Forgery and the Corruption of Aesthetic Understanding

In 1968, Nelson Goodman made an observation about artistic forgery that has never been fully appreciated, though his discussion of forgery has received plenty of philosophical attention. Goodman describes the case in which you, the viewer, are confronted with an original work and a forgery that is, for you, perceptually indistinguishable from it. On the basis of lab tests, you know which of the works is forged, but you can see no difference between them. Nonetheless, Goodman says, the knowledge that one of them is forged makes for an aesthetic difference between the works, for you, now. One reason is that this knowledge changes the way you look at the works, and the way you should look at them; it alters the sorts of scrutiny it is appropriate to apply. In fact, knowledge that one of the works is forged ‘assigns the present looking a role as training toward … perceptual discrimination’ (Goodman, 1976,105).