetics and from the actual
practice of the arts. He holds what is in effect a simplistic, nominalistic
version of the type/token doctrine that a literary work is the text, the
" B B C Radio 3, 31st October 1970.
14
So two unperformed scores are scores for two different works in t h a t they intend
different performances : cf. two unfulfilled intentions. So we avoid the philistine
absurdity of calling them " scores for ' different works ' in the oblique sense "(p. 205 n.,
m y italics), because, forsooth, as notational definitions, they " have t h e same (i.e., no)
performances as compliants " !
10 ANTHONY BALLS

inscriptions and utterances of which constitute the instances of the work.15

" Identification . . . is ensured by the fact that the text is a character in a
notational scheme " (p. 209). With a remarkable disregard for the obvious
difficulties that a type/token doctrine must face here, he asserts : " To verify
the spelling or to spell correctly is all that is required to identify an instance
of the work or to produce a new instance " (p. 116), and less remarkably,
but still controversially, " a translation of a work is not an instance of that
work " (p. 209).
The objections to this are regrettably banal. I attempt to present them
briefly, and with deliberately obvious examples. First, copies of the same
poem, novel, or play can vary enormously, while still being of the very same

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work. Work-identity survives through printer's error (" [The warhorse]
smelleth the bottle afar off "), 16 orthographical vagaries (Shakespeare's
" apricock "), textual uncertainty whether minor (" ' A babbled of green
fields ") 17 or major (Macbeth's Hecate), and even radical textual reconstruc-
tion (Lachmann's Lucretius). Identification itself calls for the exercise of
critical judgment : it is highly questionable whether there are any deter-
minate textual criteria of the identity of a literary work. (Gilbert Murray
wrote somewhere that the Choephoroe's choric odes are so corrupt that we
would be unable, on sound critical canons, to acknowledge a wholly
authentic text, should one turn up in the sands of Egypt.)
Second, it is critically imperative to recognize the existence of the same
poem through successive revisions (consider Gerard Manley Hopkins, passim).
The poem is whatever the poet intends to create, and to call " the same
poem ". Hence the original manuscript must sometimes be more than
contingently distinguished from all other instances of the work : it may be
an archetype, in that it is the specific physical medium for the expression of
the writer's (successive and developing) intentions for the writing of a poem.
Third, a literary work can, though it may not, survive translation,
which can create not a new work, but a translation of the same work, i.e.,
the same work (translated). (Consider Doctor Zhivago ; but contrast on the
one hand Butcher & Lang's, and on the other Pope's, Odyssey.)
Fourth, Goodman has to hold that a play is notationally determined by
its dialogue alone, to which stage-directions and other materials count only
as " supplementary instructions " (p. 211). But consider Shaw ; or Beckett's
new, somewhat brief play Breath, which has no dialogue ; or Exit pursued
by a bear.
Thus although a literary work may be entirely, or largely, written down
or spoken in a notation, it is not by notationality that its identity is pre-
served. Nevertheless it is allographic : it can be indefinitely reproduced,

"See especially Charles L. Stevenson, " On ' W h a t is a Poem ? ' ", The Philosophical
Review, 1957, pp. 329-62, and Joseph Margolis, loc. cit.
" J o b 39.25, as printed in the so-called Drunken Bible.
"Theobald's emendation of the Folio, Henry V, I I , iii, 9.
 THE REPRODUCIBILITY OF A WORK OF ART 11
without forgery, simply because it is written in a pre-existent natural
language, which itself necessarily employs readily reproducible units for
purposes of communication and understanding. The chaste quasi-notation-
ality of the typical literary text is merely a cultural convention, that hap-
pens in general to exclude instructions about such non-notatable matters
as rhythm (but again remember Hopkins !), and tone and manner of voice
(but Yeats could have written into the text, instead of simply recommending
independently, that he was to be read cantando). Yet allographic identity
would still be preserved if they were included. Roughly speaking, freedom
from forgery is a function of ease of reproduction. (The book which consists
essentially of text with illustrations—clearly non-notational, yet reproducible

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—constitutes an insuperable difficulty for Goodman. See also below, p.
16.)
(II. 1. c) Architecture.—Analogous points cry out to be made about all
the allographic arts. I have no competence to discuss the dance (pp. 211-8),
and the film appears to be an uninterestingly straightforward case for the
present purpose : " the most exact duplication " of a film does " count as "
a " genuine instance of the work " (cf. p. 113), but the relevant mode of
copying is manifestly not notational. As for architecture,18 its archetype
is the plans (generic sense) : a diverse but theoretically unproblematical
combination of plans (specific sense), working drawings, and specifications,
by means of which the architect tells the builder how to build what he had
in mind. (Goodman gives a slightly different list, pp. 218-9.) There is neither
point nor sense in the claim that it is by its compliance with the plans alone
(specific sense), and only then by means of a notational interpretation of
those, that a building is to be identified (pp. 218 ff.). Predictably, I say that
the decision whether a building complies with the architect's design is itself
a matter of critical judgment.
In the first place, the drawings of the plans need not be notational : the
" flounced facade of Gaudi's Casa Mila " (Gauldie, pp. 21-2) may best be
depicted, not by a series of disjoint and differentiated characters forming a
digital diagram, but in an analog drawing, which imitates what it prescribes
(contrast p. 219). Second, and far more important, " the architect's specifica-
tions of materials and construction " are often as integral a feature of his
design as we have seen tempo and dynamic markings to be of a musical
score (contrast again p. 219). Above the level of mass-production, and
sometimes even there, the texture, the feel, and the look of a building may
be as essential to it, identificationally as well as aesthetically, as its mere
shape. " Quite apart from its physical associations, . . . texture has the
power to modify the appearance of shape by assisting or defeating cognition.
. . . Textures can not only modulate the qualities of solids but . . . can be
used to modulate the feel of space itself" (Gauldie, pp. 115-6). It is not
18
I am indebted to my colleague and neighbour Sinclair Gauldie for discussing these
matters with me. See his Architecture (London, 1969).
12 ANTHONY BALLS

obvious that Hugh Casson's Elephant House at the London Zoo would be
the same building in polished aluminium sheeting. Yet textures and looks,
while certainly not notatable, are equally certainly reproducible. Again, an
environment scheme for a group of rectilinear stone-faced public buildings
may have its identity, as well as its particular aesthetic mediocrity, more
thoroughly destroyed by a square but red-brick Post Office than by a stone-
faced but curviform one. Again, the client will have a justified grouch if
his picturesque pine-clad ranch-house is finished in pink and yellow plastic
panels. And he will have a cast-iron suit at law if its main beams are balsa
wood and its " slate " roof papier-mache : not the house the architect de-
signed for him, but a cardboard copy of i t ! Shape, size, material, texture

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and construction are so intimately related as to make an a 'priori preference
for one or two over the others, even for purposes of theoretical identification,
wholly arbitrary. Even ornament and decoration may be fundamental to a
building's identity, as in Gothic or Byzantine churches, or Greek or Hindu
or Mexican temples, where it " assumes a function of engaging the spectator
with the building or rather with the myth that gives the building its purpose "
(Gauldie, p. 121, italics original), and thus " becomes a natural and in-
dispensable part of religious architecture " (loc. cit., my italics). Whether
these elements are reckoned to be reproducible will depend on what we
decide to say about painting and sculpture. (See below, section (II. 2).)
On the opposite front, when we look at apparently autographic archi-
tecture, and buildings that are unique and therefore not identically re-
producible but merely fakeable, it is no surprise to discover that this auto-
graphicity is not a function of notationality. It seems to rest upon (i) author-
ship and authorization, (ii) geographical uniqueness, and (hi) historical
association. It is contingent whether these are aesthetically significant,
(i) If Smith thoroughly plagiarizes Brown's design, it is a moot point whether
the result is another instance of Brown's building, or merely Smith's plagi-
arized imitation of it. (ii) Prank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water resists
authentic reproduction not because it can't be " scored ", but because we'd
need another waterfall exactly similar. But if vandals removed the building
overnight, " it " could be rebuilt on site ; and what if an exactly similar
waterfall turned up ? (iii) But someone may say that we couldn't build
another Frank Lloyd Wright without the master's supervision. The Baedeker-
effect again ! Compare the question, could we identically reproduce, or copy,
or only fake, Windsor Castle ? Answer : It would not be Windsor Castle,
because it would be in a different place, it would lack the relevant royal
history, and consequently it would be knavery to show people over it for
20p on a " Conducted Tour of Windsor Castle ". But of that economic
reason, as of the analogous reason for the art curator's preoccupation with
the authenticity of paintings, it is folly to expect an aesthetic justification.
I am conscious that some of these assertions about architecture are
highly controversial. But if even that much be granted, then Goodman's
 T H E R E P E O D U C I B I L I T Y O F A W O E K OF AET 13
views here are equally controversial, and need more than the three-and-a-
half pages he gives to them before they could form part of an adequate
foundation for the weight of superstructure he seeks to erect. For my part,
I believe these views will not even stand up, and for a now familiar reason.
Architects' plans are, precisely, plans : designs, written-out intentions, whose
primary purpose is to get the building built, and not to identify it once
built. They stand in exactly the same case as the paper-work of the other
allographic arts. If that is so, their notationality is incidental, a contingent
feature of their intentionality, and emphatically not a necessary condition
of their multiple applicability.
(II. 2) The Notation of Painting and Sculpture.—I argued in section

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(I) that multiple identity is not ruled out in painting and sculpture ; I shall
have to return to this general theme in section (III). Here I want to urge
specifically that, in certain ways, notations are conceivable for both these
arts. Consequently, either they are not after all wholly autographic, or the
explanation of their autographicity in terms of non-notationality is mis-
conceived. Either way, the pristine simplicity of the explanations—painting
and sculpture are autographic because non-notational, other arts are allo-
graphic because notational—is rudely violated.
Goodman makes no concessions to notationality here, beyond his ironical
" straight-faced " suggestion that we could evolve " a library-like decimal
system assigning a numeral to each painting according to time and place
of production " (p. 194). We should now be in a position to see that this
unfunny joke embodies a radical philosophical error, and why. Such a
system would lack the intentional or instructional features essential to
common-or-garden notations, which constitute (roughly) rule-governed,
(more-or-less) learnable procedures for transcribing (a number of) the
elements of a work. They serve their typical purpose by demanding rela-
tively little particularized knowledge about the work notated in this score,
so that a performer who knows the rules and conventions for this kind of
work can produce a performance with that knowledge alone. The " Goodman-
decimal system " would give us even less access to any features whatever of
its compliant works than does the Dewey decimal system ; that such a
system " would meet all five requirements " laid down for notationality
shows only that Goodman has got hold of the wrong stick (p. 194). We may
be able to see how that comes about a little later on.
Some paintings are readily notatable : e.g., simple geometrical paintings
in flat commercial colour. So too with some modern geometric sculpture :
e.g., David Smith's stainless steel Cubi I 1963, or the sundial Henry Moore
made for The Times. There is of course no difficulty in arguing, ad bonum
hominem, that curves can be Goodman-notated. They can be just as easily
digitated as the lines on an architect's plans (p. 219). And in a reach-me-
down sense, all curves can be notated : the mark ^ > i s a good notation for
telling me what shape to make the sculpture at a certain point. Again,
14 ANTHONY BALLS

some mosaics, or newspaper illustrations made out of regular rows of mono-

chrome dots of disjointly graduated sizes and/or shades, could be readily
notated on square paper—or on a punched tape. To disqualify this claim
simply on the ground that it doesn't capture the antecedently acknowledged
species of uniqueness for such works is nothing but another Conventionalist
Sulk (pp. 197-8). Notice, however, that fake is not ruled out by such notating.
If I notate and reproduce Cubi I, and tell my envious colleagues that this
is the Cubi I (the one that David Smith made), then I would be guilty of
impropriety in relation to an aesthetic object, but not of aesthetic im-
propriety.
A more far-reaching suggestion would be for a reproductive notational

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system for painting and sculpture in general. It is not absurd, though
doubtless rebarbative, to imagine imposing a two-dimensional grid on a
painting (three-dimensional for sculpture), and recording the predominant
colour, texture, etc., of each square (cube). This " score " could be pro-
duced to some finite degree of accuracy, by reference to a standardized
colour-chart, etc. It could then be " performed " : like painting-by-num-
bers ! There would be varying " interpretations " of the score, naturally
differing in aesthetic merit, just as in music. We could suppose " paint-
composers " who deliberately created such scores, leaving it to others to
" render " them ; and the paint-composer's own rendering would have only
a certain measure of authority, like a composer's performance of his own
music. Some people would buy scores, and Do-It-Themselves ; some might
buy reproductions of some good version (cf. gramophone records) ; and
particularly good versions might be hung in galleries (cf. concerts).
To those who excusably find this a piece of far-fetched whimsy the
following little anthropological fantasy might prove more acceptable. Among
the Bigga-Banga, the only acceptable two-dimensional art-form might
be, at a primitive period, cross-stitched tapestry worked in a regular grid
with a strictly limited range of dyed stuffs. Centuries later, their artists
might branch out into analogously stereotyped mosaic, and perhaps event-
ually into a kind of geometrical painting, still employing the primitive
grid-modulus. The crucial point at each stage is that, for the Bigga-Banga,
deviation from the conventionally precise norms is regarded as nothing but
a blemish, to be eradicated forthwith : maybe its perpetrator is punished.
Then although we may see such norms as nothing but contingent limitations
arbitrarily imposed upon an intrinsically non-finitely-differentiable material,
the Bigga-Banga see them as constituting the very essence of art : per-
haps they seek to imitate a naively geometrizing deity. So their pictures
are necessarily notatable ; and since they are reproducible by anyone who
has been initiated into the notation, they are unfakeable. And the notated
score for one of their pictures is manifestly non-arbitrary : for it embodies
just those culture-relative norms that prescribe the Bigga-Banga's concept
of the identity of a work of art.
 T H E E B P R O D U C I B I L I T Y OF A WOBK O F A E T 15
These little stories suggest that views about artistic identity are both
contingent (a matter of the cultural norms that happen to apply), and necessary
(since non-arbitrarily determined within the culture in question). We cer-
tainly don't practise Do-It-Yourself Art, or Bigga-Banga Art, and it is
fairly easy to discern what constitutes the fundamental difference in our
own present norms. In virtually all the art-forms, we set great store by
sensitivity to the significance of minute detail; but aesthetically relevant
detail is notoriously difficult to capture in any notation. In music, the
evanescence of the performance, until the advent of the phonograph (or
the piano-roll), caused us to be content with an emasculated score as the
permanent vehicle of a work's identity. Paintings are rather permanent, so

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why put up with a mere notation ? In music, we now have copies of scores
( = recipes for performances) and copies of records ( = performances for
listeners). It is a barren kind of conservatism that would rule out a priori
a similar two-level institution in another art form. (Might not such an
institution be a good thing ? That is to say, bluntly, good for people % It is
good to play Bach for yourself; why not, to paint Bridget Riley for your-
self ? Perhaps it would be bad for Bridget Riley ? Or bad for the develop-
ment of creativity ? Maybe : but then the suggestion is not unintelligible,
but simply disagreeable. See below, p. 17.)
But Goodman holds that the quest for a " real definition " of a work of
art, which in music involved " developing a notational system " to capture
its essential multiplicity, must in painting force us to " depend (for identifi-
cation) upon history of production " : for we must at all costs remain " con-
sonant with antecedent practice " (pp. 197-8). This is surprising in view of
his scorn of actual practice in music and architecture (pp. 186, 220). It is
also unargued. Goodman explicitly repudiates one plausible suggestion,
that the aesthetic properties of music can, while those of painting can't, be
captured in a score ; for he writes that " even where the constitutive pro-
perties of a work are clearly distinguished by means of a notation, they
cannot be identified with the aesthetic properties " (p. 120, and passim).
With no rationale provided, it is Goodman's own insistence on the vital
historicity of the substance of a painting that is arbitrary and nominal, and
not the contrary attempt to pay overriding attention to the painting's
essential feature, its look. What matters is not whether this " is the actual
object made by Rembrandt " (p. 116), but whether it is the Lucretia. Well,
does it look like it ?
The inevitability of this question at last explains why Goodman goes
wrong. It is true, though relatively uninformative, to say that two objects
or events are instances of the same work of art if they look (sound, feel,
taste) the same according to acceptable canons for the art in question.
Now we know from Goodman's " Seven Strictures on Similarity ",19 if we
" I n Lawrence Foster & J . W . Swanson (edd.), Experience & Theory (University of
Massachusetts U.P., 1970).
16 A N T H O N Y RALLS

didn't know before, that A and B are similar only if there is a respect in
which they are similar ; for Goodman this amounts to the demand for the
specification of the predicate under which they both fall. Where there
exists a notation, there we can say exactly how things resemble ; and where
there is not, we can't. No two paintings can ever sufficiently resemble one
another to be identical, simply because there exists no rule (no comprehensive
catalogue of predicates) for determining their resemblance. But only Good-
manesque nominalists need be suffocated by this stricture ! The rest of us
can invoke new notations, new rules, or use the enlightened sensitivity of
the practised eye, to distinguish things which differ and identify those
which are the same.

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Ill
ARCHETYPES, PROTOTYPES, AND MULTIPLES
So we can at last leave the Theory of Notation to the logicians, and take
a final independent look at multiple identity. Whether and how that is
preserved we have seen to be determined, within the constraints of economic
and technical considerations, by cultural norms : critical canons which lay
down criteria for the identification of authentic ectypes of the archetype.
But I have urged that we ought to see the objects of all the arts as in principle
reproducible, and must now say how and why we should adopt this stance.
Is it nothing but a theoretically motivated, ultimately arbitrary piece of
conceptual revisionism ? One could think that, only through over-concentra-
tion on painting and some forms of sculpture. Quite apart from literature
and the performing arts, multiples proliferate, with no conceptual embarrass-
ment. Films and photographs would be important cases to study here :
they can be identically copied, or faked, but are obviously not in a notation.
So too would printed books, particularly illustrated books in which the
pictures are a recognized part of the whole work, such as Tenniel's Alice,
or even integral to the work, as in Kipling's Just So Stories, illustrated by
himself. Both these originally appeared in arbitrarily limited editions ; but
when a new edition is issued, not only does it contain (further copies of)
the very same text, but also (further copies of) the very same illustrations.
So much for the dogma that for prints, " the most exact copy produced
otherwise than by printing from (the original) plate counts not as an original
but as an imitation or forgery " (p. 114, my italics ; cf. pp. 118-9). This
certainly reflects " antecedent practice " in the world of art-dealers ; but
the practice is aesthetically pernicious, except where it in turn reflects a
genuine difficulty of reproduction. The same goes for cast sculpture, which
Goodman laconically calls " comparable to printmaking " (p. 120). And
modern multiple art, from Art Nouveau onwards, involves the deliberate
intention that, as in the performing arts on the one hand, and industrial
manufacture on the other, its objects should be replicable.
Multiple visual art, the concept and the practice, is here to stay. Even
 THE REPRODUCIBILITY OF A WORK OE ART 17
to regard copies and reproductions of standard paintings as " performances "
of their originals is scarcely revisionist : the public does it all the time. I
can possess Klee's Castle and Sun—in copy ; not a good one, but indubitably
Castle and Sun. So why should the philosopher of art lose sleep over repro-
duction ? Well, it is commonplace common ground that our concepts modify
our view of our world. It is almost as commonplace to say that they facilitate
and inhibit our activity. The aesthetic concept of substantial uniqueness
must go. Since it would be good for people that there should be indefinitely
many (instances of) enjoyable artistic objects, it is desirable both that
techniques of reproduction continue to improve, and that we cease to regard
originals as peculiarly sacrosanct and valuable, except insofar as they are

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themselves perceptually remarkable, and as they are needed as archetypes.20
The art that can be copied, needn't be faked ; and if everything could be
copied, nothing could be faked. If it were possible for Lady Epstein to
distribute not tens but thousands of casts from her husband's moulds, that
would be bad for the dealer, and worse for the " collector ". 21 But it would
be very good for the world.
Individuating and reidentifying works of art can be treated as a self-
evidently aesthetic enterprise in itself, much as if picking winners were
intrinsic to equestrianism (cf. Goodman, p. 110) ; it is toto coelo less philistine,
but still importantly wrong, to see it as pre-eminently a propaedeutic to
" describing, interpreting, and evaluating works of art " (Margolis, pp. 62-3 ;
cf. Harrison, pp. 124-7). " Unique " originals, " prototypes ", and scores,
scripts, plans, etc., all " define " works of art, under the control of cultural
norms, precisely because they constitute archetypes, originators of types,
which serve as a touchstone for discriminating " identification " of (further)
instances only as a consequence of their logically prior function : to specify
how instances are to be (re-)created. The artist creates, not just a thing,
but a kind of thing, in order to communicate not simply an experience, but
a kind of experience. And what " counts as " the same kind of experience
is not simply for the public (or critics, or dealers, or lawyers, or philosophers)
to decide, but also for the creator to predetermine, so far as he is willing
and able, by the manner in which he executes his archetypes. But his
repertoire both of ideas and of materials is itself causally delimited, though
less so now than ever before, by the norms of his own culture : this inter-
play between the artist's creativity, and precedent and subsequent external
norms, is one perennial source of instability in our concept of " the same
work ".
(It is at least clear that the use of the same name can be justified with-
out reference to anything that looks like a Form, or even like a Type :
20
The ephemeral structures of some contemporary exhibitions, destined to be broken
up on closing day, possess a uniqueness just as contingent as t h a t of the traditional
masterwork ; financial stringency, or idealistic modesty, restricts to the fortunate few
participation in experiences which are yet in essence reproducible.
"See The Sunday Times, 21st & 28th February 1971.
18 ANTHONY BALLS

which now appear to have been after all simply a rather misleading facon
de parler. Forms, and Types so far as they're Form-like, can be universally
eliminated, in the arts and elsewhere, in favour of rules for the reapplication
of predicates. Nevertheless, this " projectibility " is governed not only by
our decisions, but by the pre-existent similarities that things happen to
have, among which we select the ones that interest us, whose crucial role
Goodman refuses to acknowledge. This is Nominalism of the Anti-Goodman
persuasion. (Contrast Harrison, pp. 121-4.))
It is the intentionality of archetypes that enables us to locate both the
uniqueness and the reproducibility of works of art. The immediate, spatio-

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temporally locatable upshot of the artist's creative activity is normally, for
contingent reasons, a unique archetype : you can only do one thing at once.
Itself an intentional entity, this facilitates the norm-governed (re-)production
of multiple ectypes, and can thus be seen as furnishing an intentional defin-
ition of " the work of art " : that is to say, it tells us, unimportantly, how
to distribute the labels, and perhaps the prizes. This is why to explain the
contingent limitations on re-identification in terms of " The Non-Transitivity
of Loofc-Identity " (supra, p. 4) was inadequate, since that concept, in
addition to its restriction to the visual arts, did not provide any rationale
for the measure of transitivity that is in fact permitted. Its refurbished
form could be called " The Non-Transitivity of Intentional-Identity " ; and
I conjecture that this provides the point of contact between questions of
identity and questions of interpretational criticism, a schema for describing
both the open-endedness and the determinateness of " a work of art ". In
fine, conformity to archetype tells us how to " identify " a work of art,
only in the backhanded way that a shopping-list " defines " the contents
of the basket. Shopping-lists tell us what to buy, and archetypes tell us
what to make.
The work of art is a created universal, concretely embodied through the
intentional activity of people, for people's enjoyment; and the artist makes
its archetype.

University of Dundee.