HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF FORGERIES Roger Clark Idaho State University

It is generally accepted that forgeries and copies of artworks are not aesthetically disreputable apriori because of any properties inherent in them that viewers can observe, in other words because of their looks.’ That is, the fact of being a forgery does not of necessity render the forgery incapable of exhibiting beauty. Recently, however, it has been argued that high-quality reproductions of the looks of originals-no matter how well done-cannot grant complete aesthetic respectability to forgeries, Neither forgeries nor copies can give the aesthetic satisfaction of their originals because they lack the relation to the past that only originals can have. This argument holds that although reproductions may copy all of the observable properties of a work of art, these properties alone are not sufficient to give a work aesthetic value. Essential to a work of art, so the argument goes, is a relational quality-the relation of the work of art to its context in the history of art and to the socio-cultural milieu in which it was produced. Copies can never reproduce this quality.

But the argument that historical context is essential to aesthetic evaluation fails. Although relational properties are relevant to a work’s aesthetic value, the relevant relational values are not those that relate a work to its historical context. They are those that relate a work to its genre or type, and copies can reproduce these qualities. Demanding an “appropriate” historical context of a work in order for it to be aesthetically respectable confuses aesthetic merit, a work’s beauty, with artistic merit, a work’s significance within its culture and the history of art. This demand leads to absurdity.

A work’s artistic merit is that which it possesses by virtue of its status in the history of art and its socio-cultural milieu. Influential, historically important artworks may have considerable artistic merit due to their originality, advances in technique, and so on, but this merit is distinct from the work’s aesthetic merit. Wyatt’s sonnets, for example, possess an artistic merit that far exceeds their aesthetic merit. Later pieces in a style or movement may be more beautiful than those that originated the

Roger Clark received rhe D. A . in English from Idaho Siare University where he is currenily rhe Lunguage Skills Coordinator in rhe Deparirnenr of English and Philosophy. He has published in wriring journals, and his main philosophical interest is in aesrheiics.

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style though they have less artisitc merit. If aesthetic merit is distinct from artistic merit, then derivative pieces, copies, and forgeries may have considerable aesthetic merit while remaining devoid of or possessing little artistic merit.

The supposed aesthetic significance of the work’s relation to the past is a variation on the argument that forgeries and copies lack originality and so are aesthetically inferior to originals. What distinguishes this line of argument from the usual arguments that invoke originality as an aesthetic criterion is the notion that forgeries lack originality given the context of theirproduction and that aesthetic value is tied to a work’s place in its historical context. Thus, Alfred Lessing, in “What Is Wrong With a Forgery,” admits that forgeries, Van Meegeren’s for example, can even have “the kind of imaginative novelty or spontaneity which is a mark of every good work of art.l.2 But this is not the only mark of a good work of art and is not sufficient for aesthetic respectability. He finds that what remains “wrong” with a forgery is that it is not original in its historical context-“it is ‘not’ 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.”3 In “Artistic Crimes: The Problem of Forgery in the Arts,” Denis Dutton makes a similar claim. Whenever we judge a work of art, he says, “We must have some notion of what countsasssuccessor failure in connection with the kind of artistic performance in question” [italics are Dutton’s1.4 What is wrong with a forgery, he argues, is that it is a misrepresentation of artistic performance and thus a misrepre- sentation of artistic achievement.5 And in a recent article, Mark Sagoff argues that since forgeries are not authentic products of the time and placethey seem to beof, they lack thecloserelation withourcultureand its past of originals and have no place in our collective heritage.6

Lessing and Dutton seem to be correct that aesthetic appreciation and evaluation are inherently comparative and so introduce facts from outside the work in question. One model of aesthetic evaluation claims that it is a non-comparative activity. According to this model, anything brought to bear from outside the work in question (such as facts about originality) is not aesthetically relevant. However, this model is clearly inadequate to account for our experience of artworks. E.D. Hirsch, in Validity in Interpretation, has demonstrated that our notion of the genre or type of an utterance is constitutive of the meaning we find in it and that generic expectations are necessary to understanding: without a notion of the rules that apply to any particular work, we cannot understand it, much less evaluate it. Lack of preliminary genre expectations, the attempt to understand and evaluate works in a vacuum, leads, as Hirsch shows, to the difficulty LA. Richards has in Practical Criticism. Richards conducted an experiment in which he asked students to criticize poems without being supplied titles or attributions. He was appalled with the results and concluded that

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students were no longer being adequately instructed in literature. Hirbch argues that Richards came to the wrong conclusion about his experiment. He points out that Richards demonstrated not so much the students’ undeveloped sensibilities for reading poetry, as their inability to interpret and evaluate poems without some orientation or accurate preliminary notions of the generic categories that define the constraints on a work.’ In Dutton’s terms, students did not know what counted for success or failure in the particular kinds of works they were asked to interpret.

Hirsch’s notion that an accurate assessment of and understanding of a work’s type is necessary for appreciation and evaluation applies to painting as well as literature. The appreciation and evaluation of a painting are also inherently comparative, for as Dutton rightly points out, we need to know the rules that apply to the work, what counts for success or failure in a particular kind of performance. And in order to understand a new kind of work, there must of necessity be links with pre-existing works that render the new work intelligible, links which change, re-use, or reject the past. This is the significance of the argument that not every kind of painting is possible in every period. An artist of the Renaissance would not know enough of the generic conventions to understand, much less evaluate or produce, an Abstract Expressionist painting. That is, such a painting would have no discernible links with his conception of painting.

Hence, relational properties do have relevance for aesthetic evaluation- Lessing and Dutton are correct in this. However, Hirsch’s analysis of genre suggests that the relevant aesthetic relational properties are not those that relate the work to its achievement in its cultural and historical context but rather those that define the generic constraints that apply to the work. Reference to historical context is not necessary to accurately assess a work aesthetically-we are better able to assess the aesthetic merit of a sonnet or a painting in the Impressionist manner by knowing the conventions and concerns of these types than we are by knowing the place in art history and the cultural contexts of the particular pieces under examination. When Dutton stresses that we must know what counts as success or failure with a particular performance, he is correct; but we know what counts aesthetically by knowing the constraints of the genre. A work’s historical context may, of course, help us infer these constraints, but this context is only aesthetically relevant in so far as it informs us about these rules. To give further aesthetic value to a work’s achievement within its historical context, as Lessing and Dutton do is to confuse the artistic merit or artistic achievement of a work, its contribution to or importance within its cultural context and the history of art, with the aesthetic merit of the work, its beauty.

For the purpose of aesthetic evaluation, then, the generic categories appropriate to originals seem also appropriate to forgeries and copies. If we take pride in our expertise, we may feel somewhat cheated in

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judging a work as seventeenth century Dutch when it is in fact a superb twentieth century imitation, but our sense of being cheated arises out of the misjudged artistic merit of the work, not out of misjudged aesthetic merit. Aesthetically, we have placed such a work in the proper categories and seem to be viewing it with the proper conventions in mind.

One further argument supports the idea that the rules that apply to particular works to determine aesthetic success or failure cannot be bound to historically “appropriate” styles but must rather be bound to types or genres. That we cannot require works to have an historically appropriate history of production in order to be aesthetically respectable is shown by the fact that such a requirement leads to the absurd conclusion that if imitators and copyists work within contemporary styles, they will be respected members of the artistic community, but otherwise they will not. Lessing, for example, says concerning a Van Meegeren forgery, “What makes The Disciples a forgery is precisely the disparity or gap between its stylistically appropriate and is actual date of production.”g This seems absurd, for it recommends that Van Meegeren, instead of forging Vermeers, should rather have copied a contemporary style or master, say Mondrian. This may be absurd, but I think Lessing here expresses one of the fundamental modes of perception of art historians and a major reason why historically appropriate styles have been assumed to be important. Painters who adopt a current style are perhaps known as minor painters in the style since they did not originate it, but their works are aesthetically respectable because they took place in a significant style in the appropriate historical context. Thus, a seventeenth century imitator of Vermeer could produce works not aesthetically disreputable a priori, but a twentieth century imitator can’t. Perhaps if Van Meegeren had brought the same qualities to painting in the de Stijl manner that he did to the Vermeer manner, he would have been a respected member of the movement.

Thus, recent arguments have failed to establish the relevance of the origins or history of production of an artwork to its aesthetic value. Forgeries seem to deserve the same respect aesthetically as any other artwork in spite of their lack of an “appropriate” historical context. Nothing intrinsic to forgeries casts them into disrepute; and while individual forgeries and copies will be more or less aesthetically valuable, this will depend on their individual merits.

NOTES

I See, for example, Ruby Meager, “The Uniqueness of a Work of Art,” in Collected Puperson Aesthetics, ed. Cyril Barrett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965); M. Pabst Battin, “Exact Replication and the Visual Arts,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 38 (1979), 153-57; Anthony Ralls,“The Uniqueness and Reproducibility of a Work of Art,” Philosophical Quurterly. 22 ( 1978). I - 1 8.

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* Alfred Lessing, "What Is Wrong With a Forgery?" in Contemporary Aesthetics, cd.

3 Lessing, p. 265.

5 Dutton, p. 308. 6 Mark Sagoff, "The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Art," Brirish Journal of

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretorion (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp.

Matthew Lipman (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973). p. 265.

Denis Dutton,"Artistic Crimes: The Problem of Forgery in the Arts," BritishJournal of Aesthetics, 19 (1979). 307.

Aesthetics. 21 (1981). 318-29.

7 1-89. 8 Lessing, p. 265.

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