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ThreeOranges has made some very interesting points in her LJ(http://www.livejournal.com/users/threeoranges/119698.html). As I am not allowed to post a comment there (which incidentally reinforces my decision not to friend-lock my LJ, whatever the risks), I place it here:
Of course not. A well-made painting is a well-made painting even if it is a fake. The fraudulent intention does not invalidate the actual work that has gone into the painting - and it takes just as much hard work to make a fake as to make an original. The real issue is the idolatry of "authenticity" that is now the norm in the art trade, whereby a painting that has been actually touched by the brush of an acknowledged master is worth a hundred times more than an excellent copy made by a talented apprentice under the master's own eye. If this orthodoxy (which has, for instance, reduced the number of acknowledged Rembrandts by a factor of ten) were ever challenged, a lot of insane prices would go tumbling down, and several lavish lifestyles would be in danger. Hence "fakes" must be demonized and held to be the Absolute Evil. Personally, I admire competent fakers. (It is a different matter in archaeology, where fakes are deliberately aimed at altering our understanding of history, and are extremely dangerous in terms of our reconstruction of the past.)
Of course not. A well-made painting is a well-made painting even if it is a fake. The fraudulent intention does not invalidate the actual work that has gone into the painting - and it takes just as much hard work to make a fake as to make an original. The real issue is the idolatry of "authenticity" that is now the norm in the art trade, whereby a painting that has been actually touched by the brush of an acknowledged master is worth a hundred times more than an excellent copy made by a talented apprentice under the master's own eye. If this orthodoxy (which has, for instance, reduced the number of acknowledged Rembrandts by a factor of ten) were ever challenged, a lot of insane prices would go tumbling down, and several lavish lifestyles would be in danger. Hence "fakes" must be demonized and held to be the Absolute Evil. Personally, I admire competent fakers. (It is a different matter in archaeology, where fakes are deliberately aimed at altering our understanding of history, and are extremely dangerous in terms of our reconstruction of the past.)
