SIMULACRUM: A simulacrum is a copy so far removed from its original that it ceases to carry the idea of the original.
OEUVRE: A body of work created over a lifetime.
CAMP: A work of art that was produced in earnest, which an audience, though enjoying the piece, is unable to relate to the original intent.
“The simulacrum implies great dimensions, depths, and distances which the observer cannot dominate. It is because he cannot master them that he has an impression of resemblance. The simulacrum includes within itself the differential point of view, and the spectator is made part of the simulacrum, which is transformed and deformed according to his point of view.” (Deleuze, Plato and the Simulacrum)
“Time has a great deal to do with it. Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we donʼt perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as fantasy when it is not our own.” (Sontag, Notes on “Camp”)
“It is in Kleinʼs desperate (or is it facetious?) attempt to protect himself against the erosion of painting and to maintain it as a form of sublime and privileged experience that he reveals most poignantly (it is unclear whether his clairvoyance is innocent or cynical) the extent to which painterly production had already become subservient to the conditions of the culture industry.” (Buchloh, The Primary Colors for the Second Time)
The historical avant-garde viewed the monochrome as the logical conclusion of painting, stripping paintings of any ideological, symbolical or emotional meaning. The neo-avant-garde used the monochrome as a way of proving that there is a difference between art and rote production. Yves Klein's blue monochromes were produced in an identical manner, yet the audience felt there were differences in value existing among them; they were willing to pay different prices for identical monochromes. Kleinʼs was not “art for artʼs sake”; the audience response, or the spectacle, was necessary to complete the idea of his work. This spectacle turned the monochromes into simulacrums: there is no original and the meaning of the copy shifts according to the audience viewpoint. Because the audience both completes the idea of and provides the meaning for the monochromes, the paintings no longer independently carry the original intent of their creator, thus rendering them “camp”.