Word: artfully
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rockefeller has made large editions of his reproductions in order to encourage a wide distribution. Critics questioned this unusual behavior--didn't Rockefeller believe in the pride of sole ownership and the satisfaction of a meaty price tag? Obviously Rockefeller didn't just view art as money on the wall, aesthetic stocks and bonds. "A banker once admired some Picassos of mine," he says, "When I told him they were reproductions, he said they had lost all meaning for him. I said you mean they've lost any sense of monetary value...
After the publication of his catalogue, the Association of Art Museum Directors attacked Rockefeller, publishing a statement "On the Abuses in the Manufacture and Sale of Reproductions of Works of Art...
...pure were their motives? They could not be out to save art. More likely, they are thinking about the fistfuls of money museums stand to lose if Rockefeller's slick catalogue catches on. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is itself now heavily dependent on the money it brings in by selling its reproductions, and its administrators are deep in elaborate reproduction promotions of their own. Their true objection to Rockefeller is that he is a competitor, and not that he's defacing art...
...anyone want to own one of Rocky's "clones." Rockefeller appeals to snobbery in his catalog. The reproductions will be "framed in a similar manner and by the same framer Mr. Rockefeller uses in his own home." When we buy one of his reproductions we earn the title of art collector...
Economics aside, can anyone living in 1979 really say they don't believe in reproducing art, that it's demeaning? Hardly. We live in a country that not only believes in artistic reproduction but dreams of its perfection. If this seems strange, go home and look at your stereo and record collection. Records are nothing more than musical reproductions of a performer's inspiration. The more you paid for your stereo, the more you should believe in Rockefeller's innovation. Does it matter if you copy onto plastic or canvas? Millions of dollars are spent annually trying to achieve...