Norman writes:
I don't have many thoughts on art but an article in the Guardian recently provoked some on what is not art. Apparently, Andy Warhol made a wooden model of a cardboard Brillo pack. He then commissioned a factory in Sweden to make some more. They were sold for a high price. Now the authenticity of some if being questioned; it is suggested that they are not the ones that Warhol ordered.
Now regardless of whether a wooden copy of a Brillo pad box is a work of art, the idea of authenticity in this instance is nonsense. The only difference between one and the other is that Warhol did not authenticate the “fake”. This has no more to do with art than an artist's signature in an autograph book.
I think the whole question of real and fake art works calls into question the authenticity, not of the work but of the aesthetic appreciation. Did people really gain enjoyment from looking at Van Meegeren's fake Vermeers and then cease to enjoy looking at them when they found they were not real Vermeers? Probably. This, as I say, raises questions about their response.
The article to which Norman refers is worth reading. It illustrates what a minefield is the business of contemporary art, where both fingers and reputations are likely to be badly burnt. It also makes it clear that questions of value and worth — in every sense of those words — are very slippery customers.
It occurs to me that an exhibition of authenticated and fake art — in which no identification was provided — would be very interesting. Some critics would be very fearful of their reputation!
The Brillo Soap Pads Boxes have a certain amusement value. However, of greater interest — to me — is the series of four variations of the Campbell’s Tomato Soup cans. Ruskin would have hated them, of course. However, he did write that, ‘All great art is subtle’, and — under those terms — this is what Warhol has here provided: a highly satisfying, inventive, and subtle 'range of difference’.
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