Authenticity in art

Authenticity in art is the judgment that an artwork is genuine, original, or faithful to a creator, historical source, or artistic tradition. Its criteria vary with the work, its history, and the practices through which it is made and interpreted.

Originality: The quality of being novel or independently created rather than copied or derived. Artistic authenticity is often judged by whether a work embodies its maker’s distinctive contribution.
Provenance: The documented history of an object’s ownership, custody, and location. A credible ownership history can support claims that an artwork is genuine.
Art reproduction: The making of copies or substitutes for artworks by mechanical, photographic, or other means. A reproduction may preserve an image while lacking the original object’s material history.
Marcel Duchamp: A French-American artist whose readymades challenged conventional definitions of artistic authorship and originality. His readymades made selection and attribution central to debates about what makes art authentic.
Cultural appropriation: The adoption of elements from a culture by people outside it, especially amid unequal power relations. Claims of authentic cultural representation often turn on who uses a tradition and under what conditions.
Art forgery: The deliberate creation or alteration of an artwork to deceive others about its identity or authorship. Forgery exposes the gap between an artwork’s appearance and its claimed origin.
Restoration (cultural heritage): Intervention intended to repair or recover the appearance or condition of a cultural object. Restoration can preserve a work while changing the features used to judge its authenticity.
Fountain (Duchamp): A 1917 artwork attributed to Marcel Duchamp, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt.” Its disputed authorship and lost original complicate the relation between object and authentic work.
Cultural heritage: Practices, objects, knowledge, and places inherited and maintained by communities across generations. Tradition-based authenticity depends on how communities understand and transmit their heritage.
Connoisseurship: The expert practice of attributing and evaluating artworks through close analysis of style and technique. Connoisseurs compare an object’s features with an artist’s known work.

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