Why would anyone want to see a digital recreation of a work of art when they can see the real thing?
An exhibition called Hokusai Exposed at London's Old Truman Brewery offers a vaguely creepy view of art's future.
There are no real works by the great Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) in this show. Instead, it is full of "recreations" of his art that use digital technology to model what it looked like when it was first made. Works of art fade over time, says "re-creation" pioneer Dr Shin-Ichi Fukuoka, who has devised this show. His method involves digitally mapping works, projecting their original appearance, then making modern replicas of that exact appearance.
What nonsense. Decay is part of the life of art. Of course we can't see Jackson Pollock's Lavender Mist, or Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or Hokusai's Great Wave, as they looked the day they were made – but why would we want to? That would be to freeze time and stop the universe. The changes that time brings to works of art, the cracks and colour mutations and even grime, are part of its life. The delicate art of restoration lies in saving the work from destruction without crassly pretending that it can ever be "as good as new".
When restoration goes wrong by arrogantly imposing newness on the past, people are rightly appalled. Art lovers in China are shocked that a fresco has been moronically "restored" with no respect for its antiquity. Whenever any masterpiece is restored there is, rightly, a debate over the pros and cons of the process – the jury is still out on whether The Last Supper has been saved or ruined by restorers.
Dr Fukuoka's method sidesteps all those debates. He does not touch the originals. Instead, he replaces them. At the Hokusai show you can walk down a recreated street in old Edo to see recreated Hokusais. Art becomes a simulacrum in a simulated historical setting. It's Art II.
This idea is not even original (it's a recreated idea …). There have been virtual exhibitions before of Egyptian art and even of Caravaggio. It sounds so state-of-the-art, so futuristic. And it probably does portend a future of sterile technocratic exhibitions that offer an easier, more "fun" way to experience great artists.
But the only way to truly enjoy great art is to go and see the real thing. It's the sensual, imaginative and challenging encounter with real art that matters. So instead of a virtual Hokusai why not go and see authentic (and rude) works by him in the British Museum's Shunga exhibition. The fraught encounter with living works of art, marked by time as we all are, is electrifying.
Accept no substitutes.