arts merit

[nathansphase]

When we look at a painting or piece of art do we first look who done it hten judge by the artist? for example say van gogh never signed his stuff would it still be as good?

[jno]

well, this is one of the great questions and there's no right answer. Some people who know a lot about art will instantly recognise the artist anyway... on the other hand they can be fooled eg by Van Meegeren, who did fake Vermeers and got away with it for years although, even to my eyes, they look nothing like real Vermeers. It also affects sale prices a lot; once a Rembrandt is announced not to be real (and this has happened a lot over recent years as there's a project to identify all real Rembrandts) its 'value' will plummet. So this is an argument for just liking paintings you like, regardless of who they may have beenpainted by. The question of how much a Rembrandt costs doesn't affect the ordinary gallery-goer anyway.

[saxy_jag]

I remember one particular student-led seminar from my university days, where one guy had his art student missus fake up some modern abstract art, then showed them on slides along with some originals. We were then asked to judge which was real and which was fake, and how much each was probably worth. The idea of all this was to prompt discussion around this very topic.

We came to a 'Terry Frost' and couldn't decide - even the lecturer (a past curator of some pretty influential collections) couldn't say. When we talked about value the lecturer said, "well, if it is a Terry Frost, then it would be worth a lot of money indeed." In the end, it turned out to be a fake, and I daresay an art expert would have been able to tell the originals apart, but it was an interesting seminar.