Is Fake the new Original?

Abstract

In the beginning of the 20th century new theories on the importance of fakes in art have appeared. Aesthetics, art history, culture sciences, sociology, economic and legal studies, interdisciplinary approaches and academic debates reintroduced the issue from a new perspective that treated fakes favorably and promoted them as a new kind of historical document. This paper, through a linguistic, historical and philosophical analysis of the terminology, attempts to test these theories and explain why, although forgery is an aspect of human creativity, in terms of real life and history, it is a nihilistic and disorientating phenomenon and should be treated as such.