The author and art

According to Orson Welles's F for Fake, a film essay about forgery, there are hundreds or thousands of forged pieces of art in museums worldwide. How would you feel if after having had an ecstatic moment in front of your favourite artist's work (Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, etc.) you find out that is a fake? Would you feel betrayed if you discovered that a painting that has moved you so much was not created by an artist but by an anonymous forger? Probably so.

But then the question is, are you moved by the fame of the artist or by the piece of art? In some cases the relation between the author and the work is not known, as Orson explains.

And this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole western world, and it's without a signature: Chartres.

A celebration to God's glory and to the dignity of man. All that's left most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked, radish. There aren't any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us, to accomplish.

Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced -- but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.

(transcript from the video scene).

These reflections may lead to other questions: what is truth? Is it our perception and thus, only a relative concept?

Many years have passed since Orson Welles' film (27 years), especially the relationship between information, media and audience has changed. Experts still have the last word, but the truth is decided by the most powerful communication tool yet: Television. Try to persuade millions of TV viewers of a fact after they have heard it on TV. You can reach one, 10, 100, but not the majority. Welcome to 21th century dictatorship, no need for political prisoners.