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When you're listening to Le Mariage du Figaro, do you ever wonder whether the work you are hearing was really composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Not likely. But, if you went into the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa and later learned that the painting you saw was not the work of Leonardo daVinci but was a forgery, you'd feel cheated. Why are some works of art "forgeable" and others are not?

Krystyn Schmerbeck '02 is attempting to answer that question this summer through her research made possible by an Emerson Summer Collaboration Award. Working with Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kirk Pillow, her project is titled "Faking the Unfakeable: The Possibility of Forgery in the Arts." Schmerbeck will explore why some works of art are forgeable and others are not. What is it about certain art forms, like painting and sculpture, that make claims of forgery so devastating to the identity of the work and to the aesthetic experience of art connoisseurs? How does the possibility of a forgery affect the identity of a work and how one interprets that work? These questions direct attention not only to the concept of forgery but to the very nature of art.

Schmerbeck says the most prominent theory addressing the issue of art forgery is found in Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman. He established a distinction between art forms based on whether or not the resulting work could be forged or not. Autographic arts, like painting and sculpture, are forgeable, while allographic arts, like music and literature, cannot be forged. Schmerbeck will investigate the validity of Goodman's distinction and its implications for the identity of an artwork.

Schmerbeck says Goodman's distinction between fakeable and unfakeable art forms is based upon an artwork's history of production. Autographic works are works whose most exact copies are not considered to be genuine, because the copies do not have the right history of production. The importance of the role of production in determining the authenticity of an autographic art work is central to that work's identity and to the value of the aesthetic experience we have of that work. Allographic arts by contrast are easily reproducible, but not forgeable because they are made within a rigid notational system, which prescribes whether something is an instance of the work (i.e., whether it has all the right musical notes in the right order). In allographic arts, like music or literature, the role of production does not contribute to the identity of the work. The identity of the work is contained within the text itself, without reference to the person who originally created it.

Schmerbeck says that many criticisms have been raised against Goodman's distinction. Some critics believe that it is possible to forge allographic works; other critics show that musical works can be forged despite Goodman's claim that they are also allographic, and thus, unfakeable.

Schmerbeck, from Rochester, NY, is majoring in classical languages and philosophy at Hamilton.

Created in 1997, the Emerson Foundation Grant program was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest.   The recipients', covering a range of topics, will explore fieldwork, laboratory and library research, and the development of teaching materials. The projects will be initiated this summer, and the students will make public presentations of their research throughout the 2001-2002 academic year.

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