T.H.: Yes, or from the framed catalogue images of Leonardo to the framed catalogue images of Eduardo.

E.K.: You have a point. One cannot confuse images that document the work with the work; one cannot reduce a physical work to its representation. You only know the work when you experience it; what I mean is that, at that moment, there is a coupling between you and the work. So forcibly your experience is uniquely yours and this matters, it should be part of your analytical efforts. Interpretation based on ideas or images is okay if you declare that, i.e., if it’s clear between you and your reader that you are not discussing the work itself. There’s an inevitable disconnect between art practice and art history. The former looks forward and the latter usually looks towards the past. I’m very fond of a passage from Nietzsche’s «On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.» Let me read it to you. «To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge uses it, no matter how elegantly he may look down on our coarse and graceless needs and distresses. That is, we need it for life and for action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and from action or for merely glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to serve history only insofar as it serves living.»

T.H.: Can you explain the difference between, let’s say, the famous Etruscan Chimera of Arezzo, which Fehrenbach mentioned in his essay, and your living chimera, the GFP Bunny «Alba» from 2000?