Counterfeiting and the Value of Art

That art is duplicatable and public simultaneously at different places is a very modern phenomenon since the industrialisation. We can experience any art at any place and in our hands: Devices allow us to retrieve art from various places, artists and times. We can now look up the artworks from the early Greeks, can dive into the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci’s famous creations or we can scroll through social media to see what contemporary people create and publish as “art”. Having this opportunity, art and cultures are spreading much faster. We can be inspired and communicate with artists from all over the globe. But do we actually experience those mediums as we experience the art we see as an original? Do we observe art like we did in the ages before the digital revolution? In our age, in which art can be mechanically reproduced, real art is being tested. It is questioned what the value of buying an artwork is, when you can easily download and print it on a canvas yourself. This development of public into a private experience of art decreases the effort we need to spend to consume art. We do not further need to go to a museum if we want to enjoy the aesthetic appearances. And yet, people still visit exhibitions and leave their houses to see a unique and original artwork. That demonstrates that there is a value behind art that is not a copy. The originality of an artwork is not endangered, even if

reproduction is possible: Because the medium that the artist uses is never alone content of an artwork. What we can translate into a photograph, copy or recreation is visible, but the message of the initial artist remains in his unique work.

For example, a digital design of an artist can be displayed everywhere, making just a small gap between being the original and being a copy. It is not to divide visually because computers and devices can replicate exactly identical. It is then a copy, when it is arranged by someone who is not the artist and has not the intention, the original artist had. Without knowing the background behind a digital artwork, it is not to say if it is the original or a copy. And so is the value of a digital artwork harder to discover and to create than with analogue mediums. Various features of art, such as communication, aesthetics, uniqueness or freedom of expression react differently to the possibility of reproduction. If the background and the original of an artwork is accessible, we are involved in the artists life and in his way to step into conversation. He opens himself up towards his, intentionally addressed audience. Communication through art is created when the artist willingly communicates with the audience and when the audience knows the partner of communication. The medium transports the relation between artist and world and also between world and audience. But the medium never stands on its own. A copied artwork

disregards the artists’ choice and his idea to attract an audience. Only the initial and primitive artist can incorporate value, personal experiences, storytelling or criticism (J. Berger, About Looking, 1980, p. 75). When facing a copied work, the replicator of the artwork is the one who communicates. His message differs from the artists’ intention. No matter if the copy is legitimated or fraud, the artists’ intention is gone. An example for this relation is given by Walter Benjamin who explained the movie to be a threat and antagonist of art. He shows the importance of direct confrontation between artist and audience by demonstrating the not existing relationship between actor and audience (cf. W. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1989, p. 28). The actor poses a third instance, aligning with the counterfeiters’ position. The actor never has the freedom to express his own message, instead, he is bound to the regisseurs’ message that is appropriate to the artists’ position. The actor has no individual intention and communicates through the given script, being caught in instructions. In theatres, we can discover how artists have the freedom to directly interact with the audience: they can adapt the audience, they can spontaneously create gesture and mimic and actors have a free range of variety to implement. This makes a movie enormously different from a theatre, as such as we distinguish an artwork from a copy. W. Benjamin’s thesis can be dissented when we account the regisseur as artist after having created and transported his message through a script

and a final movie. But that the actor in a movie needs to be interrogated as being artist, is obvious. Reproduction of art declines communication, as elaborated now. Additionally, there are other aspects that may dissent the unique value of original art. What the opportunities of reproduction changed in the past century and what still is a flourishing development, is the aesthetic reproduction. Digital art is easily to replicate. Further, it is nowadays not hard to reproduce analogue creations in exactly the same appearance again. 3-D technologies, calculating programs and highly advanced printers can make copies to look completely identical to the original. The aesthetic of the artworks’ superficial appearance can exist several times. The only missing instance, again, is an unseen element of the work. The execution of each step, the chronological order of making, misses. The strength of a stroke, the direction of a line or the colour mixture of a small place might have had a meaning to the creator in the primitive production. Not so, the copied sample: It is not enhancing the execution method nor the emotion while creating. It enhances simply the aesthetic.

An artist would change his concept while making something, because of emotions, ideas or intuition. His freedom allows him spontaneous alterations and he experiences a unique situation in a process. He would always prefer message over aesthetic, meaning that he could neglect aesthetics when his intention becomes

visual. This freedom is not given to someone, copying. A replicator is bound to the template. Reproduction cannot be compared to creation of art. The most important value of art is communication and it is appearing in art not only through background information of the artist. It also reappears in the use of medium, colour, shape and chronology. The aesthetics of a copied artwork would never be accounted as curatable (if the fact of being a copy is public). Neither curator, visitor nor artist would be satisfied to see a copied artwork in a museum, even if it would look identical. Uniqueness and a magical character are then stolen from the artwork. This character emerges through a “Here and Now” that the artist lived through and transports in his work (W. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1989, p.13). Artist and Audience get into a unique moment of confrontation. The audience feels that the artist wants to convey a message. If the work knowingly is a copy, this impression is lost. Further, the spectators’ knowledge that only one sample of the work exists, allows him to experience a certain amazement. The locative exclusivity is nowadays proven by the huge exchange and transport between museums and curators, exhibiting original artworks in globally distributed places. The realization of ones’ individuality becomes perceptible. As unique art exists in its’ complete version only one time, so does every person. The purpose, background and circumstance of a certain moment

when entering and discovering an exhibition is only present one time. Knowing this fact, we have the feeling that as individual, we are only present in this very short moment once. The “Here and Now” of art makes it unreproducible. A counterfeiter never has the chance to see how his own message would influence the spectator. He might not even be interested in the spectators’ reaction, while a primitive artist is.

Reproducing and distributing art can enrich the perception of various cultures, people and constructivism. The interest in new perspectives or the consciousness about our globalized structures can support diversity and tolerance, we (need to) have. Nevertheless, the value and intention of art is endangered by reproduction. The challenge is to remain an artists’ function by enhancing his work as unique, valuable and irreplaceable. We need to be aware of the fast and unfiltered visuals we see every day and are asked to approach them differently than originals.

Photography –Threat or Chance for Fine Arts?

Photographs are posing a totally new challenge for visual arts and its’ value since the impactful invention of the camera in 1839. The eye of a camera suddenly not only copied what an artist was able to create but could copy what the human eye does. Competing to the human ability, photography starts to interrogate the way we see the world, visuals and ourselves.

Visuals achieve a new value during the development of photography. The formerly enormous effort of an artist is suddenly a simple and for everyone attainable action. Fine arts so far have only been accessible for the elite. Photography brings visuals to the daily life in newspapers, advertisement and households. The division between photography as art and photography as daily mean to simply show something is separating the technique into two segments: Primitive (art) and professional photography. Initially, photography was more often used as a technique, as a method to report and document the happenings in the world or to demonstrate power (e.g. in portraits of elitist people). In this use, the value of photography is not competing with art. Photography had a rational and empiric function first, and only later, it started to be used as a mean for communication in a metaphoric and

comprehensive way (cf. J. Berger, About Looking, p. 53 ff.). While photography was feared as threat to art, its’ development demonstrates that art can never be supplemented, but things can be added to it. This is because arts’ development can’t be undone or changed in its’ quality. In the first stages of photography, it was just a technique and had not had a value that resembled the arts’ value. People legitimately were afraid of this “superficial” and technological medium to take away effort and detail of art. However, a later development makes clear that photography can be used as a medium just as a canvas and paint can. It takes as much talent and background of the artist when he photographs, such as painting does. The background of a photographer defines if he is a primitive or a professional artist, if he has an experience or an ability behind what he does. As an example: A primitive photographer is drawn to create after experiencing, feeling and urging to express his associations by using his device. Observer and artist step into conversation when a situation, the creator experienced, is transported into a relevant “Here and Now” of the audience. A message and its’ transferral into a visual need to work: Communication between artist and observer is inevitable when a value is present. In contrast, a professional learns how to shoot a flower in the perfect light, the perfect acuity and misses out on human and communicative features. As soon as a

photograph explains something without allowing space for individual interaction, it neglects the approach to the observers’ own associations (J. Berger, “About Looking”, 1980, p.54). Explicit use of a technique explains clearly and has no deeper meaning: A reportative and explanatory effect dominates over an experimental and personal observation. In those very different approaches of photography, we can sense how the value of photography is created, just as it is created for art. It needs not alone the skill to create but it needs a message, knowledge and an audience (cf. J. Berger, “About Looking”, 1980, Chapter 2).

The separation in reality was not as obviously divided. Especially fine arts of naturalistic and realistic character suffered after the invention of the camera: Pictures have been created cheaper and faster. Nevertheless, we also need to question if the portrait-art in history had an artequal value or if it just was the skill and patience of the artist who made professional, not primitive art. J. Berger introduces the widely used terms “private” and “public” which distinguish two “quite distinct uses of photography” (cf. J. Berger, About Looking, p. 55 ff.). The purpose of a photograph defines if it is an artwork (primitive photography) or just a property of an individual (professional photography). But we see that this theory, applied on art, accounts equally for analogue, traditional creations:

In all segments of Fine Arts, in Painting as much as in Photography, the context and content of a visual need to affect and influence the audiences’ conscience. The connection between creator and observer has to function when the displayed artwork projects the observer into the sphere of a “Here and Now”. He acknowledges the originality of what he sees and puts it into relation to what he knows as an individual. If the process of associations happens radially, the higher a value can grow. A sequence of thoughts happens and builds a long connection between the artwork, individual ideas, experiences and association. “In general the better the photograph, the fuller the context which can be created.” (J. Berger, About Looking, p.65). An unilinear thought chain is not allowing interpretation and room for personal participation in the artwork (cf. J. Berger, About Looking, p. 64). Considering that private portraits never met an audience but only were accessible to the client, the essential communicative value is absent. Even if nowadays, we can retrieve a value when seeing old portraits in museums (because we are able to perceive a part of history) the contemporary attributes of art has not been fulfilled. We can nowadays enter a new perspective and our conscious horizon is enlarged when facing an old work. However, it remains to be questionable how intense the contemporary impact of those artworks has been. If the theory that realistic and naturalistic drawings were more professional (skill-

orientated) than primitive (purpose-orientated), we also need to differentiate between various stylistic eras in which art was maybe not what it is at its’ core. It then can be said that primitive photography is more equal to art than a very depictive, private painting is to art. Comparing works of the expressionism to 18 th century art, the effect of the dissimilarity becomes vivid: Depending on the emotional, story-telling and associative character of the stylistic eras, the value varies.

Analysing this huge gap between paintings, etchings or even sculptures in their closed segment, the gap between analogue and photographic art deteriorates. That some traditional creations lack of value more than primitive photography, is evident.

Having elaborated this thesis, we can look at another result, the invented camera provoked: It made the essence and mission of socially important art stronger and separates it from professional drawings, only serving as depictive mean. Realism was initiated through the industrialisation, which also introduced the camera as a new medium. Those two art movements might seem to contradict each other, but in reality, they supported and added to each other, making art relevant for a bigger group of people.

The appreciation of story-telling and impactful artists grew due to the camera, that suddenly showed that

photography, as much as fine arts have a primitive and a professional character. The value for art, approached by the elite - only purchased and created within their group- deteriorated when people discovered the only depictive and less communicative features of it. Art grows into a discipline of meaning and intention, less than one of knowledge. New perspectives, new approaches and educative elements suddenly become a feature of art as it only has been before the medieval ages. As result of the industrialization, Realism introduces a new target group of artists. Firstly ever, the lower class is object, audience and communication partner in the time of realism.

Photography changed the experience and appreciation of visuals enormously. It never touched or altered the core of what art is: Communication, intention and association. In some periods of time until today, the camera posed a threat to job sectors and supplement them. However, the artist –today as much as ever –is free in the choice of his medium. Technology can never supplement the essence of arts’ personal and interhuman character which alone artist and audience can implement into it.