My need is such I pretend too much

F is for Fake
Curated by Emma Bugden
Te Tuhi
7 March - 12 April 2009

This group show examines the notion of authenticity as applied to the art experience, and the difficulty of ascertaining its presence. It includes a suite of pencil drawings (and a poker-work box) by G.F.Goldie (once known as Karl Sim); some purloined but genuine gallery signage nicked over the years by the then light-fingered Dane Mitchell; some seemingly genuine correspondence between the said Mitchell and the Crockford gallery about wall preparation; some hand carved tins of paint, rollers, boxes, fire extinguishers and furniture from Glen Haywood; a replica by Warren Olds of a Hotere mural proposal; and three fiddled with, collaged NZ Heralds from Fiona Connor. And more...Great also it was concurrent with Pivi’s ODS project.

All together there are works by thirteen artists. Not all of it succeeds. Shigeyuki Kihara’s parodies of corporate logos on 28 T-shirts, arranged in a three walled installation - are clumsy and over stated, the worst sort of histrionic knee jerk art, and far removed from the sophistication of her best projects. Ronnie van Hout’s self portrait as ranting cow-cockie, is a great sculpture, very funny, but oddly out of place here. Like Connor’s newspapers too, it doesn’t push the viewer, doesn’t fool anyone, doesn’t really employ verisimilitude to deceive.

The best works do – particularly the star acts from overseas: Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy, and Les Liens Invisibles. Dickinson’s and McCarthy’s faked historical paraphernalia around an envisaged, successful, anarchist bombing of the Greenwich Observatory in 1884, is fascinating – a wonderful array of pseudo documentation. And Les Liens Invisibles subversive websites are extraordinary in the sheer inventiveness of their cunning and the derisive nuances they manage to incorporate. Many who arrive at their site must get a rude shock once they realise its mischievous intent.

Gelatin is a Belgian art group whose account of a fake balcony they made to project from a window on the 91st floor in one of the Twin Towers is a great read, but its existence remains uncertain, the documentary images (photos from a helicopter) are so grainy. You are never entirely convinced. Is this ‘fake’ Photoshopped?

The title of this show comes from an old 1975 Orson Welles movie that reflexively undermines itself, but the real philosophical underpinning of this show’s mixture of attitudes, values such as those cheerfully upended by artists like Karl Sim, can be found in Denis Dutton’s book The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art. In this 1982 anthology he and other philosophers examine those arguments used to uphold the higher status idea and originality have over craft and manual dexterity. For those interested, here are a couple of pieces of writing on this theme by Dutton himself.

Can Art ignore beauty?

I see there is a new book just out by University of Canterbury's Philosophy of Art lecturer and Arts & Letters Daily founder, Denis Dutton. Called The Art Instinct, it is apparently a Darwinian approach to the evolution of art, modelled on Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.

I gather it is not so much about an 'Art' as an Aesthetic instinct. The two are very different - and although a lot of art ignores beauty and visual seduction, it clearly retains the status of art and is part of its history. Most of us would agree I think, but would Dutton?

Is he being sloppy equating art with aesthetically pleasing artworks, or is he just being provocative? Is he being ignorant or calculating? Has anybody out there (in the US) read his tome? I'd love to hear some opinions. Get some reviews even? His book is now out in the States where he is currently promoting it, and it will be here next month.

Now there are some books examining notions of a biological basis for art that are highly regarded - like Morse Peckham's Man's Rage For Chaos - but I suspect Dutton's book will not be one of those. Take a look at this lecture and you'll see why. As a philosopher he is highly emotional, with an intense dislike for contemporary art (he even fumes over Chuck Close) and a real loathing for continental theory. He longs for a conservative resurgence of pre-modern art that is representational and skill-based.

Normally such personal opinions wouldn't matter, but Dutton spends much of this lecture telling jokes and not providing a cohesive argument. The main flaw as I've suggested above is that real 'art' as he sees it is pre-Duchampian and a mixture of disciplines - he mixes up music (eg. Beethoven), literature (Austen) and art (Rembrandt) so that the three disparate traditions become one. Over the long course of time the 'artist' sexes have perpetuated a pleasure seeking, cross-cultural 'art gene' that assists the survival of our species.

What he doesn't explain is how this went wrong, why over the last 1-200 years did art become so different? Why is it that the majority of tertiary art education institutions, concert halls, libraries and museums promote works with values Dutton despises? Why is he a 'relic' out of step with his time? Modernism and post-modernism are here to stay and certainly there is no hint of any future reversion to pre-modernism - though those values are certainly not obliterated.

Take a look...