le piaf

AUDIATUR ET ALTERA PARS!

My Photo
Name:

A words trier, a stormy sea sailor, a jazz lover, a painting admirer, a poetry parser, a gig addict, a scent seeker, a harmony balancer. Or perhaps, a philanthropy practitioner, a knowledge seeker, a common grounds searcher, a truth resolver. Otherwise, tiny and frail creature who lives in deeds, not years. In thoughts, not breaths. In feelings, not in figures on a dial. And who also counts time by heartthrobs. Because most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Sunday, June 05, 2016

FORGERY VS SNOBERY

In aesthetics, major concern is given to the whether imitations of original art works possess any approximate aesthetic values or whether they have completely identical dimension to the original art work. In this context, a distinction is being made between pure reproduction of the work of art, and the imitation of the original. In the given example, ”judging a the perfect forgery is less aesthetically valuable than the original..”, relates to the complete copying of artwork. I should mention that the forgery depends on the type of original work (the case of musical and literature work differ in that they don’t have that much connection to snobbery) that is subject of forging activity – sculpture or painting. It is much more difficult to produce a copy of let’s say Michelangelo’s David rather than a copy of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. The entire skill, inventiveness and labor, choice of materials and technique is considerably more difficult to copy completely when forging sculpture works.  Forging the Mona Lisa however, would seem less daunting because of the entire range of available modern techniques at disposal. In addition, major influence in the judging of an artwork’s originality, would be exerted by the background knowledge of the spectator/judge, his/her aesthetic norms, by the author’s name and also by the exhibition facility of the artwork – all these elements may affect people’s perception and judgment. There are cases of perfect forgery that even experts in the field could not make a difference between the forgery and the original work.

Yet, it seems that the point of this discussion would not be whether the human eye would manage to detect the difference, but more substantial one - whether the original and the forgery would yield an identical aesthetic pleasure and would arouse identical feelings in us. It goes without saying that the value of the forgery, albeit a perfect one, could not replace the value of the original work as a piece of artwork does not exist by itself and for itself, especially because the artwork displays layers of social, artistic, spiritual, pioneering, visionary and educational messages and values, etc. Yet, if the viewer or consumer of art is unaware that perceived artwork iѕ a perfect forgery, the aesthetic pleasure may arguable be identical to the pleasure of viewing the original piece.
It would be hypocritical of me to say that I value solely the aesthetics of originals because my walls display reproductions as well, that although cannot arouse the say feelings as an original in a gallery with all its originality, and all the experience brought by originality, yet they still decorate and beautify my living space and despite being perfect forgeries.