Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Lioudmila Voropai

Faked Fakes: Art Strategy and Art Tactic

  “…She turned to me and lazily remarked, that my irony and a habit to question the rules is just a mask of inability to play any game properly. I was at a loss for what to say.”

Vasilissa Premoudrova, De Ludo Globi

Contents

Introduction 3

Part 1. Investigating the Cultural Logic Of Fake 5

1. The Secrets of Success 5

2. Notes to the Political Economy of Fake 8

Part II.  Art and Delusion: Practices of Self-Mystification 9

1. Art and its Relation to Other Social Systems 9

2. Historical Genesis of the Social Functions of Art 13

3. Art as Subject of Mass Media 18

Notes 26

Introduction

The number of the cultural products defined by their producers as ‘Fake’ is seemed to have nearly reached that critical point when it starts to become slightly irritating. To declare an artwork or a film being a fake is nowadays a sure way to increase its 'added value' on “the market of symbolic goods”. An obvious socio-critical potential of fake as a self-confident cultural practice perfectly meets one of the basic intellectual needs – the need of being unsatisfied with the social reality.

It hardly makes sense, even as a pure rhetoric figure common at the beginning of any research, to suspect that the artists and filmmakers are becoming 'fakers' because of some conscious 'marketing' strategy. It would be more reasonable to suggest, that they are rather moved by flair for a certain unarticulated demand at the 'market', which is closely intertwined with some ‘Lust am Falschen’ [1] .

The broad spectrum of fakes 'under offer' - from the reports in the media about the events which have never happened and so called 'mockumentaries' on the TV, to the catalogues of the not existed exhibitions and the article of fictitious critics about fictitious art-movements - implies some preconditions (social, economical, historical, etc.), which should be analysed first in order to enable a relevant study of the diverse practices of 'Fake' themselves. The typology of phenomena always has at the background the typology of their causes, even if the last one is not often articulated as such.

Proceeding from these assumptions, the current thesis is not intended to provide an all-embracing study of 'Fake' as a social and cultural phenomenon [2] , but rather to explore the reasons of its seductive power as a particular art strategy in the present art context.

In order to avoid some terminological confusion, we will distinguish an older meaning of the term ‘fake’ in a sense of forgery, i.e. production of a counterfeit object with the purpose to deceive, from its later use as a word that designates the art strategy[3] in the context of contemporary art. The main difference between the last one and its ‘historical precursor’ consists in an intention.

Traditionally under the term ‘forgery’ is meant a simulation of some already existing phenomena, particularly in an art context - a copy of 'original' artwork or an imitation of an individual style of a certain artist. The forgery however tries to conceal its 'secondary nature' and poses as that ‘true’ object, which it imitates. In other words, a forgery is produced with the intention of being perceived as not that, what it is, but as that, what it is not. The forgeries aim to be consumed as the artefacts, sometimes even imaginary, like, for example, unknown works of the well-known masters, which they pretend to be. So, some famous forgeries like, for instance, the forgery of Johannes Vermeer "Supper at Emmaus" [4] by Han van Meegeren from 1936 or that of Matisse "Lady with Flowers and Pomegranates" [5] by Elmyr de Hory from 1955, were even bought by museums as 'true' Vermeer (Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen in Rotterdam) and 'true' Matisse (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA).

A teleology of the concept of fake in terms of the art strategy we mentioned before is quite different. Fake in this sense just pretends that it has an intention to be perceived as not that, what it purports to be. It merely seems, that fake tries to falsify 'the reality' [6] , to stage itself as a part of 'the word', even if this 'word' is included into the 'art-world' [7] . Actually it exists only in the "as if" mode: it stages itself as if it would attempt to imitate some existing phenomena. In a fact fake only feigns its own endeavour to simulate ‘reality’, i.e. it imitates its own intention to imitate. In a sense, fake is a product that pretends to be a pretension.

The casuistry of the double pretension, or even, pretension of a second degree, perfectly serves to the compatibility of the notion of fake with some conceptual trends within the contemporary art discourse with its weakness for sophisms, self-referential constructions and loops of thought.

One of the aptest recent examples of fake, which can be mentioned here to illustrate this principle, is the project of art festival of the fake-artworks. In the Internet was placed a website, which was announced as an official site of the new art festival of the ‘fake art’.

This site entirely simulated the usual structure and aesthetics of the art festivals’ websites providing a possibility to apply for the participation at this festival. After a while, when the number of applicants and submitted artworks reached a certain point, the ‘organisers’ of the ‘festival’ declared that the ‘festival’ itself was a fake – that was an art project realised by a group of the students from the Art Academy in Bremen [8] .

The exploiting of the fake-methods to the tradition of ‘fake-artworks’ itself imparts this in a sense manneristic project with the charm of self-referentiality. What is especially important for this work as well as for any fake in general is the act of the ‘self-demystification’. To achieve the highest degree of its efficiency as an artwork in the art context, to realize itself in its adequacy to the own concept, fake should in some way declare its ‘fakeness’. This gesture of manifestation is one of the most significant aspects of the 'logic' of fake: "Im Gegensatz zur traditionellen Kunstfälschung handelt es sich bei der Konzeption von Fake … um eine künstlerische Strategie, die sich von vornherein selbst als Fälschung bezeichnet." [9]

In which form fake-work demonstrates its ‘fakeness’ does not play a big role. The work can use some internal or external hints and indications for that; it is not a strategic matter, but rather the question of its relevance for any concrete work.

What is really important here is, that these acts of self-manifestation suggest at least an understanding of the very idea of the used practice. Precisely this circumstance endows fake with that valuable quality of self-reflectivity, which in many respects enables the successful carrier of fake within the discourse of contemporary art.

Part 1. Investigating the Cultural Logic Of Fake.

1. The Secrets of Success

  “Any worthful discourse starts with the Platonism; or ends up with the Platonism; or both.”

Vasilisa Premudrova, Ancillae Philosophiae

Dropping a curtsey sideward tradition of thesis writing, we should do some remarks concerning our purposes. This thesis is not aimed to submit an overview of the fake-artworks of the last years or to offer a detailed analysis of some concrete examples of fake. What in this chapter will be dealt with is rather the discourse of fake in a broader context of the art discourse in general. But at the same moment the current paper is not going to become a kind of discursive analysis in a usual understanding of this term, for this concern restricts itself to the few particular questions. Namely, how and why the discourse of fake as a self-conscious art-practice was established within the discourse of contemporary art.

As any other discourse, the art discourse contains some conceptual topoi, which function as ‘check points’ of a discursive validity of certain phenomena. Different art practices have different degrees of compatibility with the interpretations provided by these topoi. As we will see, fake, because of its high degree of compatibility, has managed to pass these ‘check points’ successfully.

“Ich arbeite nicht mit Originalen bzw. nur mit Originalen. Doch meine Verachtung des Originals geht so weit, dass ich mir nicht einmal Kopien von den originalen mache. Kopien bzw. Abschriften macht man, um das Original zu sichern, für den Fall, dass es verloren geht. Ich achte das Original so gering, dass ich es durch keine Kopie vor seinem Verschwinden retten möchte. Ich arbeite also nicht mit Kopien“. [10]

The dichotomy of the concept of the original and the concept of the copy has a long history. Since Plato’s ‘first edition’, the interpretation of this opposition has undergone some radical changes. In Platonism, at least in that lapidary version of it, which allows us to operate with this term without getting stuck with its endless possible interpretations in the terrain of the history of philosophy, the ontological status of original and that of copy had an inverted polarity. An eidos or idea is the original that exists in the intelligible word, which is the ‘true’, ‘real’ world, the ‘world of ideas’. The material objects in the perceptible world are just the copies of eidoi or ideas from the ‘true’ intelligible world.

During the long process of the history of metaphysics this platonic hierarchy of the initial ‘true’ intelligible world of ideas and secondary ‘untrue’ perceptible world of their copies – material objects – from the ontological perspective was turned to be its exact opposite. The status of the ‘really existing’, ‘true’ and ‘real’ was appropriated from intelligible eidoi and granted to perceptible physical objects . As a result of this ‘October revolution’ the category of original became applicable to the material objects [11] ; the category of copy kept its predicates of ‘unreal’ and ‘untrue’, but got the predicate of the ‘really existing’ in the ‘real’ world. In a sense this process can be considered as an act of the ontological equalization, because both, original and copy, now belong to the same material perceptible world. This aspect is hardly mentioned in any discussion about Platonism in context of the analysis of the discourse of fake.

Some general remarks regarding the role of the Platonism in the contemporary art discourse should be done here. In this respect the discourse of contemporary art obediently follows that general interpretative tendencies concerning Platonism, which became common in all postmodern, poststructuralist, deconstruction etc. discursive practises since the sixties.

Platonism in its simplified version is treated as a convenient platform for the revelation of its own positions, which becomes possible only in form of criticism and differentiation of the concerned subject. In this context Platonism is interpreted as an origin or/and embodiment of the metaphysical principle of settling the oppositions. Moreover, sometimes the very concept of metaphysics is deduced to this principle of the oppositions: truth and untruth, being und nonbeing, true and untrue, good and evil etc. Therefore, Platonism that ‘stands for’ metaphysics is accused of being logocentric and having totalitarian intentions. In order to depict own its standpoints the postmodern thought should have offered some alternative concepts, which avoid the trap of binary oppositions, at least the old ones.

One of the most significant among them for our concern of the discourse of fake was the concept of simulacrum. Of course, it would be more correct to speak about the concepts of simulacrum, for their understandings noticeably differ depending on the interpretators’ intentions.

For instance, according to Jean Baudrillard the simulation – the process that leads to the appearance of simulacra - is the substitution of signs of the real for the real [12] . Signs no longer represent or refer to an external model. They stand for nothing but themselves, and refer only to other signs.

Slipping away from Baudrillard’s analytical mode at the level of the ‘political economy of sign’ and moving nearer the ‘metaphysical’ one, we will find another influential concept of simulacrum in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. In his famous article "Plato and the Simulacrum" he defines the simulacrum as a copy of a copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can no longer properly be said to be a copy. It stands on its own as a copy without a model [13] . A copy, no matter how many times removed, authentic or not, is defined by the presence or absence of internal, essential relations of resemblance to a model. The simulacrum, on the other hand, bears only an external and deceptive resemblance to a putative model. The process of its production, its inner dynamism, is entirely different from that of its supposed model; its resemblance to it is merely a surface effect, an illusion.

Both the foregoing concepts of simulacrum despite their noticeable difference have one very important point in common - the simulacrum cannot be adequately discussed in terms of the dichotomy of copy and model. As ‘a copy without a model’ the simulacrum has abandoned the terrain of the necessity to have an external referent. It has the reference in itself, representing an ideal type of the self-referent structure.

The discourse of fake found its solid metaphysical background in the theory of simulacrum. From that perspective the very fake is nothing else but simulacrum. Deleuzeian description of the simulative practice can be one to one applied to describe the practice of fake: "Simulation does not replace reality . but rather it appropriates reality in the operation of despotic overcoding, it produces reality on the new full body that replaces the earth. It expresses the appropriation and production of the real by a quasi-cause. [14] "

For the discourse of contemporary art, which development was entirely determined by certain tendencies in the postmodernist and poststructuralist thought in general, the concept of original is always closely intertwined with the 'old', i.e. coming from classical aesthetics, concept of the artwork. (Of course, 'classical aesthetics', 'postmodernist and poststructuralist thought' and 'the discourse of contemporary art' in this text are the same schematised constructions as afore-mentioned 'Platonism'. But as far as the rhetoric of self-positioning is the rhetoric of exaggeration and certain irresponsibility, these terms will be used as working concepts without permanent reserve. Otherwise we would not be able to make any distinct statement, being doomed to the sad endlessness of self-deconstructing writing.)

So, in classical aesthetics, which is, certainly, deeply rooted into metaphysics of Platonism, artwork is an object with a distinct ontological status. Because of its object nature the artwork should be thought in the category of being, which within the metaphysical context correlates the category of truth. At best the relations between the artwork, being and truth were resumed by Heidegger in his “der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes”: “Im Kunstwerk hat sich die Wahrheit des Seienden ins Werk gesetzt. [15] ” Therefore “das Wesen der Kunst” can be defined as “das Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit des Seienden”.

The inevitable uniqueness of the artwork results from its relation to the being accordingly to the truth. Under these presuppositions the concept of artwork correlates the concept of original just as the concept of being correlates that of truth.

As far as all these concepts within the art discourse, traditionally noticeably influenced by the Frankfurter School, imply certain political ontology, both the ‘classical’ concept of artwork and that of original are designated as “metaphysical disguises of the bourgeois notion of ownership [16] ” and the “ontology of original” is considered “as bourgeois ontology of the artwork”. Under these assumptions the artwork does not go beyond the paradigm of art as mimesis. It is just a representation of the reality, that’s why this kind of art conforms existing social order and can be even used as a means of power.

In opposite, at the level of the possible ideological implications the concept of fake can be successfully presented as a strategy that has a strong socio-critical or even revolutionary potential. It represents not the real, but imaginary alternative to the real. At the same moment, this imaginary is disguised as the real. And that what is really subversive and really efficient about fake, because being the alternative it looks very trustful and makes to believe that this alternative really exists [17] .

2. Notes to the Political Economy of Fake

Fakes are like owls in the famous sentence from “Twin Peaks”: “ The owls are not what they seem.” Moreover, fakes are like self-confident and fair owls, for by their definition and the very fact of their existence, they declare: “We are not what we seem”.

Probably exactly at this point we should start to search for a key for the understanding of the cultural logic of fake.

The fake reaches an adequacy of its perception by a recipient - a viewer of a film, a visitor of an exhibition, a reader of a text etc. – only if at a certain moment the recipient gets to know that the product s/he consumes is a fake. And namely this knowledge constitutes the ‘added value’ of fake. In this respect the whole ‘political economy’ of fake can be deduced from the one simple principle, which, in a way, causes that ‘added value’ - from the pleasure of feeling their own intelligence and perspicacity.

If the recipient realises by himself the 'fake'-nature of the object of his/her consumption, then s/he is happy, s/he is able to recognise the lie: it is unquestionable proof of their own shrewdness.

In case the recipient from the very beginning knows, what s/he is dealing with, or, if s/he gets to know about it post factum (from our analytical perspective it does not play an important role), the main thing is, that the recipient does not discover the 'fake' nature of the considered object by himself, but is informed about this circumstance from some external sources, then s/he feels his communion with the intelligence of the 'faker' (an artist, film-director or any other producer of the ‘fake’-product). Through the act of a 'fake'-production the 'faker' demonstrates his/her reflexive potential and critical distance in relation to the world, what, together with the recipient's ability to conceive it, evokes the mutual self-flattering feeling of shared deeper understanding of the 'world essence'.

Of course, the described mechanism has a slightly ludicrous character, but an exaggeration as an analytical tactic has often the biggest demystifying potential. This mechanism is that of the pleasure of fake as 'pure form', which should not be confused with the pleasure of its content. The logic of the pleasure of content is different. It is the pleasure of sharing the ideas, an enjoyment of meeting a like-minded person, through which a certain ontologisation of the own Weltbild takes place. This mechanism functions the best in the works with the conscious social-critical intentions. However, these kind of works do not represent the majority of the fake-products. The majority emerges rather from the compromise between traditional demiurgical ambitions of artists and usual low/no-budget conditions of art production. This is one of the most significant reasons, why fake as an art strategy in general and documentary-fake as genre in particular became so widely practiced by art and film students. An important motivational category of doing something for fun , which is often used by ‘fakers’ to explain their intentions, simply implies the primary artistic pleasure of deceit.

Part II.  Art and Delusion: Practices of Self-Mystification

"In der wirklich verkehrten Welt ist das Wahre ein Moment des Falschen."

Guy Debord, Rapport über die Konstruktion von Situationen

An idea of art as a place of deceit and illusion has managed to keep its actuality for the diverse aesthetic theories till nowadays. The potential of delusion is something that nearly ‘by nature’ belongs to the very essence of the artistic activity [18] . This old art theoretical topos can be illustrated by an anecdote about the alleged rivalry between two Greek painters of 5th century BC Parrhasios and Zeuxis, which was recorded in the Pliny’s Natural History. He describes an informal competition between these artists in the creation of optical illusions. According to Pliny, Zeuxis painted for the competition a grape, which looked so realistic, that even a bird tried to peck it from the canvas. When Zeuxis in turn came to Parrhasios to look at his work, he saw a curtain covering Parrhasios’ painting. When Zeuxis tried to pull the curtain aside, he realised this curtain was painted. So Zeuxis had to acknowledge defeat [19] .

The anecdote reveals one of the oldest criteria of evaluation of an artwork – its aptitude to delude. The story, on the one hand, entirely remains within the Aristotelian paradigm of art as mimesis. Long before Renaissance notions of central perspective and representationalism, painting was already considered in ancient Greece to be a creation of the optical illusion, as a two-dimensional imitation of the three-dimensional ‘reality’ [20] . But it derived benefit rather from a demonstration of its delusive aptitude in general, than from concrete act of delusion as such.

On the other hand, the mimetic aspect was not so decisive for the result of the rivalry: both painters were convincing with their imitations of nature. But Parrhasios wins not because he can better imitate reality, but because he succeeds in a deception of his craft-brother. Parrhasios’ achievement has something from that unquestioning proof of mastery like theft from a thief, for an apt act of delusion within the professional community of the ‘art-as-illusion producers’ serves as the best evidence of the artistic skilfulness. Through this interpretative shift the category of delusion in the art context reveals the relevance of its social dimension along with the aforementioned metaphysical one.

1. Art and its Relation to Other Social Systems

To scrutinise this delusive aspect of art, art in itself should be considered not just as a pure aesthetic, but also as a social phenomenon. In social theory, at least since Emile Durkheim’s definition of modern societies as societies with a certain degree of the subdivision of labour, art is understood as one of the constituent parts (like economy, politics, science etc.) within the functionally differentiated society as a whole. As any other constituent part of the society art is defined by its own system of rules and social expectations.

The system theory of Niklas Luhman follows this sociological tradition of the horizontal differentiation of society into functional parts. In his work “Die Ausdifferenzierung des Kunstsystems” Luhman defines art as a social system, which is the crucial concept for his theory in general:

“Mit “soziales System” ist ein System gemeint, das sich durch eigene kommunikative Operationen selbst etabliert. Es handelt sich demnach um ein selbstreferentielles System oder, wenn man auf die Operation der “Reproduktion” abstellt, um ein autopoetisches System. Solche Systeme werden auch als operativ geschlossene und in diesem Sinne als autonome Systeme bezeichnet.” [21]

Thus, art is presented as equal partner among others - economy, politics, science, religion etc. - in this idyllic conglomeration of autopoetic systems, which constitute society and which represent society as such. This model, however, functions only as a pure theoretical construction of social science. An amendment caused by the referent, i.e. of that ‘social reality’, which is not the product of this theory within its ad linguistic paradigm, consists in an inevitable appearance of the hierarchy of the social systems instead of the offered project of their 'égalité'. Despite self-referentiality and autopoiesis of social systems, they are nevertheless only constituent parts of a bigger social system – system of society as a whole. As subsystems, they have different functions, and exactly a significance of their functions for the working of the whole society is the ground for the above-mentioned hierarchy. This hierarchy does not have an absolute objective nature, but a relative one. It would make even more sense to talk about hierarchies of social systems , because each social system provides its own hierarchical model, which is based on the evaluation of its own significance in society as well as on evaluations of other systems.

The validity of every particular evaluation is legitimised by its conformity with the evaluations presented by other systems. So, for instance, a ‘big importance’ of the social system ‘economy’ in the society can be always found in the self-representations of this system, both for the inner and outer world and is never disputed by the other systems. Surely, the distribution of the ‘coefficient of importance’ among social systems cannot be characterized by the primitive liberal principle of simple majority. To understand this mechanism we should rather bear in mind the hermeneutic circle called social dialectics. It is hardly possible here to distinguish, if the ‘actual’ significance of the system for the society defines an evaluation of its importance and thereby evokes the hierarchy, or, if belief in this hierarchy endows the system with its ‘actual’ significance. As a result, the systems that have an approved higher ‘coefficient of importance’ are empowered to distribute the places in the hierarchy for the systems with the lower ‘coefficient’.

From this perspective art as a social system obviously does not take the first place in the hierarchy of the functional significance. The very definition of the function of art system is quite a delicate issue, and it noticeably differs depending on the instance, which gives this definition [22] . But, however, all the possible perspectives on the role of art in society – those from the outside (given by other systems) or those from within (provided by the art system itself) – have in common that circumstance, that art is never meant to supply some primary needs. Using Marxist categories of basis and superstructure , which still, despite all the provoked connotations, keep their potential of powerful ‘understanding metaphors’, art can be even concerned as a secondary superstructure, because the other systems (politics, economy etc.) theoretically can function independently of the existence of the art system. From their perspective art is usually considered as a supplementary tool that can be used as an additional means of propaganda or as sign of particular social dispositions, but not as a necessary element for the functioning of the social mechanism as a whole.

In view of its avowed superstructural nature the art system has very limited sphere of influence on the other systems. Within this ‘family’ of social systems the role of ‘poor cousin’ is imposed on art. In the absence of forcible arguments to resist this circumstance, the art system nevertheless manages to derive benefit from the existing distribution of the roles developing a kind of rhetoric of complaining about the injustice of its status. But in fact art readily collaborates with the ‘powerful’ systems, resignedly playing a victim of their ‘conspiracy’. Art takes advantage of being victim, for the discourse of victim implies the rhetoric of self-justification, which tends to reveal some ‘truth’. In this case the truth to be revealed is a ‘true’ essence of art and ensuing from that its ‘true’ function in the society, which were not understood by the other systems.

The instance that is mostly authorised to reveal, or, to be more terminologically correct, to construct the truth about art as social system, is the art system itself. This process of construction of the ‘true’ essence and the ‘true’ function of art is nothing else than the production of its own image for the ‘outer world’, made up of the other social systems.

The ‘PR-strategies’ used by the art system for this purpose, i.e. the modes of self-representation transmitted through the communicative acts with the other systems, are intended to persuade in its social significance. In fact these acts of persuasion are a pure, although quite self-conscious bluff. In the absence of convincing proofs of its importance, the art system uses offensive tactics, blaming the ‘outer world’ for the lack of understanding of art’s real nature and inner rules of its system. At the same time, the art system, as a rule, does not propose any comprehensive and articulated version of this ‘right understanding’. Its statements about the essence and functions of the art systems ‘for export’, i.e. for the outer world, could be defined as a practice of self-mystification that provides an image of a hermetic elitist system that is far beyond the comprehension of ‘non-residents’.

From these premises arises certain splitting of the discourse produced by the art system about itself into the discourse for internal use and its ‘ export version’ . The discourse for internal use insists on the absolute autonomy and autopoiesis of the art system, therefore its social uselessness , accepting as relevant only immanent rules and exaggerating its self-referent nature. The principle of disinterestedness and many other aesthetic conceptions has become possible only within this internal discourse. This discourse for external use , on the contrary, supposes that art is an integrated subsystem, which plays certain roles for the society in general and other subsystems in particular.

The art system introduces into its discourse the statement about an execution of social functions in order to maintain its autonomy. At the same moment namely this socially non-functional autonomy causes the social functions of art system. The other systems are also getting involved in this confusing dialectics of the socially useless autonomy and simultaneous functionality of the social systems. Thus, for instance, on the one hand, the system of state is supposed to support the system of art, because by its definition it should support the systems, which are unable to maintain their existence by themselves. On the other hand, the system of state by its definition supports only those systems, which the state as a social subsystem needs for its proper functioning. In other words, to be supported by the state, the system of art should prove somehow its use for the state system.

Forced to balance on the border of immanent aesthetic autonomy and inevitable social engagement, the art system develops a kind of double moral, which is, paradoxically, not only accepted, but also supported by the other systems. In its discursive self-representations the art system pretends that it executes some social functions in order to maintain the autonomy. The other systems, which are empowered to provide the art system with the support, first of all financial, pretend that they believe in this pretension. Nowadays almost all established forms of financial support of the art system - scholarships, grants, awards, residencies etc. - are based on this principle of the false pretension and false belief. The legitimated lie becomes a survival strategy for art system and an unspoken premise for the official policy of the art support.

To understand the reasons of these confusing relations of mutual lie we should briefly outline the historical genesis of social functions of the art system.