Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy argues (in a post whose permalink isn’t working for me – look for a post entitled “Authenticity, affiliation, and self-image” on July 6 2003) takes a pessimistic view of human nature and art appreciation:
My core view of human nature is that people wish to think well of themselves. Within this framework, they use affiliations, and the arts, as means to a positive self-image. The arts help us think we are cultured, sophisticated, self-aware, with the “in” crowd, and so on.
Buying a fake makes you think you have been suckered. Or if you know it is a fake in the first place, you feel undiscerning. Buying a Rembrandt makes you feel that you are touching the immortals.
How much of the pleasure of art comes from looking at the picture, and how much comes from the associated self-image? Well, economists can measure this. A Rembrandt fake is worth a small fraction of the real thing (even holding quality constant), so most of the value cannot come from simply looking at the painting.
While no doubt some people value art for the reasons Cowen suggests, I can think of other reasons to prefer an original even to a very skilled forgery. I’d love to own an original piece of Peanuts art, for instance. But Charles Schultz is not a hard artist to imitate; shouldn’t I be content with a forgery, if the drawing was convincing enough to be just as appealing as the genuine article? (Heck, shouldn’t I just manufacture the forgery myself?)
Well, no. I’m interested in owning a piece of Schultz art not just because I think a particular drawing look attractive on my wall, but because any single Schultz drawing exists as part of the arc of Schultz’s artistic career and development. An original Schultz would be a thought-aid to me; it is a reminder of a very particular point in Schultz’s development. Owing a Schultz drawing (or a Rembrandt painting) is meaningful not just for the individual image but because it is part of a sequence of masterworks.
A forgery, however attractive, isn’t part of that sequence, and can’t tell me anything about the sequence. It fetches less of a price, I think, because from the standpoint of art appreciation it provides less genuine value..
I don’t know — I can see both sides. I mean, I have a first edition copy The Handmaid’s Tale, and it’s true, that has significant meaning for me. Meaning that a second-hand paperback edition wouldn’t have. So, in that sense, I can understand that — and since it’s more rare, it’s more valuable (monetarily). But, the story itself is just as good whether one read the first edition copy or a paperback edition printed last year.
I also have an autographed copy of A Far Rockaway of the Heart by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Sure, that’s more valuable than an unsigned copy — but not because the signed copy is a better book. The extra value is tied only to the autograph, not the book.
Actually, if his example had been the two you just brought up – books – I might have agreed with him. But his example was a forged (but good) Rembrandt versus a genuine Rembrandt, which I think is a different case. It’s two different paintings, not two different prints of the same painting.
I side with Barry on this. An original drawing has instructive value related to the artist’s development and career, as well as technical relevance to other artists. More than that, however, is a general art historical value and social value: it represents a moment in time in the progress of art as well as a moment in the life of society. Within every line of a drawing is a struggle for something better—more accuracy, more humanism, more beauty, more perfection, etc. That struggle may be hidden by an artist’s expertise, but it is there. And it is this struggle which makes an author’s manuscript of a great novel so valuable, in more ways than economic.
A forgery, however, just tells you how to be a copycat.
Ooh, a tricky question.
I believe that the relationship between the artist and the work and the viewer is its most valuable attribute, not just how it looks. But it’s hard for me to explain myself. Why can’t we just, you know, pretend that a forgery contains the same history and relevance that the original does?
Here’s a related question: If a robot could paint an exact reproduction of that same Peanuts cartoon, using Charles Schultz’s drawing process–so that the two are physically indistinguishable–what’s the difference between them? (And I’m not talking about a copier; I’m talking about completely recreating it from scratch.)
What Kevin said. I prefer the original to the forgery not because the two are distinguishable to the eye, but because the first represents what was technically possible, and relevant, at a given time and place. The glory of history is its never-ending uniqueness. Rembrandt, and a Rembrandt painting, are a fundamental part of that story, as unique as a human being. A Rembrandt fake centuries later is also a part of that story, but a far, far less important part. Its contribution to history is minimal. Only one person could be Rembrandt when he was alive. Art schools are full (welll, maybe not full) of people who could be Rembrandt today.
Amp, your first sentence has unworkable syntax.
I think it’s also about having a piece of history, feeling connected. You can’t get that from a forgery.
That said I would sooooo incredibly excited to have a true forgery of a couple of Van Gogh paintings, and as the originals are, um, out of my price range to an astronomical level, the amount I would pay for a forgery would be a pretty stupendous amount to me.
Something I’d want for the piece of history… something handwritten by Hanna Senesh. But I don’t know if I’d pay much for it, because that kind of takes away from the intimacy. If that makes any sense.
But then, I wouldn’t really want that for the piece of history. I just want to get to look at it whenever I want.
I want Jimi Hendrix’s plaster cast.
There’s a great discussion of this question in Phillip K Dick’s novel “The Man in the High Castle”
I don’t know. I’m fascinated by forgeries, so I’d probably be as excited about a fake Rembrandt as a real Rembrandt precisely because it’s a good fake.
The whole phenomenon of art forgeries reminds me more and more of another spate of generalized forgeries that were treated in very similar ways: the vast trade in saints’ relics during the Middle Ages. In the same way that the medievals were trading power and prestige, we do so with artworks, and with a similar negligence for the absurd quantity of forgeries that is part of the trade. We look condescendingly on the medievals as gullible and superstitious; how will our descendants look at us?
While I can see Tyler Cowen’s point, I can’t agree with it. Real Rembrandts are more valuable than fake ones for the same kind of reasons real dinosaur bones are more valuable that the casts they have in my local natural history museum. They teach us more beyond their appearance, sociological things, scientific things, and historical things.
The Rembrandt issue isn’t just about forgeries, but also about his contemporaries painting in a similar style. These may not be as desirable for all the reasons already posted, but they have their own value too; they aren’t worthless.
So, too, forgeries can have their own value. Or should we say “copies.” People do pay for copies because, obviously they can’t afford the originals, and sometimes a painted copy is nicer than a poster of the original. (My brother has been paid to copy impressionists.)
So we take the totality of the works out there and establish different values for different objects. What else is new? Is a Rembrandt more or less valuable than a Michaelangelo? A Warhol vs. a very good Rembrandt studio work, not by his hand? An impeccable copy of something old vs. a true contemporary masterwork by someone who is not yet known?
Peter: There’s also the issue, I would say, of Roman copies of Greek sculpture, that sort of thing. So there are instances where “forgeries” or copies, also have their own inherent value. But that’s a different value than the originals have. The originals teach us things that fakes cannot. And, I suppose fakes teach us things that originals cannot. On the whole, an interesing topic.
Peter: It is weird – when I went to school, “The Man with the Golden Helmet” was mentioned as one of Rembrandt’s most famous and best paintings, they even told a little anecdote about it (how a man walked into Rembrandt’s studio off the street, then master put a helmet from his prop collection on his head and portrayed him). Then about a decade ago it turns out the painting is not by Rembrandt, it was just produced in his studio by an assistant/student of his. I certainly had an odd feeling at the time when I heard the news – how was I to view the picture now that it no longer was an unalloyed emanations of Rembrandt’s towering “lonely genius”? (Of course that’s leaving aside the question of what the contribution of various assistants may have been in the production of pictures that are still considered genuine Rembrandts).
You get something similar in literature and music, especially with works that were published anonymously or were left unpublished during the creator’s lifetime. For instance, the “Toy Symphony”, which was long referred to as a work of Haydn, but turned out to have been composed by Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang Amadeus’ father), and some works by Telemann were long misattributed to J. S. Bach (who had copied them out for his own use, and these copies were found among JSB’s papers).
Plucky Punk: Indeed. If I remember correctly, the most famous classic Greek sculptures survived only as copies. Frequently the originals were made of bronze and later molten down, while the marble copies were not as easily “recyclable”.
I’d heartily recommend Welles’ movie “F is for Fake” if you’re interested in the subject. A marvelous mind-bender!
Lets say you had two dvd movies one was real and the other one was fake / copy would you still enjoy both of them the same?
A nice stream of discussion. It just so happens that I bought a painting in Europe this last summer.Turns out that it really is from the 1760’s and appears to be possibly Mozart,
Do you have any idea how much mandatory study I have been going through to authenticate it? It is exciting not only because it looks like there is a good chance that Mozart posed for it, but also because the stuffy illiterati pop their eyes out when I send them a scan of the thing.there are only 12 authenticated Mozart paintings. I may just have the 13th..that is a lucky number…
From the off, the original piece never made clear whether the Rembrandt fakes spoken of were refering to modern day copies of his pieces produced specifically as fakes. Or was he refering to pieces that were painted at the time by Rembrandt’s contemporaries which were misattributed to him? just because it is discovered a piece was not painted by Rembrandt does that stop them from being masterpeices? Why does the price and the painting’s asteem drop so drastically when the piece is still so skillfully produced? They contain the same historical, social and scientific values that others were talking of earlier but just painted by another person. It is important to remember the different nature of the art world at this time. For Rembrandt the production of paintings was almost a business-like venture. He drew the pieces then passed them onto assistants to finish- it was about enjoying the paintings for what they were-beautiful peices of art-something that today’s art viewer should think about in a society obsessed with the assocational value of pieces.
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