ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
Underneath all the social selection pressures that exert on New Zealandism as a
concept is the interrelationship that has evolved between viewer and artist. By furthering Dutton’s application of this interrelationship to the artistic forgery problem,
it can also be revealed as helping craft the concept of New Zealandism.
In The Art Instinct, Dutton applies the sexual selection hypothesis to forgery,
claiming we dislike, often detest, forgery so much because it damages the conveyance of a person’s characteristics that their art expresses to us. Dutton words the
problem as follows:
the basic problem of forgery in the arts…[is the question]: if an
aesthetic object has been widely admired, has given delight to
thousands of art lovers, and is then revealed to be a forgery or a
copy, why reject it? (2009, 178).
In Dutton’s view, authenticity in the arts means, at its deepest levels, engagement
with another personality, the soul that created the work upon which we see, so authenticity is something evolution has made us desire in all arts. Dutton concludes
that artworks indicate characteristics and information about their creator, and so
originality is prized in aesthetic creations as an effective medium for indicating
these characteristics. In viewing an artwork, according to Dutton, the viewer undergoes some sort of communication with the artist that is the most instrumental
aspect of many artworks and forms. Forgeries, such as those by Han van Meegeren, who successfully painted a number of pieces that for a time were believed to
be newly found paintings by Johannes Vermeer, are thus abhorred, firstly, because
forgeries destroy the communicative exchange between the supposed artist and
viewer; and secondly, in a forgery, an individual thus attempts to use the original
contributions of another individual, such as those features of a Vermeer, for his or
her own means as expressive features for his or her own work. According to Dutton, one of the qualities most highly prized about a Vermeer is that it was created
by a particular individual, Vermeer, whose artistic character is admired because of
what is expressed about Vermeer in his work. So a work which attempts to deceive
the viewer into believing that the work was created by a certain individual, such as
Vermeer, when in reality it was not, is a work devoid of one of the central reasons
why artworks are venerated.
The opposing view is that jettisoning a forgery that has fooled collectors and critics
with initial acceptance and praise is a form of manifested snobbery. The aesthetic
qualities intrinsic to the artwork remain, regardless of what the people goggling at
or listening to the work know of its creation. The work was admired previously,
not because of the qualities of the artwork, but because it was believed to be the
work of an esteemed artist (e.g. Lessing (1965)). Evolutionary aesthetics challenges this theory because it can explain both the history behind the actions of curators
and the public who feel cheated and why people feel cheated by forgery, and also
why the work of some forgers, like Elmyr de Hory, is popular with a small number
of buyers. As Dutton sees sexual selection as the origin of artification, he sees all
art a ́