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A review by siria
Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats
2.0
The six potted biographies of forgers or "appropriative artists" were interesting, as I mostly had not heard of them before, and many of them fell into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category. Ultimately, however, Forged is a rather tiresome work, one which is based on a series of unexamined assertions and a pretty privileged white male view of art and the art world. "Forgers are the foremost artists of our age", Keats asserts, because they subvert "art" (a word whose meaning Keats never defines, which allows him to use it interchangeably as "the modern art industry", "fine art", or "any object which is made or interpreted in a creative way"), something which since the Renaissance has increasingly focused more on authenticity, historicity, legitimacy and the artist's celebrity than it does on the piece's aesthetic qualities or skills.
There's something to be said for exploring these issues, but I think Keats fails to do so in an honest way. Those who fail to see forgers as some sort of modern folk heroes are chastised for being too literal minded, too complicit in the system, not able to see the possibilities inherent in what they produce. Keats never really engages with the rebuttals which could be made of his argument, and seems in fact to change the terms of that argument at several points—the section on Andy Warhol and in particular the last chapter seemed to belong to an entirely different book. At this point Keats' dismisses peoples' concerns about GMO plants being released into the wild as merely illustrating how people have trouble reconciling the tension between the real and the artificial, which... what?
That was baffling, but Keats' championing of "appropriative" art was downright rage-inducing. His view of the history of art is focused almost exclusively on the West, and he entirely fails to deal with any of the ways in which such appropriation has often been used to oppress ethnic and cultural minorities and to reinforce privilege—think of the "Navajo print" panties produced by Urban Outfitters this past year. Those are surely fakes, taking the name of a still-living culture and reproducing for profit prints which claimed to be authentic Navajo designs, without the involvement or the authorisation of any Navajo people or any understanding of the roles which those prints play within Navajo culture. Would Keats endorse these as a bold and necessary evolution of art, a broadening of the demographic which is allowed to create art, and if not, why not? Where are his ethical lines, or is everything okay if it's white men who are being subversive?
I'm honestly a little confused by the fact that Forged—which if anything seems to fall into a pop academic genre—has been published by OUP. Looking at Keats' Wikipedia page, however, I see that he's made something of a name for himself with provocative art works (though honestly ones which, to me, largely seem pretty eyeroll-inducing)—is his book being published, then, solely to cash in on the notoriety attached to his name? If so, that does bring an extra layer of irony to this work.
There's something to be said for exploring these issues, but I think Keats fails to do so in an honest way. Those who fail to see forgers as some sort of modern folk heroes are chastised for being too literal minded, too complicit in the system, not able to see the possibilities inherent in what they produce. Keats never really engages with the rebuttals which could be made of his argument, and seems in fact to change the terms of that argument at several points—the section on Andy Warhol and in particular the last chapter seemed to belong to an entirely different book. At this point Keats' dismisses peoples' concerns about GMO plants being released into the wild as merely illustrating how people have trouble reconciling the tension between the real and the artificial, which... what?
That was baffling, but Keats' championing of "appropriative" art was downright rage-inducing. His view of the history of art is focused almost exclusively on the West, and he entirely fails to deal with any of the ways in which such appropriation has often been used to oppress ethnic and cultural minorities and to reinforce privilege—think of the "Navajo print" panties produced by Urban Outfitters this past year. Those are surely fakes, taking the name of a still-living culture and reproducing for profit prints which claimed to be authentic Navajo designs, without the involvement or the authorisation of any Navajo people or any understanding of the roles which those prints play within Navajo culture. Would Keats endorse these as a bold and necessary evolution of art, a broadening of the demographic which is allowed to create art, and if not, why not? Where are his ethical lines, or is everything okay if it's white men who are being subversive?
I'm honestly a little confused by the fact that Forged—which if anything seems to fall into a pop academic genre—has been published by OUP. Looking at Keats' Wikipedia page, however, I see that he's made something of a name for himself with provocative art works (though honestly ones which, to me, largely seem pretty eyeroll-inducing)—is his book being published, then, solely to cash in on the notoriety attached to his name? If so, that does bring an extra layer of irony to this work.