Title: Authenticity and Implicature
Authors: Joint with Jon Robson
Publication: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 81, Issue 3, September 2023, Pages 387–391
Date: 14 July 2023
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad016
Abstract: In her book Things, Carolyn Korsmeyer argues that authenticity or what she often calls “genuineness” is “an aesthetically salient property” (2019, 34), a property “that commands attention in itself” (35), a “valuable” property (57). We will argue that authenticity is none of these things. A picture by Vermeer and a forgery of Vermeer by van Meegeren certainly differ in value—financial and artistic. But it would be false to say that the one is authentic and the other is not. As Denis Dutton noted, “a Han van Meegeren forgery of a Vermeer is at one and the same time both a fake Vermeer and an authentic van Meegeren” (2003, 258).1 Indeed, as far as what is true of both pictures, authenticity drops out altogether. The authentic Vermeers are exactly and necessarily the Vermeers, and similarly for the van Meegerens.2 After all, if we want to know whether this is an authentic Vermeer, we need only to find out whether it is a Vermeer; there is not an additional fact that we need to check. Facts about a picture’s history, such as who painted it, matter to its value; so far as authenticity goes, all pictures are equal. It is true that being an authentic Vermeer is an aesthetically salient, valuable property that commands attention; that is because it is the same property as being a Vermeer, and that is an aesthetically salient, valuable property that commands attention. Unfortunately, being an authentic Currie and being an authentic Robson are none of those things; that is because being a Currie and being a Robson are properties that rightly interest no one.
