ARCH 1830 (WRIT)

A fully updated syllabus is available here

Fake! History of the Inauthentic

What is a fake? Who gets to decide what is authentic? Are “fake” and “authentic” absolute and antithetical categories? Greek statues, Chinese bronzes, Maya glyphs. What gets faked? Have fakes always existed? Galileo’s signature, a centaur’s skeleton, Buddhas bearing swastikas. Are all fakes the same? If not, how are they different? Why do people make fakes? Who wins? Who loses? This course revolves around the history of the inauthentic through a diachronic exploration of objects. We will range widely in time and space, focusing primarily on the pre-modern.

Instructor: Felipe Rojas

Rhode Island Hall 108: T-Th 10:30-11:50

Objectives

Students will become familiar with a wide variety of strategies to think about art. In addition to examining the peculiar underpinnings of modern western ideas about the value of art objects, students will explore alternative regimes in which authenticity, originality, and the figure of the artist were not central. They will also work directly with some of the most interesting fakes held in Brown University and RISD collections.

Textbook

There is no textbook, but we will be using Fake? The Art of Deception by Mark Jones throughout the semester. Full text is available here:

http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520070875

Course evaluation

-Weekly blog entries and attendance (no word minimum) 20%

-Essay 1 Museum Catalogue entry (ca. 1000 words) 15% Feb 21

-Essay 2 Damn/good! (ca. 1500 words) 20% Due Mar 23

-Essay 3 Logic of Fakes (ca. 1500 words) 20 Due Apr 25

-Essay 4 Fakes@Brown (ca. 1500 words) 25% Due May 9

Weekly blog

This “blog” will be hosted on canvas. It is an informal opportunity for all of us to identify questions and topics that we find interesting or problematic in the weekly readings. Every student should make at least one weekly contribution (by identifying such questions and topics) and one comment on somebody else’s contribution. The instructor himself will also participate.

Special needs

Students with special needs should, please, identify themselves to the instructor as soon as possible.

Schedule

Week 1 Introduction

Th Jan 26

Week 2 Fake/Real

Tu Jan 31 The Getty Boy

Gladwell “The Statue that didn’t look right”

Lapatin “Proof?”

Th Feb 2

Crystal Skulls

Berger “Real, Fake, or a Combination”

McLaren Walsh “Legend of the Crystal Skulls”

Week 3 Specter/spectrum

Tu Feb 7 The Snake Goddess

Butcher and Gill “The director, the dealer, the goddess”

Lapatin “Snake goddess, fake goddess”

Th Feb 9 The Nazi’s Vermeer

Dutton "Authenticity in Art"

Dutton "Forgery and Plagiarism"

Week 4 Fake Theory

Tu Feb 14

Holtorf "On Pastness"

Th Feb 16

*NO CLASS —

Lenain “The Symptoms of an Obsession”

Week 5 Experts/forgers

Tu Feb 21 Huaqconnoisseurship

*NO CLASS — Long weekend

*Museum Catalogue Entry due

Keats “The Case of the Art Forger”

Lerner “Post-pre-Columbian Ceramicist”

Th Feb 23

Lenain “Art Forgery and the Connoisseur’s Nightmare”

Week 6 One-offs and time-benders

Tu Feb 28 Without equal

Coe and Miller “Olmec Wrestler”

Pasztory "Truth in Forgery"

Th Mar 2 St. Luke®

Nagel “Copy and its Evil Twin”

Klein “Collecting Relics”

Week 7 Elsewhere

Tu Mar 7 African Koons

Kasfir “African art and authenticity”

Dutton “Authenticity in the art of tribal societies”

Th Mar 9 Even better than the Real Thing

Lange “Cultural Collecting”

Price “Alternative Authenticities (and Inauthenticities)”

Week 8 Fake Universe

Tu Mar 14 Quixotic

Borges “Pierre Menard”

Sartwell "Aesthetics of the Spurious"

Th Mar 16

Borges "Tlon, Üqbar, Orbis Tertius"

Hay “Value of Forgery”

Week 9 Fake Books

Tu 21 Art without Artists

Schmidle “A Very Rare Book”

Grafton "Forgers and Critics"

Th 23

Damn/good essay due

John Carter Brown Library Visit

Week 10

*NO CLASS—Spring Recess

Week 11 Fake Texts

Tu Apr 4

Rollston "Forging History"

Eco "Power of Falsehood"

Ehrman “A World of Deceptions and Forgeries”

Th Apr 6

The case of Jesus’s Wife

Jones “Rewriting History”

Sabar “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife”

Week 12 Fake Nature

Tu Apr 11

Gould “Lying stones”

Stafford "Characters in Stone"

Th Apr 13

Seabrook “Ruffled Feathers”

Jones (ed.) "The Limits of Belief" from Fake? The Art of Deception (read only pp. 79-99)

http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520070875 (Links to an external site.)

Week 13 Fake Thoughts

Tu Apr 18 A General Theory of Fakes?

Eco "Fakes and Forgeries"

Th Apr 20

Radnotti "Fake Paradigm"

Lenain "Fakes and the End of the World"

*Logic of Fakes essay due

Week 14 Fake as Resistance

Tu Apr 25 Jurassic Technology and the Bogg-Man

Weschler “Inhaling the Spore”

Weschler “Morons in a Hurry”

Th Apr 27 Counterfeit/Counterculture

Lin “Counterfeit Culture as Protest and Rebellion”

*Haffenreffer Visit

Week 15 Conclusions

Tu May 2 Disucssion

*Fakes@Brown essay due

ARCH1830 Spring17 S01 Fake! History of the Inauthentic