Authenticity in art

Authenticity in art means a genuine, unadulterated art. Authentication is the separation of the genuine from the false, the separation of the unadulterated from the forged.

Authenticity in art is close to the concepts of “real,” “originality”. Usually, the meaning of authenticity remains unclear unless it is known what it refers to. For example, a fake painting may not be completely unauthentic. The forgery of the famous forger Han van Meegeren from a painting by Johannes Vermeer is both a forged Vermeer and an authentic van Meegeren.

In folding and antiques, certificates that certify the object are important. However, certificates can also be forged. For example, the well-known art counterfeiter Han van Meegeren forged his father’s works and also drew certificates of their provenance .

(The art of forgery: The Supper at Emmaus (1937), by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch master forger who deceived the Nazi leader H. Göring that the painting was a genuine Vermeer painting.)

When using the concept of authenticity in aesthetics, it is good to start with the question: what is the opposite of authentic? The concepts of authentic and non-authentic are applied in aesthetics in many contexts. It manifests itself in two broad categories:

Nominal authenticity

Works of art may have nominal authenticity, which is simply defined as the identification of the origin , author, or provenance of an object. In this case, the aim is to ensure that the object of the aesthetic experience is properly named.

Expressive authenticity

However, the concept of authenticity often refers to something else that has to do with how the nature of an object expresses the values ​​and beliefs of an individual or community. This is called expressive authenticity.