Buying power

Wednesday, 16th August 2006

Forgery in the visual arts raises several interesting questions. If the eye can’t tell and the price doesn’t reflect what the eye sees, what is the buyer buying, or what does the buyer value when he pays extraordinary sums for an original painting, the forged version of which can be purchased for next to nothing? If the purchase represents a lifelong dream come true, what does the dream symbolically reveal of the dreamer? Or, if it fills a void in the buyer’s life, what was hitherto missing?

To begin with, the buyer or collector is buying what he knows about the painting: who painted it, its provenance and the esteem in which the work is held. These unseen, non-painterly aspects of the work surround it like a halo, and may include the name of the latest owner when the price is headline-grabbing right. By spending tens of millions on a painting (and not on a fleet of yachts, or an island or a prestigious building), the buyer is making a statement about his values and about values in general: on the ladder of values, the metaphysical or spiritual occupies a higher rung than the material. And, where talking is always easier than doing, and patronising the arts is often just that, the buyer lets his money talk for him when he purchases a painting whose real estate is smaller than any wall and whose true worth is not necessarily discernible to the eye. Which makes him a man of discernment, and, more importantly, known and respected as such.

Unlike the cultured person who is

usually happier with his lot, the moneyed man is never completely satisfied by his material conquests and may harbour a secret envy of the former’s accomplishment. So, in the spirit of becoming a more rounded human being, he decides to ‘invest’ millions in a painting, convincing himself that possession of the art object and becoming cultured constitute a single act. He, of course, is not innocent of the fact that the art acquisition sets him apart from his well-heeled confrères, but never admits to that motive as the underlying reason for the purchase.