Jean-Baptiste Chardin, The Monkey Painter, 1739-40 "The tension between original and copy, between imaginative and derivative works, can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Yet copying was also dogged by the platonic notion that art is twice removed from reality. An artist who copies artworks and not nature is therefore thrice removed. The futility of artistic activity was itself a perennial subject of art, often symbolized by a monkey. For example Chardin painted a series of baleful monkey artists showing art as empty mimicry not genuine creativity." Melissa Perceval Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure