Simulacrum

Simulacrum (pronounced sim-yuh-ley-kruhm)

(1) A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance; a physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.

(2) An effigy, image, or representation; a thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance; a thing which has a similarity to the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities

(3) Used loosely, any representational image of something (a nod to the Latin source).

1590–1600: A learned borrowing of the Latin simulācrum (likeness, image) and a dissimilation of simulaclom, the construct being simulā(re) (to pretend, to imitate), + -crum (the instrumental suffix which was a variant of -culum, from the primitive Indo-European –tlom (a suffix forming instrument nouns).  The Latin simulāre was the present active infinitive of simulō (to represent, simulate) from similis (similar to; alike), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sem- (one; together).  In English, the idea was always of “something having the mere appearance of another”, hence the conveyed notion of a “a specious imitation”, the predominant sense early in the nineteenth century while later it would be applied to works or art (most notably in portraiture) judged, “blatant flattery”.  In English, simulacrum replaced the late fourteenth century semulacre which had come from the Old French simulacre.  As well as the English simulacrum, the descendents from the Latin simulācrum include the French simulacre, the Spanish simulacro and the Polish symulakrum.  Simulacrum is a noun and simulacral is an adjective; the noun plural is simulacrums or simulacra (a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra).  Although neither is listed, by lexicographers, in the world of art criticism, simulacrally would be a tempting adverb and simulacrumism an obvious noun.  The comparative is more simulacral, the suplerative most simulacral.

Simulacrum had an untroubled etymology didn’t cause a problem until French post-structuralists found a way to add layers of complication.  The sociologist & philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote a typically dense paper (The Precession of Simulacra (1981)) explaining simulacra were “…something that replaces reality with its representation… Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” and his examples ranged from Disneyland to the Watergate scandal.  One can see his point but it seems only to state the obvious and wicked types like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) said it in fewer words.  To be fair, Baudrillard’s point was more about the consequences of simulacra than the process of their creation and the social, political and economic implication of states or (more to the point) corporations attaining the means to “replace” reality with a constructed representation were profound.  The idea has become more relevant (and certainly more discussed) in the post-fake news world in which clear distinctions between that which is real and its imitations have become blurred and there’s an understanding that through many channels of distribution, increasingly, audiences are coming to assume nothing is real.

Advertising copy for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with graphical art by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum.

The work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman is the best remembered of the 1960s advertising by the US auto industry and their finest creations were those for General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac Motor Division (PMD).  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly took some artistic licence and created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than taken too literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan, it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (125 mm) because the 1958 frames were used for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  It certainly improved the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance also genuinely enhanced handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, their artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Fitzpatrick & Kaufman’s graphic art for the 1967 Pontiac Catalina Convertible advertising campaign.  One irony in the pair being contracted by PMD is that for most of the 1960s, Pontiacs were distinguished by some of the industry’s more imaginative and dramatic styling ventures and needed the artists' simulacral tricks less than some other manufacturers (and the Chryslers of the era come to mind, the solid basic engineering below cloaked sometimes in truly bizarre or just dull  bodywork).

This advertisement from 1961 hints also at something often not understood about what was later acknowledged as the golden era for both the US auto industry and their advertising agencies.  Although the big V8 cars of the post-war years are now remembered mostly for the collectable, high-powered, high value survivors with large displacement and induction systems using sometimes two four-barrel or three two-barrel carburetors, such things were a tiny fraction of total production and most V8 engines were tuned for a compromise between power (actually, more to the point for most: torque) and economy, a modest single two barrel sitting atop most and after the brief but sharp recession of 1958, even the Lincoln Continental, aimed at the upper income demographic, was reconfigured thus in a bid to reduce the prodigious thirst of the 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8.  Happily for country and oil industry, the good times returned and by 1963 the big Lincolns were again guzzling gas four barrels at a time (the MEL in 1966 even enlarged to a 462 (7.6)) although there was the courtesy of the engineering trick of off-centering slightly the carburetor’s location so the primary two throats (the other two activated only under heavy throttle load) sat directly in the centre for optimal smoothness of operation.  Despite today’s historical focus on the displacement, horsepower and burning rubber of the era, there was then much advertising copy about (claimed) fuel economy, though while then as now, YMMV (your mileage may vary), the advertising standards of the day didn’t demand such a disclaimer.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1650), oil on canvas by Samuel Cooper (1609-1672).

Even if it’s something ephemeral, politicians are often sensitive about representations of their image but concerns are heightened when it’s a portrait which, often somewhere hung on public view, will long outlive them.  Although in the modern age the proliferation and accessibility of the of the photographic record has meant portraits no longer enjoy an exclusivity in the depiction of history, there’s still something about a portrait which conveys, however misleadingly, a certain authority.  That’s not to suggest the classic representational portraits have always been wholly authentic, a good many of those of the good and great acknowledged to have been painted by “sympathetic” artists known for their subtleties in rendering their subjects variously more slender, youthful or hirsute as the raw material required.  Probably few were like Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) who told Samuel Cooper to paint him “warts and all”.  The artist obliged.

Randolph Churchill (1932), oil on canvas by Philip de László (left) and Randolph Churchill’s official campaign photograph (1935, right).

There have been artists for whom a certain fork of the simulacrum has provided a long a lucrative career.  Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László) was a UK-based Hungarian painter who was renowned for his sympathetic portraiture of royalty, the aristocracy and anyone else able to afford his fee (which for a time-consuming large, full-length works could be as much as 3000 guineas).  His reputation as a painter suffered after his death because he was dismissed by some as a “shameless flatterer” but in more recent years he’s been re-evaluated and there’s now much admiration for his eye and technical prowess, indeed, some have noted he deserves to be regarded more highly than many of those who sat for him.  His portrait of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) (1932, left) has, rather waspishly, been described by some authors as something of an idealized simulacrum and the reaction of the journalist Alan Brien (1925-2008) was typical.  He met Churchill only in when his dissolute habits had inflicted their ravages and remarked that the contrast was startling, “…as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year.”  Although infamously obnoxious, on this occasion Churchill responded with good humor, replying “Yes, it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it?  I was a joli garçon (pretty boy) in those days.”  That may have been true for as his official photograph for the 1935 Wavertree by-election (where he stood as an “Independent Conservative” on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule) suggests, the artist may have been true to his subject.  Neither portrait now photograph seems to have helped politically and his loss at Wavertree was one of several he would suffer in his attempts to be elected to the House of Commons.

Portrait of Gina Rinehart (née Hancock, b 1954) by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira (b 1983), National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (left) and photograph of Gina Rinehart (right).

While some simulacrums can flatter to deceive, others are simply unflattering.  That was what Gina Rinehard (described habitually as “Australia’s richest woman”) felt about two (definitely unauthorized) portraits of which are on exhibition at the NGA.  Accordingly, she asked they be removed from view and “permanently disposed of”, presumably with the same fiery finality with which bonfires consumed portraits of Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), both works despised by their subjects.  Unfortunately for Ms Reinhart, her attempted to save the nation from having to look at what she clearly considered bad art created only what is in law known as the “Streisand effect”, named after an attempt in 2003 by the singer Barbra Streisand (b 1942) to suppress publication of a photograph showing her cliff-top residence in Malibu, taken originally to document erosion of the California coast.  All that did was generate a sudden interest in the previously obscure photograph and ensure it went viral, overnight reaching an audience of millions as it spread around the web.  Ms Reinhart’s attempt had a similar consequence: while relatively few had attended Mr Namatjira’s solo Australia in Colour exhibition at the NGA and publicity had been minimal, the interest generated by the story saw the “offending image” printed in newspapers, appear on television news bulletins (they’re still a thing with a big audience) and of course on many websites.  The “Streisand effect” is regarded as an example “reverse psychology”, the attempt to conceal something making it seem sought by those who would otherwise not have been interested or bothered to look.  People should be careful in what they wish for.

Variations on a theme of simulacra: Four AI (artificial intelligence) generated images of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.  The car depicted (centre right) is a Mercedes-Benz SL (R107, 1971-1989), identifiable as a post-1973 North American model because of the disfiguring bumper bar. 

So a simulacrum is a likeness of something which is recognizably of the subject (maybe with the odd hint) and not of necessity “good” or “bad”; just not exactly realistic.  Of course with techniques of lighting or angles, even an unaltered photograph can similarly mislead but the word is used usually of art or behavior such as “a simulacrum or pleasure” or “a ghastly simulacrum of a smile”.  In film and biography of course, the simulacrum is almost obligatory and the more controversial the subject, the more simulacral things are likely to be: anyone reading AJP Taylor’s study (1972) of the life of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would be forgiven for wondering how anyone could have said a bad word about the old chap.  All that means there’s no useful antonym of simulacrum because one really isn’t needed (there's replica, duplicate etc but the sense is different) while the synonyms are many, the choice of which should be dictated by the meaning one wishes to denote and they include: dissimilarity, unlikeness, archetype, clone, counterfeit, effigy, ersatz, facsimile, forgery, image, impersonation, impression, imprint, likeness, portrait, representation, similarity, simulation, emulation, fake, faux & study.  Simulacrum remains a little unusual in that while technically it’s a neutral descriptor, it’s almost always used with a sense of the negative or positive.

Authentic

Authentic (pronounced aw-then-tik)

(1) Something not false or copied; genuine; real.

(2) Having an origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified: with certified provenance.

(3) Representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself or to the person identified.

(4) Entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience; reliable; trustworthy.

(5) In law, executed with all due formalities; conforming to process.

(6) In music (of a church mode and most often applied to the Gregorian chant), having a range extending from the final to the octave above.

(7) In music (of a cadence), progressing from a dominant to a tonic chord.

(8) In musical performance, using period instruments and historically researched scores and playing techniques in an attempt to perform a piece as it would have been played at the time it was written (or in certain cases, first performed).

(9) Authoritative; definitive (obsolete).

1300–1350: From the Middle English authentik & autentik (authoritative, duly authorized (a sense now obsolete)), from the Old French autentique (authentic; canonical (from which thirteenth century Modern French gained authentique)), from the Late Latin authenticus (the work of the author, genuine ( which when used as a neuter noun also meant “an original document, the original”), from the Ancient Greek αὐθεντικός (authentikós) (original, primary, at first hand), the construct being αὐθέντης (authéntēs) (lord, master; perpetrator (literally, “one who does things oneself; one who acts independently (the construct being aut(o-) (self-) + -hentēs (doer)) + -ikos (–ic) (the adjective suffix)), from the primitive Indo-European root sene- (to accomplish, to achieve).  The alternative spellings authentical, authentick, authenticke & authentique are all archaic.  Authentic is an adjective (and a non-standard noun), authentically is an adverb, authenticity & authentification are nouns, authenticate, authenticating & authenticated are verbs; the most common noun plural is authentifications.

The modern sense of something “real, entitled to acceptance as factual” emerged in the mid-fourteenth century and synonyms (depending on context) include true, veritable, genuine, real, bonafide, bona fide, unfaked, reliable, trustworthy, credible & unfaked.  As antonyms (the choice of which will be dictated by context and sentence structure) the derived adjectives include: non-authentic, inauthentic & unauthentic (the three usually synonymous but nuances can be constructed depending on the context) and the curious quasi-authentic, used presumably to suggest degrees of fakeness, sincerity etc).  Inauthentic from 1783 is the most often used and thus presumably the preferred form and in this it competes also with phony, fake, faux, bogus, imitation, clone, impersonation, impression, mimic, parody, reflection, replica, tribute, reproduction, apery, copy, counterfeit, ditto, dupe, duplicate, ersatz, forgery, image, likeness, match, mime, mimesis, mockery, parallel, resemblance, ringer, semblance, sham, simulacrum, simulation, emulation, takeoff, ripoff, transcription, travesty, Xerox, aping, carbon copy, echo, match, mirror, knockoff, paraphrasing, parroting, patterning, representation & replica & the rare ingenuine.  The verb authenticate (verify, establish the credibility of) dates from the 1650s and was from the Medieval Latin authenticatus, the past participle of authenticare, from the Late Latin authenticus; the form of use in the mid seventeenth century was sometimes “render authentic”.  The noun authenticity (the quality of being authentic, or entitled; acceptance as to being true or correct) dates from the 1760 and replaced the earlier authentity (1650s) & authenticness (1620s).

Beware of the inauthentic: The authentic Lindsay Lohan (left) and the Grand Theft Auto's (GTA 5) ersatz (right), a mere "generic young woman".

Concurring with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey wrote in his ruling.  Ms Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

Real & fake appears as simple and obvious a dichotomy as black & white but humanity has managed over the millennia to create many grey areas in many shades, thus the wealth of antonyms and synonyms for “authentic”.  Authentic now carries the connotation of an authoritative confirmation (which can be formalized as a process which culminates with the issue of a “certificate of authenticity” although the usefulness of that of course depends on the issuing authority being regarded as authentic.  Genuine carries a similar meaning but in a less formalized sense and in some fields (such as the art market), something can simultaneously be genuine yet not authentic (a painting might for example be a genuine seventeenth century oil on canvas work yet not be the Rembrandt it was represented to be; it’s thus not authentic).  The word real is probably the most simple term of all and can often be used interchangeably but unless what’s being described is unquestionable “real” in every sense, more nuanced words may be needed.  Veritable was from the Middle French veritable, from the Old French veritable, from the Latin veritabilis, from vēritās (truth), the construct being vērus (true; real) +‎ -tās (the suffix used to form abstract nouns).  The traditional of use in English however means veritable had become an expression of admiration (eg “she is a veritable saint”) rather than a measure of truthfulness or authenticity.

Other nuances also organically have evolved.  Authentic now implies the contents of the thing in question correspond to the facts and are not fictitious while genuine implies that whatever is being considered is something unadulterated from its original form although what it contains may in some way be inauthentic.  This is serviceable and as long as it’s not used in a manner likely to mislead is a handy linguistic tool but as Henry Fowler (1858–1933) noted in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), it was an artificial distinction, “…illustrated by the fact that, “genuine” having no verb of its own, “authenticate” serves for both”.

Degrees of authenticity: 2016 Jaguar XKSS (continuation series)

In 2016 Jaguar displayed the first of nine XKSS "continuation" models.  In 1957, Jaguar had planned a run of 25 XKSSs which were road-going conversions of the Le Mans-winning D-type (1954-1956).  Such things were possible in those happier, less regulated times.  However, nine of the cars earmarked for export to North America were lost in fire so only 16 were ever completed.  These nine, using the serial numbers allocated in 1957 are thus regarded as a "continuation of the original run" to completion, Jaguar insisting it is not "cloning itself".  The project was well-received and the factory subsequent announced it would also continue the production run of the lightweight E-Types, again using the allocated but never absorbed ID numbers.  Other manufacturers, including Aston Martin, have embarked on their own continuation programmes and at a unit cost in excess of US$1 million, it's a lucrative business.

In the upper (or at least the most obsessional) reaches of the collector car market, the idea of “authenticity” is best expressed as “originality”.  As early as the 1950s when the market began to the process of assuming its present form, originality was valued because many of the pre-war machines first to attract interest (Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Lagonda et al from the UK, Duisenberg, Stutz, Cadillac et al from the US and Mercedes-Benz, Isotta Fraschini, Bugatti et al from Europe) had over the years receive different coachwork from that which was originally supplied.  At the time however, the contemporary records suggest that if a rakish new body had replaced something dowdy, it was a matter for comment rather than objection.  Nor were replacement engines and transmissions thought objectionable as long as they replicated the originals, there then being an understanding things wear out.  Those mechanical components were however among the first to come to the attention of the originality police and “matching numbers” became a thing, every stamped component with a serial number (engine blocks & heads, transmission cases, differential housings etc) which could be verified against factory records, made a car more collectable and thus more valuable.  It was a matter of originality which came to matter, not functionality which mattered; a newer, better engine detracted from the value.  In some cases originality was allowed to be a shifting concept especially with vehicles used in competition; if a Ferrari was found to be on its third engine, that was fine as long as each swap was performed, in period, by the factory or its racing team.

An authentic 1968 Chevrolet SS427.  Because Chevrolet was during the 1960s somewhat lax in recording the exact details of the exact configuration of the cars as they left the assembly line, it can be difficult to verify what's an authentic Chevrolet SS and what's not.  Quite a few Impalas and others have been modified and represented as what they're not and it can take an expert to tell the difference and that difference can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.  Fortunately, there are many experts.    

That exception aside, it’s now very different and, all else being equal, the most authentic collectable of its type is the one most original.  These days collectors will line up their possessions in rows to be judged by “certified judges” who, clipboards in hand will peak and poke, ticking or crossing the boxes as they go.  They’re prepared to concede the air in the tyres, the fuel in the tank and the odd speck of dust on the carpet may not be what was there when first the thing left the factory but points will be deducted for offenses such as incorrect screw heads, or a hose clap perhaps being installed clockwise rather than anti-clockwise.  Sometimes a variation from the original can’t be detected, even by a certified judge.  If a component (without a verifiable serial number) has been replaced with a genuine factory part number, if done properly that will often get a tick whereas a reproduction part from a third-party manufacturer will often have some barely discernible difference and thus get a cross.  Given the money which churns around the market, there’s a bit of an informal industry in faking authenticity and with some vehicles it is actually technically possible exactly to take a mundane version of something and emulate a more desirable model; the difference in value potentially in the millions.  In some cases however, even if technically possible, it may be functionally not: If it’s notorious that only ten copies were produced of a certain model and all have for decades been accounted for, it’s not plausible to possess and eleventh. However, there are instances where the combination of (1) the factory not maintaining the necessary records and (2) the vehicle itself not being fitted with the requisite stampings or identification plates to determine exactly what options may originally have been fitted.

Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery by Han van Meegeren (1889–1947) following Vermeer (1632-1675).

The matter of authenticity is obviously important in the art market.  Usually the critical factor is the identity of the artist.  In May 1945, immediately after the liberation from Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the authorities arrested Dutch national Han van Meegeren (1889–1947) and charged him with collaborating with the enemy, a capital crime.  Evidence had emerged that van Meegeren had during World War II sold Vermeer's Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery to Hermann Göring (1893–1946; prominent Nazi 1922-1945, Reichsmarschall 1940-1945).  His defense was as novel as it was unexpected: He claimed the painting was not a Vermeer but rather a forgery by his own hand, pointing out that as he had traded the fake for over a hundred other Dutch paintings seized earlier by the Reich Marshal and he was thus a national hero rather than a Nazi collaborator.  With a practical demonstration of his skill, added to his admission of having forged five other fake "Vermeers" during the 1930s, as well as two "Pieter de Hoochs" all of which had shown up on European art markets since 1937, he convinced the court and was acquitted but was then, as he expected, charged with forgery for which he received a one year sentence, half the maximum available to the court.  He died in prison of heart failure, brought on by years of drug and alcohol abuse.

His skills with brush and paint aside, Van Meegeren was able successfully to pass off his 1930s fakes as those of the seventeenth century painter of the Dutch baroque, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), because of the four years he spent meticulously testing the techniques by which as a new painting could be made to look centuries old.  The breakthrough was getting the oil-based paints thoroughly to harden, a process which naturally occurs over fifty-odd years.  His solution was to mix the pigments with the synthetic resin Bakelite, instead of oil.  For his canvas, he used a genuine but worthless seventeenth-century painting and removed as much of the picture as possible, scrubbing carefully with pumice and water, taking the utmost care not to lose the network of cracks, the existence of which would play a role in convincing many expert appraisers they were authentic Vermeers.  Once dry, he baked the canvas and rubbed a carefully concocted mix of ink and dust into the edges of the cracks, emulating the dirt which would, over centuries, accumulate.

Authentically guilty as sin: Hermann Göring in the dock, Nuremberg, 1946.

Modern x-ray techniques and chemical analysis mean such tricks can no longer succeed but, at the time, so convincing were his fakes that no doubts were expressed and the dubious Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery became Göring's most prized acquisition, quite something given the literally thousands of pieces of art he looted from Europe.  One of the Allied officers who interrogated Göring in Nuremberg prison prior to his trial (1945-1946) recorded that the expression on his face when told "his Vermeer" was a fake suggested that "...for the first time Göring realized there really was evil in this world".

So the identity of the painter matters, indeed, between 1968-2014, there was a standing institution called the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), an initiative of the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (the NOW; the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), the charter of which included authenticating all works attributed to the artist (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669).  That was a conventional approach to authentication but there are others.  In the West there’s a long standing distinction between “high art” and “popular art” but not all cultures have that distinction and when the output of artists from those cultures is commoditised, what matters is ethnicity.  In Australia, the distinctive paintings categorized as “indigenous art” have become popular and are a defined market segment and what determines their authenticity is that they are legitimately and exclusively the work of indigenous artists.  The styles, of which dot painting is the best known, are technically not challenging to execute and thus easy to replicate by anyone and this has caused where non-indigenous hands have been found (or alleged) to be involved in the process.

The Times (London), 8 March 1997.

In 1997, Elizabeth Durack (1915–2000), a Western Australian disclosed that the much acclaimed works of the supposed indigenous artist “Eddie Burrup” had actually been painted by her in her studio, Eddie Burrup her pseudonym.  To make matters worse, prior to her revelation, some of the works had been included in exhibitions of Indigenous Australian art.  Although noted since the 1980s, the phrase “cultural appropriation” wasn’t then widely used outside of academia of activist communities but what Ms Durack did was a classic example of a representative of a dominant culture appropriating aspects of marginalized or minority cultures for some purpose.  Sometimes (perhaps intentionally) misunderstood, the critical part of cultural appropriation is the relationship between the hegemonic and the marginal; a white artist creating work in the style of an indigenous, colonized people and representing it in a manner which suggests it’s the product of an indigenous artist is CA.  Condoleezza Rice (b 1954; US secretary of state 2005-2009) playing Chopin on a Steinway is not; that’s cultural assimilation.  Once the truth was known, the works were removed from many galleries where they had hung and presumably the critical acclaim they had once received was withdrawn.  Both responses were of course correct.  Had Ms Durack represented the works as her own and signed them thus that would have been cultural appropriation and people could have responded as they wished but to represent them as the works of someone with a name all would interpret as that of an indigenous artist was both cultural appropriation and deceptive & misleading conduct with all that that implies.

One of the photographs run by The Australian (News Corp) in this report on the involvement of white people in the production of indigenous paintings, April 2023.

More recently, there have been accusations white staff employed in a commercial gallery where indigenous artists are employed to create paintings have been influenced, assisted or interfered with (depending on one’s view) in the production process.  According to the stories run in the Murdoch press, a white staff member was filmed suggesting some modification to an artist although whether this was thought to be on artistic grounds or at attempt to make something more resemble what sells best isn’t clear.  However, in a sense the motive doesn’t matter because the mere intervention detracts from the authenticity of the product, based as it is not on the inherent artistic merit but on the artist being indigenous.  In that the case was conceptually little different from Göring’s “Vermeer” which for years countless experts in fine art had acclaimed as a masterpiece while it hung in Carinhall, an opinion not repeated as soon as its dubious provenance was revealed.  Nor is it wholly dissimilar to the case of the replica 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO which is essentially a carbon copy of one of the 40-odd originals made (indeed it was in some ways technical superior) yet it is worth US$1.2 million while the record price for a genuine one was US$70 million.  So for a product to be thought authentic can depend on (1) that it was created by a certain individual, (2) that it was created by a member of a certain defined ethnicity or (3) that it was created by a certain institution.

Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World, circa 1505), oil on walnut by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

In art, authenticity is precious in many senses.  Salvator Mundi, the critics admit, is not an exceptional painting but once authenticated as the work of Leonardo, it created its own exceptionalism, in 2017 becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction, attracting US$450 when offered by Christie's in New York.  The criteria for assessing the works of indigenous artists is also beneficial for them because unlike mainstream art, they’re not assessed as good or bad but merely as authentically indigenous or not.  That’s why there are no bad reviews of indigenous art or performance because the concept is (1) irrelevant, (2) such an idea is alien to indigenous peoples in Australia and (3) if expressed by white critics would represent the imposition of a Western cultural construct on a marginalized group.  Dot paintings and such are marketed through the structures of the art market because physically they’re similar objects (size & weight) to other paintings but they’re really modern, mass-produced artefacts which depend on provenance as much as a Ferrari, Leonardo or Vermeer.