Aesthetics and Ethics

Paper Summary:

When discussing the philosophy of art, the issue of forgeries is a standard component. Oftentimes this component includes the component of whether or not forgeries have any sort of aesthetic merit. A work of art, forged or not, could have some element of beauty, and therefore have some aesthetic value. This paper questions whether the knowledge that it is a forgery detracts from this value and whether the fact that a piece of art is a forgery immediately removes it from aesthetic consideration. The paper also questions in what ways forgeries and fakes are detrimental to the art market and whether fakes and forgeries offer any intrinsic benefits for the market.

Paper Outline:
Introduction
Aesthetics Defined
Ethics Defined
Does Forgery Affect the Aesthetic Value of a Piece of Visual Artwork?
Forgeries and Their Effect on the Art Market
Conclusion
References

From the Paper:

"A forgery is typically created to attribute a piece of artwork to a person who did not create it, in hopes of making money. The primary fault with forgeries is that they not only misrepresent the piece of art's origin, but also misrepresent the achievement of the artist's performance (Dutton, 1979). It is not that the forgery artist's work is not worthy of aesthetic value, it indeed may be as in the case of van Meegeren, however the level of achievement must be adjusted for the individual challenges, or lack of challenges, that that particular artist faced in the creation of the forgery, to determine its value."

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