Dispatch from the Pastiche Police

Most recently, in the iPad version of The New York Times, I was nagged by a Louis Vuitton advertisement for a $2,790 bag by Rei Kawakubo. What got me riled was not the frivolous item, but the fact that the photograph was a “reference” to the famous Surrealist self-portrait of Herbert Bayer.

Comparing the Bayer montage with the Vuitton ad (photographed by Jennifer Livingston) only increased my frustration: all the intensity of the original had been drained out of the sanitized image.

I only wish the photo credits read “Homage to H.B.”