Can one work be replaced by another in Louise Lawler's images? Let's imagine for a moment that instead of the reflection of a painting by Frank Stella, we had that of a painting by Ellsworth Kelly. Would that change anything? Apart from questions related to the composition of the image, would Lawler's discourse be weakened?

The answer to this question depends on the perspective one chooses to adopt when considering this work, which, it should be noted, goes far beyond the photographic prints for which it is known. Indeed, if we consider it to be documentary work, it becomes clear that its subject matter is not the work of any particular artist. What interests Lawler is rather a Marxist analysis of the use value, but above all the exchange value, of works of art. What she highlights in her photographs is the circulation of art objects as a visible sign of these exchanges. Thus, none of her images has the stability that we attribute to reproduction photography. The works always slide from the center to the edge of the frame. They are sometimes presented near a television screen whose image can only be transitory, or visible through the fleeting reflection of the museum's granite floor. More directly, they are sometimes presented awaiting exhibition, stored, or leaning against a wall. Here, the works are merely signs of these exchanges and are, therefore, completely interchangeable. Their situation matters more than their essence.

This is evident once again in the way she reframes her works, sometimes retaining only a single detail, without ever falling into a formalism where composition takes precedence over meaning. Reframing is used to focus attention on the context surrounding the work rather than on the work itself. Sometimes it also appears in the white of the wall, which evokes no specific place other than the very idea of the white cube. By deliberately placing part of the work out of frame, Louise Lawler slows down the phenomenon of recognition to the point where we realize that we are in the process of recognizing. When we recognize something, we don't just adjust what we already know, we supplement it with the information we are currently being given. We validate certain hypotheses and discover new ones. The fragmented work leads us on the trail of the complete work we have in mind.

What Louise Lawler's work also highlights is the ability of artworks to function as images. It is because they function as images that we can understand them. It is because this image-making persists that we can then recognize them despite their fragmentation. It is not a question of whether the works make a good or bad image. It is enough that they are images for us to always have the opportunity to recognize them.

In Le Musée imaginaire (The Imaginary Museum), André Malraux analyzes the influence of photography on the constitution of art history. He is particularly interested in the medium's taxonomic capacity, which allows it to produce bodies of work that can then be grouped by theme. These new organizations bring to light collections that museums struggled to make visible. Through sampling, enlargement, and graphic simplification [1], photography gives substance to Romanesque sculpture, sigillary art, and Gothic stained glass, whose scattered nature had overshadowed their great coherence. Photography extends the museum's organizing function, but also disrupts the categories that it had established over two and a half centuries of existence. But its influence goes beyond a simple reevaluation of the hierarchy of works: photography profoundly changes the way we look at them.

It was the invention of photography, and the possibility of projecting images, that led to the most obvious evolution in the teaching of art history. By displaying two reproductions of works side by side, it is possible to make a comparative analysis and thus develop each person's ability to recognize and analyze. The path to understanding a work of art can be traveled in both directions: analyze then recognize, or recognize then analyze. Recognition is at the heart of each process. It is on this recognition that art history and its pantheon of recognized artists are based. When visiting a museum, we constantly recognize the works on display. Their arrangement and proximity add to the knowledge we already have about them, presenting them to us in a new light. Works we discover for the first time are analyzed and then classified in our memory. It is the museum that has established this phenomenon of recognition. Because it is governed by a taxonomic logic, it offers interpretive frameworks based on the recognition of characteristics specific to each continent, era, or artist.

This imperative of recognition linked to works of art is so strong that when we look at an image documenting a work, it is the work itself that focuses our attention. We see only a reproduction, but recognition involves a confusion with the real object. This confusion is perpetuated by art history teachers who, for reasons of lexical convenience, do not specify that each image used in their lessons is a reproduction. Thus, as the slideshows progress, the work becomes confused with its representation. We might then ask ourselves whether learning art history through reproductions condemns us to merely recognizing works. This would be tantamount to saying that the work reaches us captured in a narrative.

These fragmented works, which we nevertheless recognize in Louise Lawler's photographs, highlight the power of the narrative that underpins them. Art history is made up of big names to which we attribute a certain value. And it is on this point that the works Lawler chooses to photograph are not interchangeable: Louise Lawler is a woman who critically photographs the works of the men who make up art history as she was taught it.