"A Good Fake or a Bad Fake"?
Fabricating Authenticity - Jason W.M. Ellsworth
Andie Alexander [+]
Leibniz University Hannover
Andie Alexander is a doctoral candidate in the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leibniz University Hannover. She is co-editor (with Jason W. M. Ellsworth) of Fabricating Authenticity (Equinox, 2024) and is Managing Editor of The Religious Studies Project. Her research focuses on identity construction, discourses of difference and experience, and conceptions of the individual as a way to examine how post-9/11 discourses of inclusivity and pluralism implicitly work as a form of governance and subject-making which construct and constrain the liberal Muslim subject.
Description
In this chapter, Alexander complicates notions of authenticity as they pertain to the world of art, art conservation and preservation, and art forgeries. Comparing two relatively recent examples of art restoration, she explores what’s at stake in achieving an “authentic” restoration that maintains what is claimed to be the “intention” of the artist. Working through these examples, Alexander considers how and when the rhetoric of authenticity is employed and explores how such claims are often linked to the purported value of the artwork rather than the “authentic” quality of the piece.