Alfred Lessing zit ernaast: het verschil tussen een origineel en zijn is wel esthetisch. De vervalsing heeft geen bewijskracht, biedt geen (causale!) toegang tot de maker van het originele werk. Dát het esthetisch is, getuigt van de kwetsbaarheid van (de beleving van) kunst. Vervalsingen zijn dus esthetisch inferieur. Dat we dat niet kunnen zien

Intuitionism in aesthetics is the view that the art work an audience is confronted with is merely a medium for the real work, in the mind of the artist: his intuition. A famous spokesman for this view is Bendetto Croce. The view is also associated with expressivism (Collingwood, Tolstoy), which holds that the work expresses…

From The Business of Art: Authentically Fake!Standing among the most infamous of art forgers—or more accurately fakers—of our time is Elmyr de Hory. Supposedly in excess of one thousand his paintings and works on paper found their way into the art market…

Alfred Lessing in zijn verzet tegen de esthetische relevantie van vervalsing, mengt de twee betekenissen die “esthetisch” heeft. Hij zegt dat we esthetisch het verschil niet zien tussen een origineel en zijn perfecte vervalsing [hij bedoelt: je kunt het niet zien!] en concludeert dat “fake or not” dus geen esthetisch verschil maakt voor onze beoordeling….

It is an instructive exercise to compare so-called iconic images (as in: photographs) to paintings that have become an icon. A clear example of the latter would be Picasso’s Guernica, of the former: Vietnam Napalm, photograph by Nick Ut, 1972. Iconic Photographs A photographer does not make an iconic image. She makes photographs and one…

I have been getting so many questions about things I have said inTrouw, that it seems appropriate to me to explain my point of view in my own words. For that I have to rely on what others have reported to me about the article in Trouw in which I have been quoted, because I…

A Kind of Depiction? Would one recognise exactly what is depicted by some piece of music? Try this experiment: Perform a piece of music notable for its pictorial nature, hand out a piece of paper to everyone in the audience, and have them sketch the scene depicted. A translation Perhaps it is a viable thought…

In “Jongleren met de werkelijkheid” stelt Hans den Hartog Jager een interessant fenomeen aan de orde. Hij noemt het een taboe, en misschien is het dat ook wel. Het gaat erom dat veel schilders naar foto’s werken, maar dat ze hun werken slechts zelden vergezellen van de foto’s waarnaar ze gemaakt zijn. Het doet mij…

In class, we discussed Gadamer’s view that a work of art is also symbolic: it is not finished until its meaning has come about. This meaning though, he argued, is in the work itself. It is also “once only”: it belongs to the one work one is confronted with. This also explains Gadamer’s view that…

The difference between photography and representation is brought by zooming in on another peculiarity of the vistas through windows and in mirrors. Photos, mirrors, and windows all prove that what is seen in or through them is real, really existant. And they prove this either by the polymodality of their perception (mirrors and windows), or…