Andy Warhol is renowned for his series – particularly his grids of screenprints, which obsessively reproduce an image until it seems to break down. Now the artists Rob and Nick Carter have turned the concept of repetition and imperfect replication back onto the iconic artist’s work.
For ‘Chinese Whispers’, they commissioned selected Warhol compositions to be copied by professional Chinese artists. Each copy would then be sent for reproduction, and its copy after that…building up a chain of similar artworks which, despite seeming like faithful renditions, slowly diverge from the original: outlines shift or harden, and shadows darken and grow, masking or overlooking the details.
What are we to make of these imperfect copies? Is the last one worth inherently less than the first, because it least resembles the original? Or is the only distinction between the original and its secondary image? And what does their presentation as a contemporary art project change about the pictures on the walls? Rob and Nick Carter’s latest exhibition asks interesting questions about the role of the replica and the mass produced object in contemporary society.
![Masterpiece [Re]discovery 2022. Photo: Ben Fisher Photography, courtesy of Masterpiece London](http://www.apollo-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/MPL2022_4263.jpg)
Has the Fitzwilliam lost the hang of things?