"Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust; to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish. Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash: the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life... we're going to die. 'Be of good heart,' cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced - but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much."
This monologue was taken from a documentary by Orson Welles called "F for Fake." It was on TCM last night. I've seen it before and I own the DVD. It's one of my favorite films, and could take the top stop very soon, as I watch it more and more.
The quote above refers to Cathedral Chartres, about 50 miles outside of Paris.
What is the value of art? Is it based soley on aesthetics? Or experts and historians who tell us it has value?
What if an artwork is revealed to be a forgery? It is beautifully rendered, however; but it was not really created by, let's say Picasso. Is it less valuable?
Is it art?
curious
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sammytequila
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It's easy to get cynical about phrases like "experts and historians", but (like literary critics and "men in white lab coats") they're the ones who've devoted themselves to grasping the _context_ of the work. They can't tell me whether or not such-and-such a painting will have an emotional impact on me, but they _can_ tell me that it's really an attempt to put a twist on such-and-such a style, which I might like more, and that if I _do_ like the twist, so-and-so did it better. Plus, we're intelligent humans with the capacity for extraordinary depth of thought; the initial impresiion of a work is only the tiniest, least significant part of really _knowing_ that work. The more you know, the more you delve, the better you understand the context and aim of that work, the deeper your appreciation can be. Critics can give you the context and perspective to appreciate any given work on a far deeper and more rewarding level than you'd ever reach by just following what emotionally appeals to you.
What if an artwork is revealed to be a forgery? It is beautifully rendered, however; but it was not really created by, let's say Picasso. Is it less valuable?
Big, big question in art since the creation of mass photographic reproduction, and one that kept food on Andy Warhol's table for a loooong time. :)
Personally, I think that the original _does_ have more value than a reproduction or forgery, due to the effect on the viewer of _knowing_ that the artist stared at and interacted with the very object the viewer is looking at. Some feeling of closeness with the _personality_ comes with knowing that this is the very same object the artist invested so much time and thought and passion in, and that feeling can't really be seperated from the piece's impact. Presumably, if the piece _was_ a forgery, that'd make no difference whatsoever until it was _revealed_ as a forgery.
It's like seeing the derringer Booth used to murder Lincoln; that very thing right there was used in one of the defining events of the country's history. To look at it (or, were you so lucky, to hold it) doesn't _actually_ mystically connect you to the event, but god damn if it doesn't feel like it does. If it turned out to be a fake, then that object would go from being a spectacularly valuable and powerful totem to being a cute toy. Because humans are crazy, crazy apes. :)
In that case, I totally agree with you--the mystical bond between creator and creation makes a huge difference when contemplating artistic value.
Now, in the Welles film, the forgery in question is not of actual works per se, but of specific artists' styles.
There was a famous art forger named Elmyr de Hory who sold countless painting to galleries and museums claiming they were lost or never before seen works of such masters as Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani. He created these works in their styles, although he never sold reproductions of famous works.
So, the question now is: Does a painting that was once thought to be done by a grand master, but turns out to be forgery done in the style of the master, make it less valuable?
In other words, does authorship equal value?
In short, while I wouldn't say that authorship _equals_ value, I would say that it _alters_ the value of a piece. That percieved interaction between the viewer and the artist, its precise effect varies from artist to artist. If, for the sake of argument, Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will were _precisely_ equal in their artistic value, I'd tend to react to both, on their faces, as "great films, exquisitely crafted, which seek to glorify terrible things". But my deeper reaction, my "interaction" with their creators, is totally different. I see Leni Reifenstahl as an exraordinary woman who fought the best she could against the norms and restrictions of her time and place, but who ended up trapped by circumstances and unfairly demonized. I see D. W. Griffith as an unusually talented Hollywood director who held some stupid opinions and used his medium to disseminate them, resulting indirectly in the deathe of hundreds to thousands of Americans. If it was to turn out that Griffith had ghost-directed Triumph of the Will then yes, my impressions of it would change.
Let me ask this back to you: de Hory and Matisse were very different people. For any given work, wouldn't your interaction with it (beyond the very first pure aesthetic reaction) be altered in some way based on who you believed had made it? Not necessarily for the better or for the worse, but for the different? :)
In literary criticism they have the "close reading," where the reader only evaluates the printed words within the covers of the work of fiction. All outside information (i.e. author's biography, the time and place in which it was written) are completely discarded. Therefore all you have is the text to evaluate and nothing more.
If you apply that to the world of visual arts, where you evaluate just the brush strokes on the canvas, then it is possible to appreciate just the work, regardless of its creator.
With that said, I've never been too much of a fan of "close readings"--although I do see it as a useful tool sometimes--so I would say that there is more to the work of art then just brush strokes and/or words. There is something insincere about regarding a piece as a seperate entity from its creator, because for starters, works just don't appear on their own.
So, I think it all comes down to that esoteric theme of inspiration. An artist can duplicate stroke for stroke a landscape previously painted by Van Gogh, but it will be missing something intangible, namely the original artist's feelings on what the subject.
A Matisse original is essentialy Matisse's unique feeling on the subject. Whereas a de Hory copy is de Hory's interpretation of Matisse's feelings.
So, that's sort of a long way of saying, yes it would alter how I viewed the work of art.
But it also brings up the question of can art be viewed on different levels? Should it be viewed on different levels?
I can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a de Hory fake, while I am still cognizant that it's a distillation and interpretation of Matisse. Do these two appreciations counteract each other? Or is it appropriate for them to co-exist?
I'm generally uncomfortable assigning measures of value to different parts of the experience of art, because they're so rarely quantifiable. I'd say that, in its own way, it's possible to appreciate the de Hory forgery _more_ than an original Matisse, given the right mindset. If the viewer has an appreciation for the "rogueishness" of passing original creations past the studied eyes of hidebound academia, then the ded Hory could be percieved as having an associated romance that the Matisse doesn't match.
And I generally disagree with the attempt to remove context from a work by disregarding its historical context and authorial intent. At its core is a desire not to obsess over the author's intent, but I think it goes too far. In evaluating a work, I think that _all_ of its context (the work itself, the author's intent, his assumptions, his background, and the _reader's_ environment and assumptions) is essential for the fullest understanding.
I honestly can't see any value to such narrow reading unless the goal is to anticipate the reaction that someone might have who wasn't familiar with the author.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
Take, for example, a movie like "Bonnie and Clyde." It's a great movie on it's own, but it means more when you think of the time period in which it was made, with the rise of the counter culture and opposition to the Vietnam War. It's a reflection of what a growing number of people were feeling at the time.
Art should reflect what's going on in society, and removing society from the equation makes it an incomplete interpretation.
Not to mention that a lot of art is autobiographical in nature, and if one of the functions of art is to instruct, then understanding what one artist learned about themselves through their works helps us understand and learn about ourselves as well.
Ultimately, all art is self expression, and very often I feel like that is forgotten by critics and scholars.
And now, having long since exceeded LiveJournal's "maximum intelligent conversation" level, I'm gonna go post about what Star Trek character I am, or something. ;)