Present Imperfect

"Forge" Sounds Funny When You Say It Over and Over Again | April 12, 2004

Another New Yorker article, another digression...

This week's has a piece about the James ossuary, the alleged coffin of Jesus's brother James, and the likelihood that its inscription is not genuine. The archeologist who believes the ossuary is a forgery explains the technical expertise you must have to produce a passable fake:

You need to read about the style of script in the ninth century B.C.E, you need to be acquainted with all the linguistic aspects of it, you need to know some geology and read some scientific reports...You have to be an expert in many unrelated fields. This is a big thing to do. Unless you are a true genius, you can't be professional in so many unrelated fields.

This idea of forger as genius reminded me of Chatterton, so I pulled my recently returned copy of Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton off the shelf and found this conversation between Joynson and Chatterton:

'...You wish me to forge the work of these men?' 'I did not say Forge. Is the work of Rowley a forgery?' He hesitated, collecting his Words. 'Is it not, as the Platonists tell us, an imitation in a world of Imitations?'

'But why should I stoop to imitate--' I emphasised that Word--'the Verses of Poets much inferior to me?'

He looked at me steadily. 'You cannot eat or drink Pride,' he said at last. Then he took my Arm and added heartily, 'And when at last you admit these Works to be your own, the Confession will bring you Fame.'

'The Fame of a great Plagiarist?'

'No, the Fame of a great Poet. You prove your Strength by doing their Work better than they ever could, and then by also doing your own.'

It's a fictional conversation, but the outcome was exactly as Joynson says: Chatterton did become famous for his forgeries. Of course, he still downed a bottle of laudanum and offed himself at 17, but boy did Wordsworth, Keats and Coleridge dig him.

And all this called to my mind the works of Glenn Brown, who, according to his Turner Prize bio (he was shortlisted in 2000)

deftly mixes fine art and popular culture to create paintings and sculptures of baffling complexity. His lengthy process of working from reproductions reflects how often we experience art at second-hand, though photographs. He adds further twists by choosing reproductions that aren't always faithful to the original in colour or tone, and then cropping or otherwise manipulating the images. 'I re-enliven it into something completely different. Something that makes personal allusions to my own life.'

What does it all mean?

I don't know. It's past my bedtime.