Faking, Forging, Counterfeiting: Discredited Practices at the Margins of Mimesis

Forgeries are an omnipresent part of our culture and closely related to traditional ideas of authenticity, legality, authorship, creativity, and innovation. Based on the concept of mimesis, this volume illustrates how forgeries must be understood as autonomous aesthetic practices - creative acts in themselves - rather than as mere rip-offs of an original work of art. The proceedings bring together research from different scholarly fields. They focus on various mimetic practices such as pseudo-translations, imposters, identity theft, and hoaxes in different artistic and historic contexts. By opening up the scope of the aesthetic implications of fakes, this anthology aims to consolidate forging as an autonomous method of creation.

Frontmatter 1 Table of Contents 5 Preface 7 Six Degrees of Separation 11 Forgery: The Art of Deception 41 The Artist and the Mountebank 59 Aping the Master 77 Fracture, Facture and the Collecting of Islamic Art 91 Shape-shifters of Transculturation 111 Fake Supreme 127 Reflections on Plagiarism in Jorge Luis Borgess Works 139 "I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books" 153 Faked Translations 167 Creating a Cult, Faking Relics 181 Desiring Fakes 199 Unmasking the Fake 223 Contributors 239 Illustration Credits 243