Original Copies in Georges Perec and Andy Warhol

Book excerpt: Priya Wadhera’s Original Copies in Georges Perec and Andy Warhol is the first book to explore striking similarities between the works of these celebrated figures of the twentieth century. Copies abound in Perec’s œuvre, where pastiches, paintings, and intertexts dialogue with the history of copying in the past and present, in literature and in art. Both here and in Warhol’s works, the source of the copies is difficult to pinpoint, shrouded in a fog linked to death. This remarkable parallel provides insight into their widely-admired works and a postmodern aesthetic where the original is stripped of its value and the copy reigns supreme. In this study of the original and the copy, Wadhera illuminates the nature of art itself.