How much less valuable is a copy than an original work of art? Consider Salvator Mundi, the painting that went to auction at Christie’s in November 2017. In 2005, when it was thought to be one of multiple copies of a lost Leonardo da Vinci work, it sold for just $10,000. Then a group of art historians caused controversy by declaring that the Florentine master had himself painted it.

Among them was Martin Kemp, who commented that the work possesses an “uncanny presence” similar to other da Vincis—funny, considering that this quality is, by definition, difficult to pin down.

Even more complicated was the fact that extensive restoration had been undertaken to improve upon its cracked canvas and layers of overpainting, meaning that—whatever its origins—the work had undoubtedly been touched by multiple hands. But da Vinci’s name alone spurred Abu Dhabi to spend a record-breaking $450 million on the painting—a move designed to lend cultural cachet to, and boost tourism for, its new “copy” of Paris’ Louvre.

Outside the realm of market value though, “the original” is a strange, problematic and even nonsensical concept. As philosopher Jacques Derrida insisted, the very existence of an “original” presupposes the existence of “repetition.” And in his 1936 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, cultural critic Walter Benjamin remarked that in the 20th century, art even becomes “designed for reproducibility.”

For the Asante carvers in Ghana, reproducibility has positive connotations. Professor of art history Sidney Littlefield Kasfir observes that, to them, “imitating a well-known model is considered neither deceptive nor demanding; rather it is viewed as both economically pragmatic and a way of legitimating the skill of a predecessor… or paying homage to a fellow artist.”

In Chinese art, a masterwork of painting may never be finished. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han notes that, contrary to European practices, such art is “subject to continual change and permanent transcription” as new owners apply their personal seals and other forms of inscription to the actual canvas. This art “is not static,” he writes. “The trace makes it fluid… The more famous a work is, the more inscriptions it has.”

Han also observes that in China, two forms of “copy” exist: fangzhipin, meaning “imitations where the difference from the original is obvious” (such as a poster of a Rembrandt), and fuzhipin, “exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original.” Fuzhipin have caused controversy outside China, such as in 2007 when Hamburg’s Museum of Ethnology closed a touring exhibition of Chinese terra-cotta warriors when it discovered that the statues had been manufactured recently.

Such dissatisfaction is at once warranted and naive. In Ways of Seeing, art critic John Berger describes how copies of artworks appearing on television provide new, unique experiences to spectators that remove the “bogus religiosity” attached to works of art as cult objects.

Engaging with three-dimensional replicas is no different. Though they should always be identified as such, if constructed well, reproductions still elicit an emotional response and help provide insight into the past.

But the hierarchy between original and copy, if not nearly destroyed by the advent of photography and film, may be even more obsolete in the digital age: We now praise robots for their ability to “pass” as human, while online, the origin of data matters little outside security departments.

These contemporary truths aside, copies of works of art possess qualities that separate them from the originals: They are emotionless, made without risk, surprise or spontaneity. They are also only of the present.

In Berger’s words, the gestures of the artist inscribed in the original, particularly in drawings and paintings, “close[s] the distance in time between the painting of the picture and one’s own act of looking at it.”

Beyond bridging historical divides, the original also brings the spectator into intimate contact with its creator. As writer Siri Hustvedt notes, when looking at art, “I am aware of another mind and body, a ‘you’ in relation to my ‘I.’” Engaging with such works, she asserts, is an intersubjective experience—the kind of communal experience that every move toward the digital, the new and the endlessly reproducible, makes a little less possible.