Genuine Or Fake?

Genuine Or Fake?

Works of art remain the same;

People’s valuation fall and rise.

A painting of Monet was sold for U.S.$ 1.400.000, TV reported. If - for the sake of preserving its message -, one should own, see the genuine painting, or watch, hear a live performance in a theatre or concert hall, to be able to enjoy art, then, shouldn’t we also have to read the genuine hand- or type-written script of an author to enjoy a novel? We even read translations with hardly any suspicions.

I’d just be as happy and grateful with copies or call them fakes. To have a nice printed copy of a painting on a calendar, an opera on a disc or video, the cheapest edition of a translated novel, a good imitation of beautiful antique ceramics, the Venus of Milo in miniature, … I can still hear Mozart on a tape recorder or performed through artists other than Mozart himself as well.

Fakes are nothing but kinds of replicas, such as copies, editions, imitations, translations, transpositions, recordings. Why not produce replicas of the works of art in a way people publish books or issue records? Then art will come down within the purse of all for anyone to enjoy and be familiar rather than be a scare. So one can afford to have his own private gallery of art without having to spend a fortune to buy or see the genuine works abroad.

It doesn’t belittle Tolstoy or his novel if one can have a translated version for just 50 U.S. cents, nor does it make Monet or his painting a bit greater, because people honored him with such a huge sum for a piece of his works.

The difference between the genuine and a fake will become less. Some day we won’t be able to distinguish between them anymore. Such as a book, which is as genuine as its original script except for misprints, or as music transposed into another key.

Aren’t so called fakes art too? And they help us to overcome the barriers of time, of place, of language and our limited means.

The Jakarta Post, October 4, 1986