A creative engagement with historic and modern sculpture: Waldo Story's Fallen Angel

The study of reproduction in sculpture has largely focused on direct copies of an original work, and prioritized the original at the expense of the reproduction. This essay shifts the emphasis towards a more critical examination of the reproduction itself. I address the partial, adaptive and display-specific aspects of reproduction, as afforded by a close reading of two works: The Fallen Angel, produced in white marble in 1887 and 1889 by the Anglo-American-Italian sculptor Waldo Thomas Story (1855-1915). Firstly, I consider the ways in which Story deployed reproduction as a creative engagement with sculpture and its histories, through his adaptive reproduction of three specific antique, neoclassical and contemporary works, subverting and reworking them to create a ‘new’ work. In the second part of the article I examine how additional meanings are generated by their separate plinths. Each creates a unique viewing experience which transforms and individualizes these apparently identical works.