I visited the National Museum of American history some years ago and it reminded me of nothing so much as a shrine. Many of the families looked to be making their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to a source of meaning in their lives. The art and exhibits there were relics for these people and the experience seemed to me, at least, to be a profound one for many of them.

Yes(-ish!), meaning is more than half created by the viewer. And yes(-ish!), it is not possible to be defrauded in art, unless you came to it asking for something other than simply to be helped to see. It's also not possible to be defrauded in art if there is no art. I think one should be very wary in condemning enjoyment of art, even if its merely by association. And some of that enjoyment is in art as a devotional piece (social/historical/religious/p­ersonal/scientific) in which the piece is enjoyed as a stand-in for the process which created it (like any relic). Faking a painting is not a fraudulent work of art, it is a fraudulent piece of history/biography/religion/etc­.

"Why don't they just put all the bad guys in jail or shoot them."

"Well son, you first have to find out who the bad guys are and then you have to prove they are bad."

Vaguely dissatisfying answer for the kid. The bad guys are obvious. They look like bad guys. They have the initials BG on their foreheads.

Engaging the painting - the very act of engagement is theory laden. That's true for the unitiated. That's true for me. It's true for you too. There's no such thing as raw engagement.

The work of art is more than half created by "the viewer" - but not each and every viewer. The "right" viewers have a tremendous influeunce on the rest of us - most of the time we aren't aware of it.

People bother to view the Mona Lisa because the right viewers have told them that's the thing to do.

I'm not arguing in favour of disengagement. At best, the only position I'd put forward is to practice not passing judgment, where possible.

Oliver Sacks' man who mistook his wife for a hat - here's an elegant example that all seeing is seeing as. He's unable to give correct interpretations of the colour patches he's seeing - but everything he sees is still an interpretation, based on previous experiences.

Every great artist knows who will be seeing his/her work and each one anticipates the reaction to it from that individual.

Van Meegeren anticipated the reaction from Bredius (read the book if interested). He deliberately chose to introduce his forgery to Bredius - one of the absolutely greatest experts on Vermeer - for a myriad of reasons - including having studied Bredius' earlier articles and earlier discoveries of hidden Vermeers - van Meegeren painted with the foreknowledge that Bredius would look for certain things to fit in with his overall theory.

Supper at Emmaus was considered so great that as the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam was closing the deal, the government stepped in at the urging of the Rijksmuseum. They'd buy the Supper for the Rijksmuseum, being the nation's national museum, and as compensation for the Boijmans for all its hard work in attempting to keep the painting in The Netherlands, they offered from the Rijksmuseum a genuine small Vermeer and a ter Borch.

To their surprise, they were informed the deal had in fact been completed, and that they intended on keeping Supper. It's now the most sought after work in the Boijmans Museum (to the distress of the curator).

People don't want to see Supper just to see it. They don't want to engage it in any raw kind of way. They find the scandal delicious, and they marvel that people could be so mistaken.

I'm not sure who said your quote, but I do know you've said it before. It sounds a little like Picasso, who once claimed something to the effect that he had to unlearn how to paint.

Anyway - see those little things doesn't mean the painting works at all. Seeing the House of Parliament in a Monet doesn't mean you are seeing the fog. Seeing The Virgin in a Caravaggio doesn't mean you are seeing the "modern" Roman garb, or the fact that the model is a courtesan.

Seeing, by and large, in an uneducated way, is boring.

Faking a painting is not a fraudulent work of art, it is a fraudulent piece of history/biography/religion/etc­.

Supper is a fraudulent work of art. Let me point out van Meegeren offered very little history to the painting (the only history he offered was that it was owned by an Italian family who wanted to smuggle it out of Italy - he didn't even proclaim it as a Vermeer) - he schemed a way to get it in front of an emminent scholar and the emminent scholar, without any desire to deceive, gave the piece a history and biography.

Van Meegeren wanted exactly that to happen. The expert - Bredius - didn't just see it, he saw it as..... Everything we see we see as......

I don't think anyone is condmening enjoyment of art, but as I've said before, I'll argue against passing judgment on art, recognizing that some of that enjoyment of art is in the passing of judgment.

The Reform Party denouncements of artists like Rothko come to mind. But then again, while I don't want to stop the lines of people from forming in front of the Mona Lisa in the devotional way you outline, the need to pose with the damned painting does reflect very much on these people.

Those families looking to make their pilgrimage are no different than the old man Bredius looking to make one more splash in announcing his discovery of the greatest Vermeer of them all - a discovery he suggested could happen decades earlier.

Seeing, by and large, in an uneducated way, is boring.

Well, yes and no.

I think I’d define “uneducated” and “seeing” differently than you, Camille. If I have to listen to someone educate me in front of a painting, I don’t mind if the person helps me “see” the painting, i.e. appreciate the painting’s techniques to understand why the painting moves me.

Knowing the background of a painting, i.e. whether it is a forgery or not, is only a beginning. What I want someone to help me do is see how the artist of this forgery does not have the brushwork and other artistic qualities of the artist he was copying.

At one time, I would have liked to see the Mona Lisa, but I think it is almost impossible to get close to it or to spend any amount of time with it. If I ever get a chance to spend a night in the Louvre, I’d like to do what I do in front of any painting that interests me

-- look at it from a distance to see how it affects me (in the case of the Mona Lisa, do her eyes and mouth seem more alive, more mysterious than that of other painted faces?);

-- get as close as the guard or automatic sensor will let me to look at the brushwork to understand how that effect was achieved;

-- and then step back to better “see” the painting from a distance.

I don’t need to know how much a museum paid for a forgery, who did it, etc. All I want to know is how to see that it is a forgery. And if I can’t see a difference, then I will stand there and enjoy it. "Appreciating" a work of art is all about what happens in the mediation / meditation between the viewer and the work of art. Being "educated" in the facts or the background is merely icing on the cake.

The same holds true whether the work of art is a painting or a poem.

you won't stand there and enjoy it. You'll instead want to figure out how others can see the difference.

And knowing that it isn't 300 years old, knowing you can no longer put it in that context, you'll move on to the next piece. (Unless what interests you is forgeries....)

If you can't see a difference, you won't stand there and enjoy it.You'll instead want to figure out how others can see the difference.

With all due respect, Camille, please don't tell me that you know what I will do. Especially since I just told you what I would do.

As for figuring out how others can "see" the difference, I already know that many museum curators can't really "see" the difference (that's why they bought the painting in the first place); they just get someone to date the paint. So if I can't see the difference, I don't really mind.

Really.

I wouldn't lie to you, Camille.
Have I ever lied to you before?
I rest my case.

but you have been wrong.

And really, you're wrong here. Think of it this way. Suppose, wherever you live, there was an art exhibition of, say da Vinci. Suppose it were really expensive - you were hesitating to go at that price. Finally, it was just at that price that you decided to go. If it had been a dollar more, you wouldn't have gone. This price was your absolute limit.

Now imagine another exhibition - the same price - but all da Vinci copies - you won't be able to tell the difference. They've all been produced by machines to make copies that your untrained eye won't be able to see the difference. You still going?

(Now, you might tell me you'll still go at that price - and I'll respond - I don't believe it.)

While in Paris a few weeks ago, and I wandered into a gallery and found myself in a room of dull, mediocre, early 20th century impressionist-ic landscapes. It actually pissed me off, I was thinking "fuck, these are like bad Sunday paintings by people with too much time on their hands.." and " didn't these people have anything more vital to say about their time in the world?".

I scanned the room, trying not to be so judgmental, when one painting snagged my eye. It wasn't anything special, but it had something...

I told myself to not read the label, and to just look at it. Being hopelessly analytical, I had to break it down to determine what set it apart from the others, and right off the bat, it was the way that simple strokes of pale yellow pushed forward around cool olive-grey strokes that, in a flash, denoted heat, light, cool shade, and a pleasing sensation of relief from the heat. A pale blue splash became a figure, cool in the shade. And I thought "Oh, there's a witty painting, and it works on a few levels beyond all these others". It turned out to be by Vuillard, gouache or thin oil on cardboard. Just something that was dashed off in a few moments- nothing special, nothing "great" but transmitted a sense of a personality that i found enjoyable.

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But I've more time for Bonnard, his one time room mate.

The world is filled with fake impressionism. It really has given art a bad name - superficially copying the style, without any awareness of the intent.

I saw the Bonnard show in New York, last winter. My friend asked me why i liked the paintings, she said that to her, they looked like "something you'd see at the Faulkner (local library) Gallery".

Some people! What are you gonna do?

I admit to a similar feeling when I enter a great art museum. I have to shake it off, repeatedly, until I feel that I am really there with the paintings. As much as possible, I don't look at the identification plates. (Unfortunately, some places don't give you a lot of selection--the galleries are too prominently labeled.) I never pick up a catalog--nor, God forbid, one of those squawky talky things. I don't give a damn who painted what. I keep reminding myself that, if I could sit down and talk with Rembrandt (in his later years) he would seem remarkably like my Uncle Jimmy. And, like you, I observe other patrons. We rarely stop to think that we're all part of the exhibition.

isn't Vermeer or Rembrandt, it's Frank Frazetta.

No contest.

Now imagine another exhibition - the same price - but all da Vinci copies - you won't be able to tell the difference. They've all been produced by machines to make copies that your untrained eye won't be able to see the difference. You still going?

Camille, it bothers me that you have twisted or misread what I wrote.

We were talking about a forgery, and I said that if I couldn't tell the difference between the original and the forgery (not unlike the curator, who needed an age-of-paint test for verification), I would enjoy it.

In the above post, you mention machine-made copies that my untrained eye couldn't distinguish. Believe me, Camille, I do not have an untrained eye when it comes to looking at art, having spent several decades reading about and looking at art in major museums around the world.

If you want to make assumptions about what the typical museum goer might or might not do, feel free. But please do not make assumptions about me.