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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Fakes and Forgeries

09:25 / 10.01.06

Reading some comments about the value of art here and here, and the discussion of counterfeit designer-wear here, I went looking for a more general thread on fakes and forgeries. But there doesn’t seem to be one. (And I could have sworn there was. AFD mods, please advise if so)

So, a question:
Original works of art cost galleries and museums an enormous amount of (often public) money and require very expensive insurance. A good forgery of a masterpiece would cost a tiny fraction of the real thing, and yet be indistinguishable to the non-expert. So, why display originals rather than fakes?

There has been some talk in the Fashion Dictator thread (3rd link above) about how forgery affects financial and social value, but does it have any bearing on aesthetic value?

10:37 / 10.01.06

Well, to get slightly conspiracy theorist on your ass - How can you be sure that they aren't displaying a forgery?

10:51 / 10.01.06

Well, you ask a very good question, sleaze. I don’t, and I wonder whether I should care.

Along the same lines, do you know whether the Crown Jewels on display behind bullet-proof glass at the Tower Of London are the real thing or not? I hear conflicting stories, but someone once confided that no, of course they’re not, but without the glass, alarms and so on, people would realise they were reproductions and lose any interest in seeing them. Which is interesting, I think.

20:11 / 10.01.06

forgery affects financial and social value, but does it have any bearing on aesthetic value?

Is it possible to say that the latter can have an affect on the former?

22:31 / 10.01.06

Sorry, do you mean does the aesthetic value affect the financial and social value?

23:30 / 10.01.06

No, that social and financial bearings can have implications on aesthetic values.

00:14 / 11.01.06

Oh, I see.
Hmm, I don't know. I think most of us have had some small taste of that. "Nice ring. What? It's a real diamond! Wow! Oooh, it's beautiful" say. Although I suspect that social and financial bearing focusses the aesthetic attention rather than changes the way something looks. Conversely, I think most of us have also seen something very expensive or prestigious and thought it was ugly. So if there is a relationship, I don't see it as a simple one. But I'm not sure. What do you think?

I suppose that raises the larger question of whether and how knowledge about an aesthetic object mediates or influences the appearance of it.
And there's also the question of what objects are aesthetically sensible. What does it mean to say that a mathematical equation is beautiful? Does look beautiful? Sound beautiful? Feel beautiful? etc. I assume some sense of authenticity is relevant in this case also. I guess the truth of an equation is a factor in its aesthetic attraction (that E=MC2 is more beautiful because it's true) but is that the same kind of thing?

06:20 / 11.01.06

I would suggest that part of the overt point of the whole Pop Art movement was to lay bare the effect of socioeconomic considerations on aesthetics. At what point did it become okay to make art from trash?

Piero Manzoni famously tried to make a vicious comment about how easily aesthetics are influenced by economic considerations, by labeling and numbering cans of his own shit ("Merda d'artista, to be sold by weight based on the current price of gold, was first exhibited in August of that year at the Galleria Pescetto in Albisola, Italy."). It is open to interpretation whether the subsequent placing of his canned shit in museums should be viewed as a triumph or defeat.

07:28 / 11.01.06

Dear Smoothly,

In regards to you first question, my opinion is that social and financial bearing enhance rather than focus aesthetic attention. This I think is simply due to the fact that we are talking about objects which are intended to be sold, and marketing (which effects the aesthetic value of an object.) Today, it is not merely about the object itself, but about the lifestyle it represents or achieves. How does it enhance myself? what aesthetic am I trying to articulate to myself which will be responsive in the eyes of others? So it isn't a matter of simplicity, rather one of acknowledgement, I think, and this could lead into your second question.

I do believe that knowledge about an aesthetic object will infuence or mediate the appearance of it, to a degree, however, I think that what it might do more effectively is make the viewer more sympathetic rather than receptive to it aesthetic capabilities. This would most certainly be the case in regards to questions of theoretic aestheticism, which mathematics would fall under. This theory can be applied to art as well. However, it will only appeal to a certain minority, not the majority. As result, it doesn't raise a quesion aesthetic sensibility, but rather of aesthetic acceptability. The vast majority of people don't see the beauty, because as you have said, you need to understand the beauty in mathematical theorem. I certainly don't. Even if it is true. It needs to be articulated in such a way as to why it is aesthetic, that people can relate to. So, I don't think that authenticity is required. I recently saw a pseudo-documentary on Einstein and physics, and how his theory of E=MC2 came about. It was filled with love, drama, sadness and physical notions (all those experiments and lustful looks). But it certainly wouldn't have been a replica of the actual events. it was directed to educate and most certainly, but it had to entertain, which is an important aspect of aesthetics. a majority (probably some significant parts/events) would have been omitted.

In some ways it is all related.
Lastly, everyone has different opinions on aesthetics, and change all the time. You may agree with this or not. I just hope it makes sense!

09:26 / 11.01.06

So, just to get this back on topic a bit, what does all this say about our attitude to fakes and forgeries? Would we object to the masterpieces hung in our great galleries and museums being replaced with (cheaper) copies because they’re cheaper?
Hanging an original Picasso in one’s home might represent a different lifestyle from hanging a print of the same, but is that an aesthetic difference? I think if I put Guernica next to a good forger’s copy of Guernica (a copy that was, let’s say, identical in surface appearance), and someone were to say the first was more beautiful than the second, I reckon I’d think them perverse. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t rather own the original than the copy, just that my preference wouldn’t be an aesthetic one. At least I don’t think so. If you can’t tell the difference between two objects by application of the senses, I don’t see how you could say one was more beautiful than the other. Particularly if, when asked which was more beautiful, you said ‘I dunno. Whichever the more expensive one is’. But maybe I'm missing something.

17:30 / 11.01.06

I was just reading an article by Rosalind Krauss, who was talking about this very thing.
Her take was that with the coming of Minimalism, an art museum or gallery, or art owner, should be able to replace one of Donald Judd's 'boxes' if it gets worn or damaged without effecting the concept or integrity of the piece. Her reasoning is that Minimalism argued for an art that was reproducable based on artists designs and plans and not on the 'touch' of the artist being important. However even Judd himself has difficulty with this notion since he tried to stop one of his buyers from doing this very thing. I'm not sure what the outcome was but it does raise some pretty interesting questions in regard to the perceived 'authenticity' of an aesthetic object.

In my opinion I would not want to see a fake deVinci, however a fake Warhol may not bother me so much. Perhaps this is because I see the inherent reproducability in many modern works, specifically Pop and Minimalism. On the other side, there are Modern works in the realm of Surrealism and Abstraction that would be difficult to reproduce and It's hard for me to see the value in creating a forgery.
This brings up the question of why the original work would need to be protected in the first place. If there was no inherent value in 'seeing' the original work and a fake would be just as good, then it would seem to me that there would be no reason for protecting the original at all, and it should be displayed anyway.
In this vein of thinking it would appear the only reason not to show the original, would be for monetary and not aesthetic reasons. The artwork's value as an asset would outway its value as an historic or aesthetic object.

06:17 / 12.01.06

I would object to hanging the fake Guernica because only a fraction of its value lies in the image. Much more lies in the historicity. Going beyond the mere touch of the artist, you have all the emotion tied up with wars in general and that war in particular, for example, and these things in some sense reside in Guernica the object almost as the soul is said to reside in the body. I really only have sentimental objections to forgeries.

09:04 / 12.01.06

In my opinion I would not want to see a fake deVinci, however a fake Warhol may not bother me so much.

Warhol is a good example because, as I understand it, many original Worhols were ‘untouched’ by Warhol himself.
I want to come back to ‘touch’, but first, skolld, could you say a little more about why you would not want to see a fake da Vinci? Is it because you think a da Vinci would not be convincingly reproducible? I might misunderstand you, but the art world has a rich history of faked paintings fooling experts, being sold as the real thing and displayed in prestigious galleries. Van Meegeren’s "Vermeer" was so convincing it almost cost him his life, and John Myatt did a fine line in abstracts and Surrealists, from Matisse to Chagall.

Your point that in a world where people have no particular interest in originals over copies the value of originals would be on a par with copies, restates my original question nicely though. But people do value originals more than copies or prints, the question is, why?

Your last paragraph makes me wonder whether art galleries are primarily about the aesthetic experience at all. Could it be that the attraction is the historic value and/or the ‘touch’, like the attraction of workaday Stone Age artefacts or autographs?

Dirty Ho, I’m really interested in your point too. Is the emotion tied up in an original work sensible at all? If I were to present you with Guernica and superficially identical copy, could you be able to sense the ‘soul’, as it were? You and skolld are making me wonder whether my initial assumption that viewing art is primarily an aesthetic experience is a naïve one.

13:04 / 12.01.06

I believe that much of the interest in art in a museum does indeed rely on the historical connection. Artworks there function like holy relics-- they are real and tangible fragments of history, of the great narrative of these great characters like Leonardo, Raphael, Vermeer, Picasso... I have often been told that, when people are taking their children around a gallery or museum, their interest in an object often expires when they are told that it is a reproduction, be it an artwork or a dinosaur skeleton. My own gut reaction is similar. I want a real link, a portal, to the past. Whereas a repro would be a mere prompt. There is a lot of irrationality at play here, and yet should art, or its appreciation, be rational?

In the modern era, when the nature of artistic production has been thrown into question in its own right, the lines all become weirdly blurred. Look at Duchamp's Fountain-- the original is in fact lost, yet several museums hold authorised copies-- fake, terracotta urinals that are copies made for an artistic purpose to represent a readymade urinal. It makes my head hurt to unravel that, but also makes me laugh... There is a whole Duchampian game of chess and wit at play. Likewise, when is a Hirst a Hirst? His studio makes pictures. Sometimes buyers are authorised to have his work 'installed' and are left to arrange for it themselves. Why does Damien's permission make one group of spots better than another identical one? Some artists' estates are even authorised to continue producing the artist's works even after their death...

And as for Warhol... I enclose a quote from him:

'I’m using silkscreens now. I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me. I haven’t been able to make every image clear and simple and the same as the first one. I think it would be so great if more people took up silkscreens so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else’s’ (Warhol, quoted in D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 1995, p. 100).

12:44 / 13.01.06

Warhol did, too. Let others make silkscreens attributed to him, that is. Unless you saw him do it, you couldn't be sure. There's a story that a potential customer who was visiting the Factory pulled out a pistol and shot a silkscreen that Andy had just finished. *That* one was real.

19:19 / 13.01.06

Smoothly,

Could it be that the attraction is the historic value and/or the ‘touch’, like the attraction of workaday Stone Age artefacts or autographs?

I think it's the historic value of the da Vinci, and partly the artistic touch. Because no matter how good the fake is, it still won't be da Vinci's hand that we're looking at, and as an artist I am very interested in viewing 'how' he painted and not how well someone is able to paint like him. This is the allure for me in ancient stonecarving or casting as well.
Warhol's images were meant to be mechanically reproduced. I think he would like the term 'meat robot', people being just as much a machine as anything built by man. So his concept remains unchanged when it's reproduced. He created art made for mass production. He really blurred the line of authenticity.
I'm going to have to put some more thought into the idea 'authenticity' before I say anymore about it.

I like this discussion

17:53 / 14.01.06

skolld: I am very interested in viewing 'how' he painted and not how well someone is able to paint like him

When you say 'how' he painted, do you mean that in the sense of looking at actual brushstrokes, or do you mean in a broader sense, such as how the face of someone in one of his paintings is formed? With regard to the latter (at least), I think that could be an argument for displaying originals -because it would be gutting to notice something (and I can't think of an example of that something, sorry) and to put a meaning on it in light of what you know about the artist and hir work, and for that to be one of the few tiny details that would allow an expert to tell it as a fake and that wasn't present in the original.

I realise that this is colossally unlikely, but from a hypothetical point of view I think it could be something that would bother a person about looking at a fake in a gallery rather than an original.

18:14 / 14.01.06

That's a nice point. But, to continue with hypotheticals, if a da Vinci could be reproduced exactly - using nanobots maybe - would you then lose any particular interest in seeing the original?

I'm increasingly feeling that our interest in visiting original works is closely related to our interest in autographs. It's not about the aesthetics, it's the 'touch'. I don't believe in souls, but there's something about what Dirty Ho says that rings true to me.

20:58 / 14.01.06

It's possible as well that it's not only to do with soul or 'touch' as to do with how we relate to (any form of) art -do you want to be able to look at something that evokes a feeling along the lines of 'I am looking at the work of a person who understood this subject matter, and I think I understand it better as a result', or even 'I am looking at the work of a person who has experienced something as I have experienced it'? Again, this is fairly abstract thing -but I think it is qualititively different from looking at the the work of someone who has understood the work of the artist whose work they reproduce, or indeed a nanobot who has been programmed to reproduce that work.

Also -does this (if it makes sense) relate only to traditional art, or is there a way in which it can be related to pop art or readymades?

16:10 / 15.01.06

This is really interesting. But before we get onto how this might relate to readymades, can I just clarify something from your perspective, Vincennes?

to look at something that evokes a feeling along the lines of 'I am looking at the work of a person who understood this subject matter, and I think I understand it better as a result', or even 'I am looking at the work of a person who has experienced something as I have experienced it' ... is qualititively different from looking at the the work of someone who has understood the work of the artist whose work they reproduce, or indeed a nanobot who has been programmed to reproduce that work.

Is it possible to discern this qualitative difference by observation alone?

18:46 / 15.01.06

I'm not sure that it is -having looked at my reply again I think that all I was doing really was defining what I would mean by the 'touch' of the artist (although that wasn't what I intended to do). It was prompted at least in part by the comparision to an interest in autographs -I wanted to discuss how far that analogy, which I find interesting, can go, and whether part of original art's appeal is that it's not just the fact that a work of art has been daubed on canvas by the hand of a particular person but that these daubings on canvas have been the concious effort of a person who is in some way uniquely capable of making them come into being. So it's not just like having a famous person's autograph, but meeting them as well, and whilst there's no convincing analogue there for an excellent fake I hope it clarifies what I meant a bit.

Anyway, in answer to your question -assuming the fake was perfectly accurate in every way -I'm not at all sure the difference I'm trying speak of would be aesthetic.

03:08 / 16.01.06

When I was trawling through New York's major art galleries at the end of last year, I was struck by the fact that one gallery (I think it was MoMA, from memory) allowed photography in all of their galleries except the Warhol gallery. Not exactly germane to the topic at hand, granted, but darkly hilarious nonetheless.

04:09 / 16.01.06

If I were to present you with Guernica and superficially identical copy, could you be able to sense the ‘soul’, as it were?

No, most likely I would not, but then if I had never heard of Picasso, the Basques, etc. I would certainly not value the painting so highly -- would a work by an unknown painter be worth copying?

00:05 / 17.01.06

Yeah, I think Vincennes and I are thinking along similar lines. I suppose I'm becoming interested in a couple of things here. One is the way the aesthetic sense is constructed, and I'm trying to peg out the boundaries like Venn diagrams. One border I feel vague about is where the sensory experience intersects with knowledge about the object, and how and to what extent secondary information can alter perception. Is it possible that original works literally look better if you believe them to be originals (or in my earlier examples, a cut stone actually looks better for knowing that it's a diamond)? On the one hand that sounds daft for the reasons I say above. It sounds perverse to claim that of two identical works of art, the one you believe to be authentic is the more beautiful. But is it?

Consider Butyric acid. It's the chemical that gives two things their characteristic smell. Wave a vial of Butyric acid under someone's nose and ask them what it smells like and about half of them will say, comfortably, "Parmesan cheese''. The half will recoil in disgust and identify it without hesitation as "Vomit". What's more it's very easy to transform the aesthetic qualities of Butyric acid. Just accompany the smell with a mere suggestion of one or the other, and odour sublimates accordingly into an appetising, high quality aesthetic experience, or a nauseatingly low quality one.
So maybe two identical pictures really can be said to have different aesthetic qualities, depending on context and how much we know about the context. And that context could include things like origin and provenance. I'm just throwing it out there, but maybe the value of originals over fakes is that fakes might become known to be fakes, and their aesthetic quality would be diminished as a result. Beauty is truth and truth beauty, and all that jizz.

11:11 / 17.01.06

I think that for museum objects, that element of knowledge is often vital. It is what allows the picture or object to become a direct link to the past. The Mona Lisa was painted by the hand of Leonardo... It is a sort of genealogy, a way of leapfrogging and connecting ourselves with epic aspects of history to one extent or another. Of course, this can sometimes be supplementary to genuine artistic value and worth (as with Leonardo's works, or other good pictures and objects), or can be the main and sole interest, as in, for instance, an inscribed stone in the British Museum which has words from Alexander the Great, implying that the stone was inscribed to celebrate his presence by it so many hundreds of years ago. The stone itself is not an aesthetic masterpiece, nor the calligraphy, but the notion that we are in the same spot (relative to the rock, of course) that Alexander once occupied... It is an irrational, almost superstitious way of allowing ourselves to be transported, and it is this, I believe, that lends a lot of 'real' objects their soul or value or interest. Not mere appearance.

18:21 / 17.01.06

I think that authenticity in an object implies a context. Knowledge of the history of the piece is what creates the desire to experience it. Perhaps to have a 'real' experience, a connection to Leonardo, a continuation of the event (his painting) that he started 100's of years ago. I like this analogy to an autograph, that by having a signature we are somehow taking part in the phenomena that is the artist. It gives us a sense of belonging perhaps, or of 'being in the know'.
So maybe Smoothly's proposition isn't so perverse? Perhaps it is the desire to be connected to Leonardo that makes the orinal 'more beautiful' than the fake. I don't think it is the 'image' or 'form' that we go to museums and galleries to see. We can get that from books. I think it's the desire to be a part of the art (or the artist). The more I think about it the more it has an almost Fetish sense to it. That an object held and created by Leonardo, eperienced by us, even 100's of years later, can put us in the presence of the artist.

09:57 / 19.01.06

Working in the art world, I have long wondered about many of these issues. One of the ways in which they make themselves weirdly apparent is in the re-atttribution of paintings and other works. For instance, the Duke of Devonshire a long time ago gave a painting that was a Rembrandt to the National Gallery in lieu of millions of pounds of duties. Everyone loved that picture. It was a good Rembrandt, interesting, you could look at it and know that it was great-- until suddenly someone proves that it is by an also-ran, another artist on a good day. So what happens to the painting? A huge amount of its awe is dispelled as quickly as its link to Rembrandt-- or the association of a smell to parmesan. It is like fashion or brands or something-- even if it is a good picture from the same period, from the same studio even, people do not look at it in the same way. Take away the labels in a room with Rembrandts and pictures by his followers, and I wonder what would happen...

14:31 / 19.01.06

that would be an interesting exhibition wouldn't it?
A 'Where's Rembrandt?' show. I wonder how much it would change how people 'look' at the paintings.

16:53 / 21.01.06

Van Meegeren is a really interesting character in his own right, and actually I'd love to have a sample of his work, and not for it's resemblance to Vermeer. I think that this ties back in with Smoothly's question -- the value of the Van Meegeren is wholly in my head, in the knowledge I have about him, and in my interest in his story -- to the point that it completely overwrites the paintings themselves.

Briefly, on the subject of the touch of the artist -- a friend of mine sort of despises Chihuly, claiming that because he does not produce the pieces himself, he is not 'really' an artist. She seems to feel that the art lies in the craft, rather than in the design. That argument bugs me a bit -- it seems reminiscent of the person who looks at a Klee and says "my five year old could draw that." Yeah, but your five year old didn't draw that. Concept, more so than execution.

10:23 / 23.01.06

Hirst has a rather entertaining rejoinder to similar accusations-- this is from a conversation he had with Gordon Burn:

GB So is a spot paining painted by you better, or worth more, or in any way different from a spot painting painted by a studio assistant? Does it have any added 'aura'?
DH Listen: Who designed the Guggenheim?
GB Frank Lloyd Wright.
DH Right. And he can’t build. He’s a fucking architect. Can’t build walls. So if you live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house that he built himself, knowing he can’t build walls, is that better than a Frank Lloyd Wright house that he just designed and got other people to build for him? Which is the best Frank Lloyd Wright house?
(D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, pp.89-90).