Well, it's been a while since I've posted. Things have been quite busy here, and I've been writing away as usual. I have a couple shorts coming out with Red Rock Review, and there will also be some collages coming out with flyway magazine. The Collages have been fun to work on and I think have been another way for me to better encapsulate an experience. We'll see if I'll ever get to that point.

Funny thing I saw in the news today: that a French Museum found out that many of the paintings in its gallery are fakes. Yup. Apparently more than 20% of all paintings in all museums are forgeries. Yes, people, the world is full of shadows and lies. This one doesn't surprise me and I wonder how much we should care.

After all, the aesthetics of the painting should more or less be the same (down to the facture). So have we really lost out in seeing such a forgery? Furthermore, given how inflated the art market is, it would appear that this is yet another example of the rich figuring out a myriad of ways to skimp on their taxes (they can donate or lend paintings etc). 

That being said, this is also a statement about what art is. I watched F for Fake by Orson Welles (a brilliant movie which you should watch right away) and loved everything about it. In it he talks about the forger who has many of his paintings on many walls in museums around the world. It would appear that this was more than just boastful.

But there was something else. The artist claimed he was better than the original artists and (it seemed to me) that it was only a matter of luck that his own paintings never "made it". So he gained something by creating forgeries and also by knowing his strokes were better than the original artist's. He also gained something from pretending that the artists themselves could not tell his work from their own. 

Which brings me to the idea of art and the individual's role in that creation of art. It's not a formula but the artist doesn't paint in a vacuum. They take in from their environment, experience, and they create. I wouldn't go so far as to call the work of art by an artist a communal creation, but it's not entirely individual either. 

So if that's the case, where in all this does the forger (especially the forger whose original work is considered unpopular) fit in? Where does their creation fit in? What if it is a new creation in the exact same vein as the original artist's? I don't think we should consider that a complete loss to view. Of course what it does do is force us to look at the prices (us as in us peasants who wouldn't participate in such auctions anyways) and why we value art in certain ways. 

Interesting stuff, if you ask me. You?

On that note, check out 1000001 American Nights while you still can. The color paperback is the best way to do this.