Józefa Pankiewicza Portret Feliksa Jasieńskiego przy fortepianie. Reprodukcje i spojrzenia.

Feliks Jasieński’s face reflected in a shining piano lid in Józef Pankiewicz’s Portrait of Feliks Jasieński at the piano (1908, Cracow, National Museum) – who is it looking at? In the original, in a reproduction, in various reproductions from many periods? Is the girl’s head in Johannes Vermeer A Lady at the Virginal a Gentelman ( The Music Lesson) (ca. 1662–1664, Royal Collection. Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II) turning aside towards the accompanying her man? In a reproduction? Or in the original? And if a reproduction shows something else or even more than what we see in the painting? What is a mechanic reproduction’s role in the game between a viewer, an artist, a scene depicted in a painting and its mirror reflection? What is a reproduction’s life, its autonomous and independent from the original existence, and what is the possibility of its reverse reaction to an image, to ‘an image’s image’, which, with its aim, will spread throughout the world of common reception and the world of professional analyses? What is the status of uncertainty in present art studies? Following the widely recognised experts (Walter Benjamin, Rosalind Krauss, Mieke Bal, Victor Stoichita) the article’s author makes an attempt to answer all these questions.