3 page paper about the article "What is Wrong with a Forgery?"

ARGUING ABOUT ART Contemporary Philosophical Debates Third Edition Edited by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley ~~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK First edition published by McGraw Hill in 1995 Second edition published in 2002 by Routledge Third edition published in 2008 by Routledge 2 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2002, 2008 Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley for selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors Typeset in Saban and Frutiger by Keystroke, 28 High Street, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been applied for ISBNH 978-0-415-42450-9 (hbk) ISBN13, 978-0-415-42451-6 (pbk) ISBN10, 0-415-42450-X (hbk) ISBN10' 0-415-42451-8 (pbk) CONTENTS PART3 Fakes and forgeries Would we be justified in revising our aesthetic judgment of a work after learning that it is a fake? In what ways does (or should) our knowledge that an artwork is an original bear upon our aesthetic valuation of it? 6 What is wrong with a forgery? ALFRED LESSING 7 Artistic crimes DENIS DUTTON PART4 Rock music and culture What role does music play in a culture? What does the widespread preference for rock music over classical music say about contemporary Western culture?

8 The decline of musical culture ROGER SCRUTON 9 Music's worldly uses, or how I learned to stop worrying and to love Led Zeppelin THEODORE GRACYK PART 5 Appreciation, understanding, and nature Are there correct and incorrect ways of appreciating nature and appreciating works of art? How does our aesthetic appreciation of nature differ from our aesthetic appreciation of works of art? 10 Aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment ALLEN CARLSON 11 On being moved by nature: between religion and natural history NOEL CARROLL 12 Models of nature appreciation MALCOLM BUDD VI 83 89 102 115 121 137 151 157 172 192 Part 3 FAKES AND FORGERIES At !east four of the copies of Rembrandt self-portraits are judged superior to their originals, which are nowhere to be seen. On two of these copies, the draftsmanship and brush control are finer than anything Rembrandt himself ever could accomplish. Unless, of course, the copies are by Rembrandt and all of his originals are by someone else. This is hard to believe, as Schillig says. "But it is superb!" "Yes. A superb fake." "We!!- but could anybody spot it?" Joseph Heller, Picture This, p. 49 "Not without a scientific examination. The panel is old and quite genuine, and it is covered in leather as old as itself. The colors are correct, made in the true manner. The technique is impeccable, except that it is rather too good for a wholly unknown painter. And this ingenious scoundrel Corniche has even seen that the craquefure incorporates some authentic dust. I don't suppose one observer in a thousand would have any doubt about it." "Oh, but Meister- that observer would surely spot the old Fugger Firmenzeichen, the pitchfork and circle, that can just barely be perceived in the upper left-hand corner. He would pride himself on having spotted it and guessed what it is, although it is almost obscured." "Yes. But it is a fake, my dear Max." "Perhaps in the substance. Certainly not in the spirit. Consider, Meister: this is not imitating any known painter's work- that would be a fake, of course. No, this is simply a little picture in a sixteenth­ century manner. Now what makes it different from these others?" "Only the fact that it has been done in the past month." "Oh, that is almost Lutheran pernickety morality! That is an unworthy servitude to chronology. Cousin, what do you say? Isn't it a little gem?" Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone, p. 318 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 who, after examining the work, tells you that your prized Paul Klee drawing is not in fact a drawing by Paul Klee at all, but a fake! Naturally enough, you are devastated. Of course, there are all sorts of reasons why you might be devastated by this news. For one thing, the forgery is almost certainly worth much less than a drawing by Klee, and so the fact that your drawing is a forgery might matter to you financially. For another, you had taken the drawing to be a genuine Paul Klee, so you may feel that the discovery that it is really a forgery casts doubt on your credentials as a connoisseur of modern art. These may be very important matters to you. But remember that one of the reasons that 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? In the first of the chapters in this part, Alfred Lessing argues that it should not. "The plain fact," Lessing writes, "is that aesthetically it makes no difference whether a work of art is authentic or a forgery," and "The fact of forgery is important historically, biographically, perhaps legally, or ... financially; but not, strictly speaking, aesthetically." The suggestion here is that the features of a work or object that are relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of the work are features that we can see (or hear, or feel, or even perhaps smell). The aestheti­ cally relevant features of a work or object, that is, are observable features. Given that there has been no change in the observable features of your drawing, then, there should be no change in your aesthetic appreciation of it. This is not to say that there is nothing wrong with forgeries, however: as Lessing sees it, the problem with them is that they lack originality, in one important sense of that term. This lack of originality negatively affects their status as art. But since- as Lessing suggests; others would disagree- originality is not an observable feature (you cannot tell whether a work is original simply by looking at it), lack of originality cannot affect a forgery's aesthetic value.

But is it true that only the observable features of a work are relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of it? In the second of the chapters in this part, Denis Dutton argues against this view. Dutton suggests that all works of art can be seen as performances, and that a central part of what is involved in aesthetic appreciation is appreciation of what an artist has achieved in his or her performance. This achievement (or lack of it) may not be wholly observable; understanding an artist's achievement, Dutton argues, depends on knowing something about the origins of the work and about the context in which it was produced. In 87 FAKES AND FORGERIES Dutton's view, that is, non-observable features of a work, and in particular facts about its origins, are relevant to our assessment of the achievement the work represents, and thus may well be relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of it. The problem with forgery, he suggests, is that "it misrepresents artistic achievement", by misleading us about the origins of the work in question. Although discovering that a work is a forgery may not lead us to notice any difference in its observable features, it does alter our understanding of its origins, and hence our assessment of the achievement it represents. Thus, if Dutton is right, discovering that a work is a forgery may legitimately affed our aesthetic appreciation of that work. Clearly, discovering that your drawing is a forgery is likely to upset you. The chapters in this part suggest, however, that it is not so clear whether your reasons for being upset can include aesthetic reasons. In essence the question is this: Can the fact of forgery matter to a person whose only concern is with aesthetic value? In attempting to answer this question, we are forced to think critically not only about the nature of aesthetic value but also about the nature of aesthetic experience. 88 6 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? Alfred Lessing This chapter attempts to answer the simple question: What is wrong with a forgery? It assumes, then, that something is wrong with a forgery. This is seen to be a reasonable assumption when one considers that the term forgery can be defined only in reference to a contrasting phenomenon which must somehow include the notion of genuineness or authenticity. When thus defined there can be little doubt that the concept of forgery is a normative one. It is clear, moreover, that it is a negative concept implying the absence or negation of value. But a problem arises when we ask what kind of value we are speaking of. It appears to be generally assumed that in the case of artistic forgeries we are dealing with the absence or negation of aesthetic value. If this were so, a forgery would be an aesthetically inferior work of art. But this, as I will show, is not the case. Pure aesthetics cannot explain forgery. Considering a work of art aesthetically superior because it is genuine, or inferior because it is forged, has little or nothing to do with aesthetic judgment or criticism. It is rather a piece of snobbery. 1 It is difficult to make this position convincing to a person who is convinced that forgery is a matter of aesthetics. If a person insists that for him the aesthetic value (i.e., the beauty) of a work of art is affected by the knowledge that it is or is not genuine, there is little one can say to make that fact unreal for him. At most one can try to show that in the area of aesthetics and criticism we are easily confused and that his view, if carried through, leads to absurd or improbable conclusions. It is important that we do this because it is impossible to understand what is wrong with a forgery unless it be first made quite clear that the answer will not be in terms of its aesthetic worth.

Somehow critics have never understood this and have again and again allowed themselves to be forced into an embarrassing position upon the discovery of some forgery or other. Perhaps the classic, certainly the most celebrated case in point, was that of Han van Meegeren, who in 1945 disturbed the complacent tranquility of the world of art and art critics by confessing that he was the artist responsible for eight paintings, six of which had been sold as legitimate Vermeers and two as de Hooghs. It 89 ALfRED LESSING 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 subjected to the very highest praise by the noted critic and scholar Abraham Bredius as one of Vermeer's finest achievements, and it hung in the Boymans Museum for seven years. During that time thousands upon thousands admired and praised the painting. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was one of the greatest of Vermeer's paintings and, indeed, one of the most beautiful works of art in the world. It was undoubtedly this universal judgment of aesthetic excellence which accounts largely for the sensational effects of van Meegeren's confession in 1945. It is of course embarrassing and irritating for an expert to make a mistake in his field. And it was, as it turned out, a mistake to identify the painting as a Vermeer. But it should be obvious from the words of Bredius that there is more involved here than a mere matter of misidentification. "The colors are magnificent," he writes. "The highest art ... this magnificent painting ... the masterpiece of Vermeer": this is more than identification. This clearly is aesthetic praise. And it is just the fact that the critics heaped such lavish praise on a picture which turned out to have been painted by a second-rate contemporary artist that made the van Meegeren case such a painful affair for them.

To their way of thinking, which I am trying to show was not very logical, they were now apparently faced with the dilemma of either admitting that they had praised a worthless picture or continuing to do so. This was, of course, precisely the trap that van Meegeren had laid for the critics. It was, in fact, the whole raison d'i!tre of his perpetrating the fraud. He deliberately chose this extreme, perhaps pathological, way of exposing what he considered to be false aesthetic standards of art critics. In this respect his thinking was no more logical than that of the critics. His reasoning, at least about his first forgery, The Disciples, was in effect as follows: "Once my painting has been accepted and admired as a genuine Vermeer, I will confess publicly to the forgery and thus force the critics either to retract their earlier judgments of praise, thereby acknowledging their fallibility, or to recognize that I am as great an artist as Vermeer." The dilemma as stated contains a difficulty to which we shall return later. What is important historically is that the critics accepted van Meegeren's dilemma as a genuine one (thereby becoming the dupes of a logical forgery as well as an artistic one), although in the public outburst of indignation, condemnation, praise, blame, analysis, investigation, and discussion which followed van Meegeren's confession, it is difficult to determine which horn of this dilemma the critics actually chose to be impaled on. There existed, in fact, a small group of critics who never for a moment accepted van Meegeren's claim to have painted The Disciples at Emmaus. They argued vehemently that whereas all the other paintings in question are easily shown to be forgeries, no convincing evidence had been produced to prove that The Disciples (as well as one other painting entitled The Last Supper) was not by Vermeer and that, in fact, all evidence 90 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? pointed to the conclusion that it was a genuine Vermeer. Subsequent laboratory tests using more modern techniques have finally settled the issue against these critics, but that need not concern us. What should concern us is the fact that aesthetically it would seem to make no difference whatever whether The Disciples is a Vermeer or a van Meegeren. Needless to say, this is not the view of the critics. To them apparently it makes all the difference in the world. Consider, for example, the words of J. Decoen, who was one of that aforementioned group of critics that held that The Disciples was a genuine Vermeer:

I must recall that the moment of greatest anguish for me was when the verdict [of van Meegeren] was being considered. The Court might, according to an ancient Dutch Law, have ordered the destruction of all the pictures. One shudders at the thought that one could, officially, have destroyed two of the most moving works which Vermeer has created. During the trial, at the moment of his indictment, the Public Prosecutor stated that there was in Court a man who claimed that a number of the paintings were not by van Meegeren. He made this statement because, ever since 1945, he must have realized that my perseverance had not faltered, that my conviction was deep, and that I had never changed my original statements in any respect whatsoever. These words may possibly have influenced the decision of the Court with regard to the application of the Law. If this be so, I should consider myself amply repaid for my efforts and pains, for my tenacity may possibly have ultimately rescued two capital works of the Dutch school of the seventeenth century. 2 But what does it matter that Decoen is wrong? Could he no longer take pride in having prevented the destruction of these "capital" paintings even though they are products of the twentieth instead of the seventeenth century? The answers, it seems to me, are almost self-evident. What, after all, makes these paintings "capital works"? Surely it is their purely aesthetic qualities, such as the ones mentioned by Bredius in his description of The Disciples. But if this is so, then why, even if this painting is a forgery, should Decoen not be justified in his actions, since he has preserved a painting which is aesthetically important for the only reason that a painting can be aesthetically important- namely, its beauty? Are we any more justified in destroying capital paintings of the twentieth century than those of the seventeenth? To this question we are usually given the answer that the one is after all a forgery while the other is genuine. But our question is precisely:

What is the difference between a genuine Vermeer and a van Meegeren forgery? It is of no use to maintain that one need but look to see the difference. Tbe fact that The Disciples is a forgery (if indeed it is) cannot, so to speak, be read off from its surface, but can finally be proved or disproved only by means of extensive scientific experiments and analyses. Nor are the results of such scientific investigations of any help in answering our question, since they deal exclusively with non-aesthetic elements of the picture, such 91 ALFRED LESSING as its chemical composition, its hardness, its crackle, and so on. The truth is that the difference between a forgery and a genuine work of art is by no means as obvious as critics sometimes make out. In the case of The Disciples, at least, it is certainly not a matter of but needing to look in order to see. The actual history of The Disciples turns all such attempted post facto explanations into a kind of academic sour grapes.

The plain fact is that aesthetically it makes no difference whether a work of art is authentic or a forgery, and, instead of being embarrassed at having praised a forgery, critics should have the courage of their convictions and take pride in having praised a work of beauty. Perhaps if critics did respond in this way we should be less inclined to think that so often their judgments are historical, biographical, economical, or sociological instead of aesthetic. For in a sense, of course, van Meegeren proved his point. Perhaps it is a point for which such radical proof was not even necessary. We all know very well that it is just the preponderance in the art world of nonaesthetic criteria such as fame of the artist and the age or cost of the canvas which is largely responsible for the existence of artistic forgeries in the first place. We all know that a few authentic pen and ink scratches by Picasso are far more valuable than a fine landscape by an unknown artist. If we were offered a choice between an inferior (but genuine) Degas sketch and a beautiful Jones or Smith or X, how many of us would choose the latter?

In a museum that did not label its paintings, how many of us would not feel uneasy lest we condemn one of the greats or praise an unknown? But, it may be argued, all this we know. It is simply a fact and, moreover, probably an unavoidable, understandable - even a necessary- fact. Is this so serious or regrettable? The answer, of course, is that it is indeed serious and regrettable that the realm of art should be so infested with nonaesthetic standards of judgment that it is often impossible to distinguish artistic from economic value, taste or fashion from true artistic excellence, and good artists from clever businessmen.

This brings us to the point of our discussion so far. The matter of genuineness versus forgery is but another nonaesthetic standard of judgment. The fact that a work of art is a forgery is an item of information about it on a level with such information as the age of the artist when he created it, the political situation in the time and place of its creation, the price it originally fetched, the kind of materials used in it, the stylistic influences discernible in it, the psychological state of the artist, his purpose in painting it, and so on. All such information belongs to areas of interest peripheral at best to the work of art as aesthetic object, areas such as biography, history of art, sociology, and psychology. I do not deny that such areas of interest may be important and that their study may even help us to become better art appreciators. But I do deny that the infor­ mation which they provide is of the essence of the work of art or of the aesthetic experience which it engenders. It would be merely foolish to assert that it is of no interest whatsoever to know that The Disciples is a forgery. But to the man who has never heard of either Vermeer or 92 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? van Meegeren and who stands in front of The Disciples admiring it, it can make no difference whether he is told that it is a seventeenth-century Vermeer or a twentieth­ century van Meegeren in the style of Vermeer. And when some deny this and argue vehemently that, indeed, it does make a great deal of difference, they are only admitting that they do know something about Vermeer and van Meegeren and the history of art and the value and reputation of certain masters. They are only admitting that they do not judge a work of art on purely aesthetic grounds but also take into account when it was created, by whom, and how great a reputation it or its creator has. And instead of seeking justification in the fact that in truth it is difficult to make a pure, aesthetic judgment, unbiased by all our knowledge of the history and criticism of art, they generally confuse matters of aesthetics even more by rationalizing that it is the complexity of the aesthetic experience which accounts for the difference made by the knowledge that a work of art is a forgery. That the aesthetic experience is complex I do not deny. But it is not so complex that such items of information as the place and date of creation or the name of the creator of a work of art have to be considered. The fact that The Disciples is a forgery is just that, a fact. It is a fact about the painting which stands entirely apart from it as an object for aesthetic contemplation. The knowledge of this fact can neither add anything to nor subtract anything from the aesthetic experience (as aesthetic), except insofar as preoccupation with it or disappointment on its account may in some degree prevent us from having an aesthetic experience at all.

Whatever the reasons for the removal of The Disciples from the walls of the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam, they were assuredly not aesthetic. And yet, we can all sympathize with, or at least understand, why The Disciples was removed. It was, after all, a forgery, and even if we grant that it is not a matter of aesthetics, it still seems self-evident that forgery remains a normative term implying a defect or absence in its object. In short, we still need to answer our question: What is wrong with a forgery? The most obvious answer to this question, after the aesthetic one, is that forgery is a moral or legal normative concept, and that it thus refers to an object which, if not necessarily aesthetically inferior, is always morally offensive. Specifically, the reason forgery is a moral offense, according to this view, is of course that it involves deception. Reasonable as this view seems at first, it does not, as I will try to show, answer our question adequately. Now it cannot be denied, I think, that we do in fact often intend little more than this moral connotation when we speak of forgery. Just because forgery is a normative concept we implicitly condemn any instance of it because we generally assume that it involves the breaking of a legal or moral code. But this assumption is only sometimes correct. It is important to note this because historically by far the majority of artistic fakes or forgeries have not been legal forgeries. Most often they have been the result of simple mistakes, misunderstandings, and lack of information about given works of art. 93 ALFRED LESSING We can, as a point of terminology, exclude all such instances from the category of forgery and restrict the term to those cases involving deliberate deception. There is, after all, a whole class of forgeries, including simple copies, misattributions, composites, and works "in the manner of" some reputable artist, which represent deliberate frauds. In these cases of forgery, which are undoubtedly the most notorious and disconcerting, someone, e.g., artist or art dealer, has passed off a work of art as being something which it is not. The motive for doing so is almost always economic, but occasionally, as with van Meegeren, there is involved also a psychological motive of personal prestige or revenge. In any case, it seems clear that- if we leave out of consideration the factor of financial loss, which can of course be considerable, as again the van Meegeren case proved -such deliberate forgeries are condemned by us on moral grounds, that is, because they involve conscious deception.

Yet as a final answer to our question as to what is wrong with a forgery, this definition fails. The reason is the following: although to some extent it is true that passing anything off as anything that it is not constitutes deception and is thus an undesirable or morally repugnant act, the case of deception we have in mind when we define forgery in terms of it is that of passing off the inferior as the superior. Although, strictly speaking, passing off a genuine de Hoogh as a Vermeer is also an immoral act of deception, it is hard to think of it as a forgery at all, let alone a forgery in the same sense as passing off a van Meegeren as a Vermeer is. The reason is obviously that in the case of the de Hoogh a superior work is being passed off as a superior work (by another artist), while in the van Meegeren case a presumably inferior work is passed off as a superior work. What is needed, then, to make our moral definition of forgery more accurate is the specification "passing off the inferior as the superior." But it is just at this point that this common-sense definition of artistic forgery in moral terms breaks down. For we are now faced with the question of what is meant by superior and inferior in art. The moral definition of forgery says in effect that a forgery is an inferior work passed off as a superior one. But what is meant here by inferior? We have already seen that the forgery is not necessarily aesthetically inferior. What, then, does it mean? Once again, what is wrong with a forgery?

The attempt to define forgery in moral terms fails because it inevitably already assumes that there exists a difference between genuine works of art and forgeries which makes passing off the latter as the former an offense against a moral or legal law. For only if such a difference does in fact exist can there be any rationale for the law. It is, of course, precisely this assumed real difference which we are trying to discover in this chapter.

It seems to me that the offense felt to be involved in forgery is not so much against the spirit of beauty (aesthetics) or the spirit of the law (morality) as against the spirit of art. Somehow, a work such as The Disciples lacks artistic integrity. Even if it is beautiful and even if van Meegeren had not forged Vermeer's signature, there would still be something wrong with The Disciples. What? is still our question. 94 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? We may approach this problem by considering the following interesting point. The concept of forgery seems to be peculiarly inapplicable to the performing arts. It would be quite nonsensical to say, for example, that the man who played the Bach suites for unaccompanied cello and whom at the time we took to be Pablo Casals was in fact a forger. Similarly, we should want to argue that the term forgery was misused if we should read in the newspaper that Margot Fonteyn's performance in Swan Lake last night was a forgery because as a matter of fact it was not Margot Fonteyn who danced last night, but rather some unknown person whom everyone mistook for Margot Fonteyn. Again, it is difficult to see in what sense a performance of, say, Oedipus Rex or Hamlet could be termed a forgery. Here, however, we must immediately clarify our point, for it is easily misunderstood.

There is, of course, a sense in which a performance of Hamlet or Swan Lake or the Bach suites could be called a forgery. If, for example, someone gave a performance of Hamlet in which every gesture, every movement, every vocal interpretation had been copied or imitated from the performance of Hamlet by Laurence Olivier, we could, I suppose, call the former a forgery of the latter. But notice that in that case we are interpreting the art of acting not as a performing art but as a creative art. For what is meant is that Olivier's interpretation and performance of Hamlet is itself an original and creative work of art which can be forged. Similar comments would apply to Margot Fonteyn's Swan Lake and Casals's Bach suites and, in fact, to every performance. My point, is then, that the concept of forgery applies only to the creative and not to the performing arts. It can be denied, of course, that there is any such ultimate distinction between creative and performing arts. But we shall still have to admit, I think, that the duality on which it is based -the duality of creativity or originality on the one hand and reproduction or technique on the other - is real. We shall have to admit that originality and technique are two elements of all art; for it can be argued not only that a performance requires more than technique, namely originality, but also that the creation of a work of art requires more than originality, namely technique. The truth of the matter is probably that both performances and works of art vary greatly and significantly in the degree to which they possess these elemeuts. In fact, their relative presence in works of art and performances makes an interesting way of categorizing the latter. But it would be wrong to assert that these two elements are inseparable. I can assure the reader that a portrait painted by me would be technically almost totally incompetent, and yet even I would not deny that it might be original. On the other hand, a really skillful copy of, for example, a Rembrandt drawing may be technically perfect and yet lack all originality. These two examples establish the two extreme cases of a kind of continuum. The copy of Rembrandt is, of course, the forgery par excellence. My incompetent portrait is as far removed from being a forgery as any work can be. Somewhere in between lies the whole body of legitimate performances and works of art. 95 ALFRED LESSING The implications of this long and devious argument are as follows: forgery is a concept that can be made meaningful only by reference to the concept of originality, and hence only to art viewed as a creative, not as a reproductive or technical, activity. The element of performance or technique in art cannot be an object for forgery because technique is not the kind of thing that can be forged. Technique is, as it were, public. One does or does not possess it or one acquires it or learns it. One may even pretend to have it. But one cannot forge it because in order to forge it one must already possess it, in which case there is no need to forge it. It is not Vermeer's technique in painting light which van Meegeren forged. That technique is public and may be had by anyone who is able and willing to learn it. It is rather Vermeer's discovery of this technique and his use of it, that is, Vermeer's originality, which is forged. The light, as well as the composition, the color, and many other features, of course, were original with Vermeer. They are not original with van Meegeren. They are forged.

At this point our argument could conclude were it not for the fact that the case which we have used throughout as our chief example, Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus, is not in fact a skillful copy of a Vermeer but a novel painting in the style of Vermeer. This threatens our definition of forgery since this particular forgery (always assuming it is a forgery) obviously possesses originality in some sense of the word.

The problem of forgery, in other words, is a good deal more complex than might at first be supposed, and before we can rest content with our definition of forgery as the lack of originality in works of art, we must show that the concept of originality can indeed account for the meaning of forgery as an untrue or objectionable thing in all instances, including even such a bizarre case as van Meegeren's Disciples at Emmaus. It thus becomes important to examine the various possible meanings that the term originality may have in the context of art in order to determine in what sense The Disciples does and does not possess it, and hence in what sense it can meaningfully and justifiably be termed a forgery. 1. A work of art may be said to be original in the sense of being a particular object not identical with any other object. But this originality is trivial since it is a quality possessed by all things. Particularity or self-identity would be better names for it.

2. By originality in a work of art we may mean that it possesses a certain superficial individuality which serves to distinguish it from other works of art. Thus, for example, a certain subject matter in a particular arrangement painted in certain colors may serve to identify a painting and mark it as an original work of art in the sense that its subject matter is unique. Probably the term individuality specifies this quality more adequately than originality. It seems safe to assert that this quality of individuality is a necessary condition for any work of art to be called original in any significant sense. It is, however, not a necessary condition for a work to be called beautiful or to be the object of an aesthetic experience. A good reproduction or copy of a painting may be the object of aesthetic 96 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? contemplation yet lack all originality in the sense which we are here considering.

Historically many forgeries are of this kind, i.e., more or less skillful copies of existing works of art. They may be described as being forgeries just because they lack this kind of originality and hence any other kind of originality as well. Notice that the quality which makes such a copy a forgery, i.e., its lack of individuality, is not a quality which exists in the work of art as such. It is a fact about the work of art which can be known only by placing the latter in the context of the history of art and observing whether any identical work predates it. As we said above, it is not this kind of originality which is lacking in The Disciples.' 3. By originality in art we may mean the kind of imaginative novelty or spontaneity which is a mark of every good work of art. It is the kind of originality which attaches to individual works of art and which can be specified in formal or technical terms such as composition, balance, color intensity, perspective, harmony, rhythm, tempo, texture, rhyme, alliteration, suspense, character, plot, structure, choice of subject matter, and so on. Here again, however, in order for this quality to be meaningfully called originality, a reference must be made to a historical context in terms of which we are considering the particular work of art in question, e.g., this work of art is original because the artist has done something with the subject and its treatment which has never been done before, or this work is not original because many others just like it predate it.

In any case, The Disciples does, by common consent, possess this kind of originality and is therefore, in this sense at least, not a forgery.

4. The term originality is sometimes used to refer to the great artistic achievement of a specific work of art. Thus we might say that whereas nearly all of Milton's works are good and original in the sense of (3) above, Paradise Lost has a particularly profound originality possessed only by really superlative works of art. It is hard to state precisely what is meant by this use of the term originality. In justifying it we should probably point to the scope, profundity, daring, and novelty of the conception of the work of art in question as well as to the excellence of its execution. No doubt this kind of originality differs from that discussed under (3) above only in degree.

It is to be noted that it cannot be the lack of this kind of originality which defines a forgery since, almost by definition, it is a quality lacking in many- maybe the majority of -legitimate works of art. Moreover, judging from the critical commentary with which The Disciples was received at the time of its discovery- commentary unbiased by the knowledge that it was a forgery- it seems reasonable to infer that the kind of originality meant here is in fact one which The Disciples very likely possesses.

5. Finally, it would seem that by originality in art we can and often do mean the artistic novelty and achievement not of one particular work of art but of the totality of artistic productions of one man or even one school. Thus we may speak of the originality of Vermeer or El Greco or Mozart or Dante or Impressionism or the Metaphysical Poets or even the Greeks or the Renaissance, always referring, I presume, to the artistic 97 ALFRED LESSING accomplishments achieved and embodied in the works of art belonging to the particular man, movement, or period. In the case of Vermeer we may speak of the originality of the artist's sense of design in the genre picture, the originality of his use of bright and pure colors, and of the originality of his treatment and execution of light.

We must note first of all that this meaning of originality, too, depends entirely on a historical context in which we are placing and considering the accomplishment of one man or one period. It would be meaningless to call Impressionism original, in the sense here considered, except in reference to the history of art which preceded it. Again, it is just because Vermeer's sense of pictorial design, his use of bright colors, and his mastery of the technique of painting light are not found in the history of art before him that we call these things original in Vermeer' s work. Originality, even in this more profound sense, or rather especially in this more profound sense, is a quality definable only in terms of the history of art.

A second point of importance is that while originality as here considered is a quality which attaches to a whole corpus or style of works of art, it can be considered to exist in one particular work of art in the sense that that work of art is a typical example of the style or movement to which it belongs and therefore embodies the originality of that style or movement. Thus we may say that Vermeer's A Painter in His Studio is original because in this painting (as well as in several others, of course) we recognize those characteristics mentioned earlier (light, design, color, etc.) which are so typical of Vermeer's work as a whole and which, when we consider the whole of Vermeer's work in the context of the history of art, allow us to ascribe originality to it.

Turning our attention once more to The Disciples, we are at last in a position to provide an adequate answer to our question as to the meaning of the term forgery when applied to a work of art such as The Disciples. We shall find, I think, that the fraudulent character of this painting is adequately defined by stating that it lacks originality in the fifth and final sense which we have here considered. Whatever kinds of originality it can claim- and we have seen that it possesses all the kinds previously discussed- it is 110t original in the sense of being the product of a style, period, or technique which, when considered in its appropriate historical context, can be said to represent a significant achievement. It is just this fact which differentiates this painting from a genuine Vermeer!

The latter, when considered in its historical context, i.e., the seventeenth century, possesses the qualities of artistic or creative novelty which justify us in calling it original.

The Disciples, on the other hand, in its historical context, i.e., the twentieth century, is not original, since it presents nothing new or creative to the history of art even though, as we have emphasized earlier, it may well be as beautiful as the genuine Vermeer pictures. It is to be noted that in this definition of forgery the phrase "appropriate historical context" refers to the date of production of the particular work of art in question, not the date which in the history of art is appropriate to its style or subject matter 4 In other 98 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? words, what makes The Disciples a forgery is precisely the disparity or gap between its stylistically appropriate features and its actual date of production. It is simply this disparity which we have in mind when we say that forgeries such as The Disciples lack integrity. It is interesting at this point to recall van Meegeren's reasoning in perpetrating the Vermeer forgeries. "Either," he reasoned, "the critics must admit their fallibility or else acknowledge that I am as great an artist as Vermeer." We can see now that this reasoning is not sound. For the notion of greatness involved in it depends on the same concept of historical originality which we have been considering. The only difference is that we are now thinking of it as an attribute of the artist rather than of the works of art. Van Meegeren's mistake was in thinking that Vermeer's reputation as a great artist depended on his ability to paint beautiful pictures. If this were so, the dilemma which van Meegeren posed to the critics would have been a real one, for his picture is undeniably beautiful. But, in fact, Vermeer is not a great artist only because he could paint beautiful pictures. He is great for that reason plus something else. And that something else is precisely the fact of his originality, i.e., the fact that he painted certain pictures in a certain manner at a certain time in the history and development of art. Vermeer's art represents a genuine creative achievement in the history of art. It is the work not merely of a master craftsman or technician but of a creative genius as well. And it is for the latter rather than for the former reason that we call Vermeer great.

Van Meegeren, on the other hand, possessed only craftsmanship or technique. His works lack the historical originality of Vermeer's and it is for this reason that we should not want to call him great as we call Vermeer great. 5 At the same time it must be recalled that van Meegeren's forgeries are not forgeries par excellence. The Disciples, though not original in the most important sense, possesses, as we have seen, degrees of originality generally lacking in forgeries. In this connection it is interesting to speculate on the relations between originality and technique in the creative continuum which we came upon earlier. A totally original work is one which lacks all technique. A forgery par excellence represents the perfection of technique with the absence of all originality. True works of art are somewhere in between. Perhaps the really great works of art, such as Vermeer's, are those which embody a maximum of both originality and technique: van Meegeren's forgeries can never be in this last category, for, as we have seen, they lack the most important kind of originality.

Finally, the only question that remains is why originality is such a significant aspect of art. Now we need to note, of course, that the concern with originality is not a universal characteristic of art or artists. Yet the fact that the search for originality is perhaps typical only of modern Western art tends to strengthen the presumption of its fundamental relation to the concept of forgery. For it is also just in the modern Western tradition that the problem of forgery has taken on the kind of economic and aesthetic 99 ALFRED LESSING significance which warrants our concern with it here. But why, even in modern Western art, should the importance of originality be such that the concepts of greatness and forgery in art are ultimately definable only by reference to it? The answer is, I believe, not hard to find. It rests on the fact that art has and must have a history. If it did not, if artists were concerned only with making beautiful pictures, poems, symphonies, etc., the possibilities for the creation of aesthetically pleasing works of art would soon be exhausted. We would (perhaps) have a number of lovely paintings, but we should soon grow tired of them, for they would all be more or less alike. But artists do not seek merely to produce works of beauty. They seek to produce original works of beauty.

And when they succeed in achieving this originality we call their works great not only because they are beautiful but because they have also unlocked, both to artists and to appreciators, unknown and unexplored realms of beauty. Men like Leonardo, Rembrandt, Haydn, Goethe, and Vermeer are great not merely because of the excellence of their works but also because of their creative originality which goes on to inspire other artists and leads through them to new and aesthetically valuable developments in the history of art. It is, in fact, this search for creative originality which insures the continuation and significance of such a history in the first place. It is for this reason that the concept of originality has become inseparable from that of art. It is for this reason too that aesthetics has traditionally concerned itself with topics such as the inspiration of the artist, the mystery of the creative act, the intense and impassioned search of the artist, the artist as the prophet of his times, the artistic struggle after expression, art as the chronicle of the emotional life of a period in history, art as a product of its time, and so on. All such topics are relevant not to art as the production of works of beauty but to art as the production of original works of beauty, or, more accurately, works of original beauty. As such they are perfectly legitimate topics of discussion. But we must not forget that the search for originality is, or ought to be, but the means to an end. That end is, presumably, the production of aesthetically valuable or beautiful works of art; that is, works which are to become the object of an aesthetic experience. That experience is a wholly autonomous one. It does not and cannot take account of any entity or fact which is not aesthetically perceivable in the work of art itself. The historical context in which that work of art stands is just such a fact. It is wholly irrelevant to the pure aesthetic appreciation and judgment of the work of art. And because the fact of forgery- together with originality and greatness- can be ultimately defined only in terms of this historical context, it too is irrelevant to the aesthetic appreciation and judgment of The Disciples at Emmaus or any other work of art. The fact of forgery is important historically, biographically, perhaps legally, or, as the van Meegeren case proved, financially; but not, strictly speaking, aesthetically.

In conclusion, let us consider the following paradoxical result. We have seen in what sense Vermeer is considered to be a great artist. We have also seen that although The Disciples is indistinguishable from a genuine Vermeer, van Meegeren cannot be thus 100 WHAT IS WRONG WITH A FORGERY? called great. And yet we would suppose that Vermeer's greatness is somehow embodied in his work, that his paintings are proof of and monuments to his artistic genius. What are we to say, then, of this van Meegeren forgery which hung in a museum for seven years as an embodiment and proof of Vermeer's genius? Are we to say that it now no longer embodies anything at all except van Meegeren's skillful forging technique? Or are we to grant after all that th!s painting proves van Meegeren's greatness as Vermeer's paintings do his? The answer is, I think, surprising but wholly appropriate. Para­ doxically, The Disciples at Emmaus is as much a monument to the artistic genius of Vermeer as are Vermeer's own paintings. Even though it was painted by van Meegeren in the twentieth century, it embodies and bears witness to the greatness of the seventeenth-century art of Vermeer. NOTES 1 Cf. Arthur Koestler, "The anatomy of snobbery," The Anchor Review 1 (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955): 1-25. 2 J. Decoen, Vermeer- Van Meegeren, Back to the Truth, trans. E.J. Labarre (London: Danker, 1951), p. 60. 3 A slightly more complex case is offered by forgeries (including probably some of van Meegeren's less carefully executed Vermeer forgeries) which are not simple copies of other paintings but which are composites of other paintings. While such forgeries clearly have a measure of individuality totally lacking in the simple copy, I should want to maintain that they lack only superficially the kind of originality here discussed.

4 To avoid all ambiguity in my definition of forgery, I need to specify whether "actual date of production" refers to the completion of the finished, concrete work of art or only to the productive means of such works. This question bears on the legitimacy of certain works in art forms where the means of production and the finished product are separable. Such works include lithographs, etchings, wood~cuts, cast sculptures, etc. What, for example, are we to say of a modern bronze cast made from a mold taken directly from an ancient bronze cast or a modern print made from an eighteenth~century block? Are such art objects forg­ eries? The answer, it seems to me, is largely a matter of convenience and terminology.

Assuming that there is no moral fraud, i.e., deception, involved, whether or not to call such cases instances of forgery becomes an academic question. It depends entirely on what we take to be "the work of art." In the case of lithography or etching there may be some ambi­ guity about this. I myself would define "the work of art" as the finished concrete product and hence I would indeed call modern prints from old litho stones forgeries, though, assum­ ing no deception is involved, forgeries of a peculiarly amoral, nonoffensive sort. In other arts, such as music, there is little or no ambiguity on this point. Clearly, no one would want to label the first performance of a newly discovered Beethoven symphony a forgery. In still other, e.g., the literary, arts, due to the absolute inseparability of the concrete work of art and the means of its production, this problem cannot arise at all.

5 Unless it be argued that van Meegeren derives his greatness from the originality of his works when considered in the context not of the history of art but of the history of forgery! 101