You’re So Fake
Case 1
Suppose that you inherit a small pencil drawing by the Swiss artist Paul Klee.
Your benefactor has left the drawing to you because she knows how much you admire Klee’s work, and how much you appreciate this drawing in particular.
Naturally, you want to have the drawing insured, so you take it to an expert. After examining the work, the expert tells you that your prized Paul Klee drawing is not, in fact, a drawing by Paul Klee at all. It is a fake.
Naturally enough, you are devastated.
But remember: one of the reasons your benefactor left the drawing to you was that you had always liked it so much.
And the drawing itself has not changed.
So, should the fact that it has turned out to be a forgery matter to you aesthetically?
Case 2
In 1945, Han van Meegeren confessed that he was the artist responsible for eight paintings, six of which had been sold as legitimate Vermeers and two as de Hooghs.
It is not hard to imagine the discomfort felt by critics at that time, especially when we recall how thoroughly successful van Meegeren was in perpetrating his fraud.
His Disciples at Emmaus was praised by the noted critic and scholar Abraham Bredius as one of Vermeer’s finest achievements. It hung in the Boymans Museum for seven years.
During that time, thousands upon thousands of people admired and praised the painting. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was one of the greatest Vermeer paintings and, indeed, one of the most beautiful works of art in the world.
It was undoubtedly this universal judgment of aesthetic excellence that largely accounts for the sensational effects of van Meegeren’s confession.
When asked why he perpetrated the Vermeer forgery, van Meegeren replied:
Either the critics must admit their fallibility, or else acknowledge that I am as great an artist as Vermeer.
Is van Meegeren right?
Is he really as great an artist as Vermeer?
Questions
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Alfred Lessing argues that if you change your judgment of the artwork after you find out it is a forgery, it is because you are a snob. And no one likes a snob. Is he right about this? Are you only liking the piece because of who made it, and not because of what it looks like?
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Even if it turns out that you only really liked it because you thought it was painted by someone famous, thus making you a snob, what is so bad about being a snob?
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Dennis Dutton argues that all art is a performance. The only difference between a painting and a concert is that the painting stands as a reminder of the performance. Thus, when you forge a painting, you are saying it was performed in a different time than it in fact was. This is what the problem with forgery is. How do you feel about the idea that all art is a performance? Is there really no difference between performing a song on an instrument and painting a picture?
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Carolyn Korsmeyer wrote the book Things: In Touch with the Past, in which she argues that part of the appeal of an artwork is that it was in fact touched by a famous painter, whereas the forgery was just touched by some guy named Han. How do you feel about this argument? Mr. Kenley loves his artifacts. What if all of his artifacts turned out to be museum-quality replicas, indistinguishable from real artifacts? Should he like them less? Is this any different from why we would like a painting less if it is a forgery?
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Many of you generally thought that authenticity in musical performance had no bearing on how good a performance is. Is it possible to think that authenticity does not matter in musical performance, but matters a lot in the case of forged paintings? In other words, if you think authenticity is not that important for music, are you forced to think that forgeries are not really a big deal aesthetically?