During his years living and working with artist Sherry Levine, Nick Normal became influential in developing the notion of artistic 'appropriations'. Levine herself was much taken with Macpherson's thoughts on semi-essentialism and Normal and Levine co-authored an important essay titled "Bad Platonism: Copying Copies." In his recent work, Nick has gone a step beyond Levine's famous copies of Modernist art and has begun making replicas of things that are already secondary works. In an interview for Artforum in 1984, Nick said, "The library book is the opposite of the first edition, that's why they're great, they're like the prostitutes of the book world and equally honest by being so."
Note:
The Library of Congress was established by an act of Congress in 1800 when President John Adams signed a bill providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. The legislation described a reference library for Congress only, containing "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress - and for putting up a suitable apartment for containing them therein...."
Established with $5,000 appropriated by the legislation, the original library was housed in the new Capitol until August 1814, when invading British troops set fire to the Capitol Building, burning and pillaging the contents of the small library.
From Gilles Deleuze, "The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy" in The Logic of Sense:
"What does it mean to 'reverse Platonism'? This is how Nietzsche defined the task of his philosophy or, more generally, the task of the philosophy of the future. The formula seems to mean the abolition of the world of essences and of the world of appearances. Such a project, however, would not be peculiar to Nietzsche. The dual denunciation of essences and appearances dates back to Hegel, or, better yet, to Kant. It is doubtful that Nietzsche meant the same thing….â€
