CAROLYN KORSMEYER
Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
In 1998 archeologists conducting a site inspection
for the development of the harborfront of the city
of Buffalo discovered the remnants of the original
terminus of the Erie Canal.1 This structure, known
as Commercial Slip, once opened a shipping chan-
nel into the Buffalo River and thence to Lake Erie
and points west. After a hundred years of use it
had been buried and built over, and by the late
twentieth century the old harbor was overshad-
owed by elevated highways and empty grain ele-
vators. The redevelopment project was designed to
revive the area with recreation and tourist attrac-
tions, including the reproduction of a portion of
the historic canal district. When the original canal
terminus was discovered, plans continued to build
a nearby replica. The old site was to be reburied;
perhaps its outline would be marked on the pave-
ment above to indicate its presence underground.
But the historic “feel” of old Buffalo—the “experi-
ence” of the nineteenth-century canal town—was
to be evoked by a reproduction slip, by an area of
newly laid cobblestone streets, and by interpretive
centers and signage, all of which presented fewer
engineering and financial complications.
To the apparent consternation of officials in
charge of the project, this plan met vigorous re-
sistence from the vocal majority of citizens, who
might have been presumed to have no interest in
what was now little more than a hole in the ground.
There were heated public debates, newspaper arti-
cles, courtroom hearings, injunctions, and demon-
strations. Under pressure, the state development
plan was revised, and it was decided to uncover,
restore, and rewater the old Commercial Slip, re-
taining not only its site but also the original lime-
stone walls that had been christened with a splash
from a bucket by Governor Dewitt Clinton in 1825
when the canal was opened.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:2 Spring 2008


c 2008 The American Society for Aesthetics
This may seem an odd anecdote to introduce a
subject in aesthetics, for engineering feat though it
may have been, no one has claimed that the canal
terminus represents a thing of beauty; nor except
in the most extended sense can it be considered
a work of art. But I have chosen this example in
the hope that by selecting an object with only one
important aesthetic feature, I can show that this
feature is presumed by other objects whose more
obvious aesthetic merits overshadow it. What the
uncovered site possesses is the property of be-
ing the real western terminus of the Erie Canal.
Because of this, it has claims on attention that a
replica would not, even though a replica might be
more like the original site in its entirety. The plan-
ners of the replica project also presumed that it
would have greater aesthetic appeal. In this sur-
mise they were wrong; I hope here to explore why.
‘Authentic,’ ‘original,’ ‘real,’ and ‘genuine’ are
related but not synonymous terms, and apposite
usage depends on object and context. I use both
‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ to conduct this study.
Invoking any of these concepts invites an array
of familiar puzzles: metaphysical, epistemic, and
ethical—as well as aesthetic. What counts as gen-
uine or authentic for an object that inevitably
changes over time, for example, especially one that
has been damaged and restored? By what means
do we recognize genuineness? What exactly do
such terms modify, and what kinds of value do
they invoke? What does the ontological state of an
object matter if it delivers a full and enjoyable ex-
perience? While not inseparable, these questions
are sufficiently connected that answers to one have
consequences for the others.
Despite the daunting problems presented by
the concept itself, I intend to defend genuineness
as an aesthetic property, an aesthetic value, and
118
a feature of experience. I shall not engage gen-
eral debates over the ontology of aesthetic prop-
erties, a term I use to refer to aesthetically salient
properties—those that contribute to an object’s
aesthetic value, no matter how they are under-
stood.2 I shall argue that ‘genuine’ names a pre-
sumptive property of objects that legitimately af-
fects experience whether or not it is perceptually
discernible. Other aesthetic properties depend on
it, and—even more important for my focus—it can
itself be the direct intentional focus of an aes-
thetic encounter. I shall not, however, presume
that terms like ‘genuine’ are synonyms for ‘best’
such that a genuine object is ipso facto aesthet-
ically better than a replica or an adaptation, al-
though I do think that genuineness commands re-
spect even if it does not guarantee other aesthetic
virtues.3
A locution I use frequently, ‘aesthetic en-
counter,’ indicates that I endorse an old theoretical
usage connoting a type of apprehension or grasp
of an object.4 This approach emphasizes cognitive
engagement, which includes the more commonly
invoked notion of “experience” but stresses the
singular insight gained therefrom. The traditional
way to describe this brand of apprehension is to
note that it requires first hand, direct acquaintance
and that it delivers a kind of affective illumination.
While the general requirement of direct acquain-
tance is sometimes questioned, it is indispensable
for the kinds of cases that will concern me here.5
Aesthetic encounters are apprehensions of their
objects, and one can be mistaken about those ob-
jects, for the moment of experience is not self-
validating. Hence the possibility, and sometimes
the gravity, of aesthetic deception.
Genuineness may seem hard to defend as an
aesthetically important property (though not as an
artistic or a historical property) because it is not re-
liably discernible from perceptual encounters. Sci-
entific measurements, historical research, trusted
authority, and so forth are needed to substantiate
identification and provenance before genuineness
can be insured, for perception and affective re-
sponse alone may furnish few to no clues to the
matter.
There is a school of thought, sometimes dubbed
“aesthetic empiricism,” that would locate all aes-
thetic properties within the set of those that are
manifest in experience.6 Manifest properties in-
clude sensory properties: how something looks
or sounds, and, if one countenances the bodily
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
senses (as I do), how it feels or smells or tastes.
Imagination and cultural competence inform man-
ifest properties, although they also complicate the
task of separating perceptually discernible qual-
ities from those that require additional informa-
tion. Probably fewer theorists, when pressed, hold
strong aesthetic empiricism than at first appears.7
But considering its implications not only musters
a case against the empiricist stress on manifest
properties, it also reveals weaknesses in other ap-
proaches to aesthetic salience that would locate
aesthetic value only in experience.8
In what follows, I shall join the (fairly
large) camp that opposes aesthetic empiricism,
and, more generally, aesthetic “experientialism,”
adding to the arguments for that opposition some
observations about modes of sense experience
that are relatively seldom considered: taste and
touch. Emphasis on these proximal senses will nar-
row my scope, for measures of genuineness vary
considerably by both type and purpose of object.
While some of the topics I consider are relevant for
practical decisions about restoration and preser-
vation, these are not my focus. Nor are the new
and perplexing questions about authenticity pre-
sented by digital storage of images and texts.9 The
performance arts present still other concerns, vari-
ant for music, dance, and theater—large subjects I
shall also skirt. Indeed, the standard arts will play
only a minor role in this discussion. I am inter-
ested in genuineness as it pertains to objects with
tangible presence—loosely speaking, material
objects.
Why mingle ideas about taste and touch in an
exploration of genuineness? These senses have
less history in aesthetic discourse, and I am inter-
ested in probing aspects of their operation that
might have been slighted or overlooked. The ob-
jects of these two senses provide stark contrasts:
fleeting, ephemeral, and “subjective”; and endur-
ing, stable, and “objective.”10 Objects of taste are
probably the very hardest to gauge in terms of au-
thenticity, and it is tempting to place their aesthetic
value entirely in the experiences they occasion. In
contrast, objects of touch may be comparatively
long-lasting, and it is tempting to presume that the
genuine object is simply the one that continuously
endures. These initial impressions are both com-
monsensical and highly misleading.
This argument will proceed with a heteroge-
neous set of examples, including historical ar-
tifacts, nature, works of art, and food. As this
Korsmeyer Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
list indicates, I do not conceive of the various
things modified as “aesthetic” to radiate outwards
conceptually from art.11 Works of fine art are dis-
tinctive in that their chief value is aesthetic, and all
artworks are candidates for nontrivial aesthetic as-
sessment. But one can grant that artworks provide
even the majority of compelling aesthetic cases
without conceding that the concept of the aes-
thetic is pro tanto a paradigmatically artistic con-
cept, in relation to which other uses of the term
are derivative.
i. perceptions and deceptions
Aesthetic encounters are often analyzed as per-
ceptions; they are equally often investigated in-
sofar as emotional responses are called into play.
Pursuit of both affinities demonstrates the salience
of genuineness. It will also confirm that ‘genuine’
can never modify experience alone.
If any experience is self-validating, one would
think it would be the assessment of the tastes of
food and drink. It is commonly noted that taste
and smell operate together; but with few excep-
tions taste also requires haptic experience. (As it
happens, in English the root for ‘taste’ also con-
notes ‘touch.’) Gustatory taste furnishes aesthet-
ics with one of its early root metaphors partly
because the savoring of flavors manifest in eat-
ing and drinking—and there is hardly more “di-
rect” acquaintance—is considered a valuable end
in itself. Nonetheless, appreciation even of taste
sensations is importantly affected by correct iden-
tification of the substances consumed. This fact
is obvious in certain contexts and hidden in oth-
ers because of an ambiguity in what we count as
a taste property—an ambiguity that extends into
other sensory modes as well but is particularly no-
table with tastes.
Flavors are describable both as the tastes of
a substance and as tastes characteristic of a
substance. The peculiar sweetness of a familiar
granular substance is the taste of table sugar.
The sweetness of sugar substitutes is supposedly
the taste characteristic of sugar, but it is really the
taste of the chemical surrogate. Perhaps this is a
simple case of aesthetic deception: fool the tongue
into thinking it is tasting sugar. But if one is inter-
ested only in immediate experience, there is noth-
ing to be deceived about. If a substance and its
surrogate are indistinguishable, the distinction be-
119
tween a characteristic property and a property of
a substance is erased. No harm, no foul.
However, experiences of manifest properties—
including so subjective a phenomenon as a taste—
vary depending on the presumptive properties of
their objects, even when at first it seems they
should not. Suppose someone were finally to in-
vent a convincing substitute for vanilla extract,
one that truly delivers the taste characteristic of
vanilla. Suppose now that a restaurant reviewer
savors a bite of crème brulée, praising the rich
crunch of caramelized sugar on top, the smooth
egginess of the custard, and just the right under-
tone of vanilla. But the chef is promoting his new
artificial vanilla flavoring, and he whips a bottle of
Shamilla from behind his apron and declares that
the wonderful flavor has its source in a chemical
combination quite innocent of vanilla beans. The
restaurant reviewer is now in an awkward position:
she might reassess her experience and declare that
she knew something was wrong with the flavor
after all, which smacks of illegitimate retrospec-
tion, or she might endorse the artificial flavor—
gracefully or grudgingly. This is the obverse of
Hume’s famous example of the wine tasters and
the key on a leather thong, for rather than the dis-
cernibility of a flavor distinction being validated
by reference to an object of taste, the distinction
between objects of taste seems to validate flavor
indiscernibility. If one cannot distinguish between
the taste of vanilla and the taste characteristic
of vanilla, then one might conclude—hastily and
erroneously—that both would be equally genuine
vanilla encounters.
If Shamilla really has just the same flavor as
vanilla, then the immediate assessments of the ex-
periences might indeed be the same. There has
been deception, but it has been in the service
of demonstrating that a distinction between two
substances is perceptually trivial, at least in the
moment. But it need not follow that it is also
aesthetically trivial—an extension that would pre-
sume that the distinction between cause and ob-
ject of experience is inconsequential. If the critic
is assessing not only the immediate experience of
a dessert but also the method of preparing a tra-
ditional dish or the quality of a particular batch
of vanilla beans, the extension clearly fails. Even
first-rate Shamilla has nothing to do with either the
vanilla crop or culinary tradition. The point is this:
differing causes of the taste sensation are aesthet-
ically irrelevant only if we have already decided
120
that aesthetic salience lies entirely within imme-
diate experience and has no further meaning or
value.
What is more, the restaurant reviewer would
not be entirely unjustified in reassessing her ex-
perience. Like all sensory qualities, tastes can be
somewhat ambiguous, requiring context and cor-
rect identification to be brought into focus. Is that
flavor piquant or rancid? It matters whether one is
eating Gorgonzola or drinking milk. Is that a sus-
picious whiff of ammonia? It matters whether one
is eating kidneys, Camembert, or a fish that was
caught last month. In cases such as these, identifi-
cation of the substance affects whether the taste is
subtle and recherché or disgusting. This variation
is not a figment of imagination about tastes char-
acteristic of a substance, but the focus of a vague
sensation into a clear one that recognizes the taste
of a substance.12 Just as the category that a partic-
ular work of art belongs to influences the aesthetic
properties ascribed it, as Kendall Walton has influ-
entially observed, so the category of food affects
both taste qualities and their valence.13 Among
wines, for instance, Riesling is sweet; among pas-
tries it is not. The pungency called haut goût may be
savored with meats but not with shellfish. Correct
identification is not always significant; but when it
is, we are nearing the territory of genuineness and
its aesthetic import.
The French employ the concept of goût du ter-
roir, the taste of place, the flavor imparted by the
earth that nourished a product.14 It is a concept
particularly pertinent to the assessment of wines,
for soil affects the quality of grapes. The most cul-
tivated palate supposedly can discern the place of
origin of a vintage (though this difficult enterprise
may be more famous in parody than in actual-
ity). In this perceptual experience, savoring the
substance includes diagnosing, recognizing, and in
some cases respecting and even honoring what is
eaten or drunk. The identity of the substance is
presumed in all of those latter cases, and at least
the last two can count as aesthetic judgments. Only
an authentic vintage, for example, would qual-
ify for the following elegy to an ancient bottle of
wine—taken from a fictional source but nonethe-
less plausible:
Truly enough the ’47 port was a dead thing; the merest
ghost of its old flame and flavour hung about it. Lord
Peter held his glass poised a moment. “It is like the taste
of a passion that has passed its noon and turned to weari-
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ness,” he said, with sudden gravity. “The only thing to do
is to recognise bravely that it is dead, and put it away.”
With a determined movement, he flung the remainder
of the wine into the fire.15
Any theory that would cancel the distinction be-
tween “taste of” and “taste characteristic of” could
make no sense of this scene.
Considering food and drink discloses two senses
of “genuine” that may be aesthetically salient: the
right kind of object and the right particular object.
With exceptions, the objects of gustatory taste are
fungible and require only that they be the right
type of object. Any chocolate from the box will
present the same qualities and arouse the same
response, though in rare cases, such as the fictional
1847 port, comestibles may become unique simply
because they are so rare.
A skeptic might still insist that the assessment
of sensory properties ought not change with the
discovery that one has been mistaken about the
identity of their cause. If my argument based on
taste has not yet been convincing, consider that
aesthetic encounters are only partially illuminated
in terms of perception; they are equally aligned
with emotional responses, and with some emotions
presumptions about the identity of their objects
more obviously affect their tenor.16
Ronald de Sousa enlists a Greek myth to dra-
matize this feature of emotions, and the device
suits an aesthetic point equally well.17 He recalls
the case of Alcmene, a loving and faithful wife,
whom the lecherous Zeus was able to seduce
only when he disguised himself by assuming all
of the perceptually discernible properties of her
husband, Amphytrion. One may assume that her
encounter with Zeus was experientially identical
with an encounter with Amphytrion, but Alcmene
was aghast to discover the deception. No matter
how loving the experience, the object of affection
was mistaken and was retrospectively recognized
as in error, because love is one of the nonfungible
emotions whose objects are not substitutable even
with others that possess the same manifest proper-
ties. It is not just that the experience would feel dif-
ferent; rather authenticity is a property presumed
in the encounter in order for that experience to
have come about in the first place. An incorrect
presumption is an aesthetic error, and sometimes
an aesthetic deception.
Not every aesthetic encounter rises or falls with
correct identification. It can be a trivial matter,
Korsmeyer Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
as is the use of sugar substitutes for those in-
sensitive to the bitterness of surrogates. Qualities
of what is sometimes termed the “aesthetic sur-
face” are generally less affected by deception. And
since, as manifest properties, they are always aes-
thetically pertinent, it may seem as if they com-
mandeer the whole territory. However, deciding
the scope of relevance is an aesthetic version of
the so-called frame problem: What properties of
an object are salient for the arousal of aesthet-
ically appreciative affect, such that they are lo-
cated within the aesthetic frame? The question is
prematurely foreclosed if one first stipulates what
are to count as aesthetic properties and then elim-
inates the rest. The frame expands and contracts,
and genuineness is among the features that may
be in or out of the frame depending on other
factors. Included in those variable factors is the
role of different sense modalities in apprehend-
ing an object. Here is another example—a partic-
ularly complicated one that engages the sense of
touch.
ii. in touch with the past
When the Nazi occupiers of Warsaw fled the ad-
vancing Russian army in 1944, they mined what
remained of the city, reducing it to acres of rubble.
After the war the city was rebuilt to look as it had
before, and the famous Old Town, an urban cen-
ter since the middle ages, now attracts thousands
of visitors a year. They walk within a section of
Warsaw that was painstakingly reconstructed with
the aid of drawings, photographs, and memories to
the way it appeared around the seventeenth cen-
tury. There is an important sense in which one does
indeed see the old city while traversing narrow,
twisting streets evocative of urban growth from
long ago. For those who like their aesthetic en-
counters to include visits to the past, it is a com-
pelling experience.
However, the tourist leaning against a wall of
the old city, sharing a contact with generations
past as her palms press against stone where many
hands have lain, might in fact be leaning against
what was once part of the city of Szczecin far to
the west, for fragments of that ancient town (for-
merly German Stettin) were utilized in rebuild-
ing the oldest sections of Warsaw.18 There is a
strong sense in which she visits old Warsaw, and no
sense in which she visits Szczecin. Yet what does
121
she touch? Has she touched Warsaw? Well, it is
Warsaw now, though presented as Warsaw then.
Has she touched Szczecin (though clearly not see-
ing it)? Compare touching tiny fossils of ancient
creatures caught in stone. If one’s attention is di-
rected to a building, the geological features of the
stone are not in the aesthetic frame, though they
might be in another. But the agedness of the his-
torical artifact—an aspect of this stone wall that
is the best candidate for being the closest contin-
uer in the preservation of old Warsaw’s identity
through time—is in the aesthetic frame.19 Hence
the conundrum, for it is the right property in the
wrong frame, and is therefore a prompter of aes-
thetic deception. (This is the case in spite of the
fact that guidebooks are quite clear that the city
was rebuilt.)
This example discloses some variance in the
direct acquaintance that is the traditional hall-
mark of aesthetic encounters and perhaps illu-
minates why its necessity may be questioned.
Acquaintance entails different degrees of proxim-
ity depending on its object. With an artifact whose
age and perdurance are in the aesthetic frame,
palpable presence is optimal. Because touch is
not permitted in museums and galleries to pro-
tect the objects on display, the subtle operation
of this sense is probably more obvious elsewhere,
such as historic cities or even natural settings. As
one hiker tramping the route of Lewis and Clark
remarked, “Walking in Meriwether Lewis’ foot-
steps makes my feet tingle.”20 This comment does
not express appreciation of a pedal sensation but
rather is a way of drawing attention to the fact
that, quite apart from any of its manifest sen-
sory qualities, touch furnishes a sense of being in
actual, literal contact with something. The urge
to touch is common when encountering objects
singled out for their age and historical unique-
ness.21 As one writer to the Buffalo News declared
when it appeared that the Erie Canal would re-
main buried: “The trip back would be so much
easier for me if I could reach out and touch the
walls of the Commercial Slip.”22 Being in the pal-
pable presence of the right object is presumed
by aesthetic engagements such as these. The en-
counter can lose both its descriptive properties and
its value altogether upon discovery that one has
been mistaken or deceived about the object, just as
Alcmene’s discovery of the pseudo-Amphytrion
affected her assessment of the quality and value
of that experience.
122
iii. age value
Age is among the salient aesthetic features of arti-
facts such as old Warsaw and the Erie Canal, and it
is illuminated by a distinction drawn by art histo-
rian Alois Riegl. Riegl wrote (at the turn of the last
century) about monuments and artifacts from the
past that accrue two distinct sorts of value: histori-
cal value and age value. Every work of art is also a
historical monument because it represents a spe-
cific stage in the development of culture, and, as
Riegl states, “in the strictest sense, no real equiv-
alent can ever be substituted for it.”23 While both
bring temporal location to mind, age value is to be
found in objects that embody the passage of time
and that show the marks of their antiquity, whereas
historical value attaches to objects insofar as they
represent a stage of cultural creativity.24 Historical
value is the more familiar concept, and while no
one disputes that many artifacts and artworks have
substantial historical value, many theorists would
separate (extrinsic) historical from (intrinsic) aes-
thetic value. This is not a simple distinction to draw,
for artworks and other artifacts have historically
situated properties—such as being a manuscript
illumination—that are also aesthetically pertinent
properties. But it is not implausible to argue that
their historical value is still distinct from the aes-
thetic value contributed by those properties. To
the degree that historical value is connected to sci-
ence and research and the accumulation of knowl-
edge of the past, and to the degree that it calls such
investigative sensibilities into play, it may conceiv-
ably reside outside the aesthetic frame.
In contrast, age value is always inseparable from
the sensible and affective impact that an object has
on the viewer. As Riegl asserts, “age value mani-
fests itself immediately, through visual perception
and appeals directly to our emotions.”25 I would
supplement his observation about visual percep-
tion with touch, for the point is made even more
profoundly by appeal to this proximal sense, which
conveys the palpable impression of being in con-
tact with the past. Age value attaches to cultural
artifacts such as buildings, bonzai, and flint axes
and to natural objects such as sequoias and amber.
Unlike sensory properties, being aged is not both
a merely “characteristic property” and a “prop-
erty of” an object; it is always the latter. As such,
it requires genuineness.
At this point I had better anticipate an objec-
tion: Why should age be an aesthetic property and
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
age value be counted as an aesthetic virtue? Is
it not better considered as a separate feature for
admiration—or perhaps only curiosity—with no
particular aesthetic salience? Some of the oldest
living things on earth, such as 900-year-old Joshua
trees (which have been called “the most repulsive
tree in the vegetable kingdom”), capture the imag-
ination just because they have been around for so
long.26 Why saddle a simple, gawking interest with
aesthetic qualifications? While age may not always
occupy the aesthetic frame, there are surely times
when it does—when one touches with awe some-
thing that has endured over time or stands before
remnants of the past. This is a direct and imme-
diate acquaintance with strong affective valence
just as standard accounts of aesthetic encounters
require; and it delivers a particular, singular, often
unique grasp of the object of attention. I do not
want to turn aesthetic experience into a seance,
but I do claim that this kind of experience is clearly
and properly described as “aesthetic.” Discovery
of error in age reduces aesthetic impact or even
erases the experience altogether. Moreover, age
is often the central determinate property of the
intentional object.
The former point is familiar from related con-
texts. As has been argued widely with regard to
forgeries, even the most adept copy cannot be
valued for the artistic achievement that it rep-
resents.27 Ascription of aesthetic properties, such
as “innovative,” “prescient,” or “boldly satirical,”
presumes that the object so described is the gen-
uine one situated at the right historical place in
the right sequence of cultural and social events.
But genuineness is more than just a prerequisite
for a set of aesthetic and artistic features; it is it-
self a direct and appropriate object of aesthetic
attention.
Imagine a visit to an eclectic museum of histor-
ical art and artifacts. In the Far East wing, you are
captured by a beautifully carved piece of jade, its
grace and delicacy testimony to ancient techniques
that transformed solid materials into airy webs. On
closer examination of the caption on the display,
you discover the words ‘polymer replica.’ What
happens? The figure is just as pretty as ever; its aes-
thetic surface remains the same. But first of all, the
appreciation of the artistry is now utterly deriva-
tive because it incorrectly presumed authentic-
ity. Secondly, your trip to the past is aborted. At
best, you appreciate that there is a genuine item
matching this one safely secured somewhere; but
Korsmeyer Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
disappointingly, it is not here. This is frequently the
response to displays of the Karpeles Manuscript
Museums, for example, which feature only ob-
jects held in their collections, but place on exhibit
copies distributed among the originals at their nine
widely dispersed sites. All the objects look gen-
uine, but visitors pore over the identification list
to separate the old ones from the merely appar-
ently old. This fact is more dramatic with objects
with few to no features of interest on the aesthetic
surface, for without the genuine article before one,
there is nothing else worthy of aesthetic attention.
Age value by its very nature requires genuine-
ness. However, objects valued for their age are
also those that are most likely to have had their
original condition altered by use, deterioration, ac-
cident, or malice. This reveals that the cluster of
values under discussion do not comprise a harmo-
nious package. Historical value and age value may
come into conflict, for age value does not resist the
deterioration of objects that make time’s passage
manifest; in contrast, interest in historical value is
more preservationist in sensibility. With careful at-
tention to historical concerns, which often require
restoration, the manifest properties that signal age
value are compromised. Age value may equally be
at odds with the values of the aesthetic surface, and
for similar reasons. A good cleaning and repair re-
stores an object’s appearance, but the presence of
new paint or patches reduces the affective reso-
nance of its age value. On the other hand, if an
ancient artifact has become so degraded that it is
hardly recognizable, it has passed the point where
it can be appreciated even for its age value.28 Age
value accrues and declines, eventually disappear-
ing altogether. One cannot resist this sequence
without interfering with age value and, ironically,
hastening its end.
We can sketch a schematic continuum mark-
ing several stages of change: an object from the
past no longer in its original condition may be re-
paired, employing fragments of the original glued
or soldered back together. While the damage af-
fects its economic value, historical value might be
preserved, and age value is not compromised. Or
it might be restored, where missing bits are re-
placed.29 It might be rebuilt, using both old and
new materials. Or it might be replicated in part
or entirely. Finally, it might be reproduced, even
multiple times, either to preserve and record the
surface aesthetic qualities of the original or for
market purposes if copies are to be sold.30 As
123
the continuum progresses, more and more prop-
erties of the object become properties character-
istic of what the object used to be. Historical value
is largely preserved in at least the first stages.
Age value rapidly diminishes in this sequence—
repair, restore, replicate, reproduce—although it
need not immediately disappear, for implicit in
the string is reference back to yet another “r”—
the real thing. Replication presumes a degree of
fungibility, though honorific reference back to the
real thing implicitly recognizes the ultimately non-
fungible genuine object.
To have age value an object has to be old.
Appearing old is not sufficient. But how old is
old enough? How restored is too restored? How
much of the original construction of an artifact
must be retained in order for age value to re-
main? There are no principles to appeal to for
answers, and these are probably not situations
where consistency ought to be expected. Nonethe-
less, it is important to notice that as one pro-
ceeds along increasingly distal references, the
appreciable qualities recede to the aesthetic sur-
face, leaving those relevant to age value behind un-
til experience becomes directed to an intentional
object so altered from what we presume it to be
that—inevitably—it becomes an occasion for aes-
thetic deception.
iv. pitfalls
It will not have escaped notice that my interest
in these matters invokes some old-fashioned—
perhaps even premodern—ideals, including pres-
ence and aura, which are sometimes considered
not only outmoded but also unsuited to a post-
modern age.31 (Some of my comments also bear
on the status of religious relics and talismans, an
unsettling parallel I shall not pursue.32 ) If authen-
ticity and age value appear retrograde concerns,
this foregrounds the fact that at this historical mo-
ment, traditions, and the anchors of tradition that
enduring objects represent, are weakening. From
the tastes of foods to the digitized world, we in-
creasingly trade with simulacra.33 What would per-
haps not have received much notice in the recent
past, such as continuing presence through time,
looms large now because of the contrast it poses
with what is to be anticipated. Hence a certain nos-
talgia is indeed a component of postmodernism, as
Jean-François Lyotard observes.34 But there are
124
greater concerns to ponder than fashions of sen-
sibility. If genuineness itself is a nostalgic ideal or
even illusion, then clinging to that value would
ironically contribute to aesthetic deception.
I now consider two worries. Perhaps includ-
ing presumptive qualities such as genuineness
in the phenomenology of aesthetic encounters
perniciously extends the boundaries of aesthetic
salience into regions that are prone to fancy, prej-
udice, and other clearly illegitimate influences.
Take, for example, the seventeenth-century Dutch
paintings that were at one time attributed to Franz
Hals but were later determined to be by his some-
time student Judith Leyster. It was to be ex-
pected that their market value would change with
the new attribution, because Hals’s paintings are
in greater demand; but is it not suspicious that
these paintings were then determined to mani-
fest a hitherto unnoticed feminine hand—to be
rendered with less-than-vigorous brushstrokes for
instance.35 And yet, the identity of the artist, in-
cluding his or her gender, is a candidate for the
kind of presumptive property that ensures the
sound attribution of aesthetic properties to their
objects. How can legitimate presumptions be dis-
tinguished from dubious ones?
Obviously, there is a large and contentious zone
where questionable judgments circulate. I have re-
moved a standard ground for excluding them by
insisting on the aesthetic salience of what others
label an extrinsic property. But if it is illegiti-
mate to redescribe and reassess the Leyster paint-
ings based only on the discovery of her signature,
then the reason is not that aesthetically irrele-
vant features have been considered where previ-
ously they were not. In fact, perhaps reattribution
might bring into focus properties that were for-
merly harder to see. If the wider frame also per-
mits prejudice to fog the judgment, this is an error
of another sort. As David Hume might have said,
separation of supportable from insupportable aes-
thetic qualities needs to occur through appeal to
fairness and good sense rather than to category of
property.
The very toughest problem with genuineness is
that perhaps the standard it promises is both con-
fused and impossible to meet. Nowhere are both
worries clearer than in the realm of taste. Even
if we focus on tastes of food and drink (rather
than characteristic of ), we are still dealing with
fleeting experiences that are notoriously difficult
to describe. What is more, culinary traditions are
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
not static but alter with migration, changes in cli-
mate, accident, and contact with others. Once I
was invited to dinner with a Korean friend with the
promise that I would experience the genuine cui-
sine of her home country. When I inquired about
its preparation, I was told that one of the sauces
was flavored with Coca-Cola, which she had found
an excellent substitute for an ingredient hard to
find in the United States. Examples of such adap-
tations permeate virtually all culinary traditions,
which are richly flexible and opportunistic.
What is more, today our flavor experiences
are deeply affected by the widespread and of-
ten surreptitious use of artificial flavors or flavor
enhancers, creating a hyperreality of tastes in com-
parison to which nature’s product appears pallid.36
To what is taste compared? A taste from the past?
But whose past, and how far back can one reach?
One can compare tastes of the present with tastes
remembered from childhood, as Proust famously
recounted; but how do you compare your taste ex-
periences with those of your great-grandmother,
whose table represented an older version of your
present culinary tradition and who probably ate
varieties of fruits that no longer exist?37 If one
were truly bent on formulating exactly what an au-
thentic taste experience is supposed to mean, these
multiple complications would stagger the attempt
to locate a coherent gauge.38
With the odd exception of honey, the actual
physical substances that we eat quickly degrade
and rot, and so there is no question here of the
endurance of things beyond the span of their orig-
inal use. The gastronomic equivalent of age value
would arise from reenacting foods of times long
gone—such as garum, the fermented fish sauce
widely used in classical antiquity, or the sweetened
and spiced meats that were eaten in Europe un-
der lingering influence from the Persian empire,
or the preparation of maize dishes in America
before the European conquest. Even if we could
secure lost ingredients and figure out how to con-
coct some of those dishes, it is most unlikely that
eating them would conjure up ancient tastes, de-
pendent as these are on habit and culinary custom.
The foods of the past are hard enough to recreate;
the tastes of the past can barely be imagined. Who
now would savor the vintages of Greek antiquity,
knowing that Homer’s heroes not only sailed on
but also drank his wine dark sea?
At the same time, genuineness or authenticity
is a gustatory value that is now desperately sought,
Korsmeyer Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
for the very reason that certain tastes appear
on the verge of extinction, receding from mem-
ory as their objects become unavailable. Global
standards for food production and marketing are
changing sanctioned modes of food preparation
and thereby the taste of the products, and eventu-
ally shrinking the available range of taste experi-
ences. Such losses are much on the minds of those
worried about the narrowing of sense experience
with an altered economy. Something is being lost.
But what, exactly? Perhaps one concern (the most
nostalgic) is that alterations in the foods produced
foreclose the very possibility of recovering past
tastes, no matter how this idea is understood.
Tastes are particularly ephemeral, but parallel
problems extend to other objects of experience,
including those that appear most durable. Here I
have focused on aesthetic encounters where the
past is brought before us in objects whose value
includes a noteworthy age value. But the fact is,
we almost never have objects from the past that
are both whole and in their original condition, so
genuineness cannot rely on retention of a stable set
of features. What even counts as “genuine” with
an object that was altered in its own time, such as
the Erie Canal, which was widened and repaired
many times before portions of it were buried? And
once unburied and restored, how significant are
new patches of concrete or rearrangement of the
blocks of limestone on its sides? These will not
make much of a visible difference, so the visitor
probably will not notice; but this is no answer, for
I have just argued that genuineness is a presump-
tive quality even when it is not manifest. It seems
as if aesthetic deception of some degree is virtu-
ally inescapable—unless one haunts undisturbed
ruins.
There are plenty more examples with far more
profound aesthetic and artistic merit: The Ishtar
Gate, fragments from Babylon, now rebuilt in
Berlin. Replicas of marble statues in cities such
as Rome and Krakow, replacing those eaten away
by acid rain. Triptych altarpieces separated and
acquired by different collections. Broken statuary
from South Asian temples that has migrated all
over the world. Or the bizarre case of London
Bridge, the very paradigm of the metaphysically
contentious scattered object—part in London,
part in Devon, and part in Arizona, where it forms
the nucleus of a popular tourist attraction. All of
these are objects with claims on age value, and all
invite palpable contact with their pasts. None can
125
claim to be genuine if that means actually being in
their entirety what they once were long ago. They
refer to that time; they only partially embody it,
and sometimes that embodiment has become so
attenuated as to be nearly insignificant.
Because the problems of identity through time
are complicated, puzzling, and even tragic, one
might conclude that a value such as genuineness
is both practically unrealistic and naive. More
gravely, perhaps it sets a notional standard that is
itself deceptive inasmuch as it presumes the pos-
sibility of something that is, in effect, impossible.
It is folly to be a purist about these matters. Fortu-
nately, genuineness admits of degrees, where parts
of an object or continuity of sequential objects can
support claims to genuineness that are sufficient
even if partial. What counts as “sufficient” must
be left to decisions in the individual case. But the
need for compromise and even inconsistency does
not obviate the importance of genuineness, with-
out which we lose the fundamental feature that
warrants the magnetism of objects that command
aesthetic respect and honor.
CAROLYN KORSMEYER
Department of Philosophy
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Buffalo, New York 14260
internet: ckors@buffalo.edu
1. This article is a revised version of my 2006 Presiden-
tial Address for the American Society for Aesthetics. For
their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts, I thank
Carrie Bramen, Ann Colley, Regina Grol, and Joe Zeccardi.
2. I take it that the aesthetic–nonaesthetic distinction,
property realism, and so forth can be addressed indepen-
dently of the considerations advanced here. My arguments
on behalf of genuineness obtain regardless of one’s answers
to those questions.
3. Peter Kivy criticizes the equation of “authentic” with
“good” in Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musi-
cal Performance (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 1.
4. David Summers, The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance
Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987) presents the complicated history of this
idea.
5. Noël Carroll dismisses direct acquaintance with the
example of conceptual art in “Aesthetic Experience: A
Question of Content,” Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics
and Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2005), pp. 69–97. Even if appreciation of con-
ceptualism does not require direct experience, this kind of
case would not pertain to other aesthetic encounters. Jerrold
Levinson refers to direct acquaintance as a “shibboleth,” but
again this does not indicate that it never pertains: “Aesthetic
126
Properties II,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume
79 (July 2005): 211–227.
6. See Gregory Currie, An Ontology of Art (London:
Macmillan, 1989), p. 17 and chap. 2; David Davies, Art as
Performance (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), chap. 2. Both
Currie and Davies argue against aesthetic empiricism.
7. Although the label is an odd one for him, Kant ap-
proaches this position when he remarks that the pure judg-
ment of taste is devoid of interest in the existence of its
objects (Critique of Judgment §2.)
8. This position has been defended recently by Alan
Goldman, “The Experiential Account of Aesthetic Value,”
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 333–
342.
9. Authenticity in a Digital Environment (Washing-
ton, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources,
2000).
10. Use of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ here is distinctly
pretheoretic, but philosophers such as Kant divided the
senses according to these categories. See Anthropology from
a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell (Car-
bondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 41.
11. I seem to be among a shrinking number of people
who take this approach, for many insist that the concept of
the aesthetic chiefly pertains to the experience of art. See
Carroll and Goldman, cited above.
12. Goldman draws a distinction between perceptual
and experiential properties, such that perceptual properties
may be indiscernible, but the experience of an object will
differ depending on the correct identification of its object. I
believe that the case of flavor indicates that perceptual prop-
erties also may vary; this may be because taste sensations are
inherently vaguer than are visual or auditory perceptions
and hence more vulnerable to change with altering iden-
tity of causes. See “The Experiential Account of Aesthetic
Value,” p. 336.
13. Kendall Walton, “Categories of Art,” Philosophical
Review 79 (1970): 334–367.
14. Amy B. Trubek, “Place Matters,” The Taste Culture
Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink, ed. Carolyn Kors-
meyer (Oxford: Berg, 2005), pp. 260–271. See also several
essays in Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, ed.
Barry C. Smith (Oxford: Signal Books, 2007).
15. Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness (New York:
Avon, 1969 [1927]), p. 137.
16. Marcia Eaton compares aesthetic responses to emo-
tions in Merit: Ethical and Aesthetic (Oxford University
Press, 2001), chap. 1.
17. Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotions (MIT
Press, 1987), chap. 5.
18. This anecdote vastly simplifies the complex set of
decisions over rebuilding the old city, which utilized materi-
als from various sites in Poland. See David Crowley, “Peo-
ple’s Warsaw/Popular Warsaw,” Journal of Design History
10 (1997): 203–223. The example of Szczecin is variously re-
ported and somewhat controversial, and I thank Elizabeth
Peña, Jean Dickson, and Slawomir Jozefowicz for research
and advice on this question.
19. A closest continuer theory of identity through time
is defended by Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations
(Harvard University Press, 1981), chap. 1.
20. Stephen Ambrose (quoting his wife), “Join Us on
the Trail,” National Geographic Traveler 19 (2002): 63.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
21. Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Staying in Touch,” in Ethical
Criticism and the Arts, ed. Garry Hagberg (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, forthcoming).
22. Jack Kempf, “Reburying the Canal Doesn’t Make
Sense,” “Viewpoints,” Buffalo News, August 30, 1999, p. 3B.
23. Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its
Character and Its Origin,” trans. Kurt W. Forster and Diane
Ghirardo, Oppositions (1982 [1903]): 22.
24. Some contend that an encounter with an object from
the past ideally yields an experience as though time is erased
and one experiences the object as a contemporary would.
Among the several confusions implicit in this notion is failure
to recognize that the object is of its time; we are not. Neither
historical nor age value implies this collapse of temporal
consciousness.
25. Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” p. 33.
26. John Fremont quoted on the website on the
Mojave National Preserve: www.nps.gov/archive/moja
/mojaanjt.htm (September 17, 2006).
27. Denis Dutton, “Artistic Crimes: The Problem of
Forgery in the Arts,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 19
(1979): 304–314; David Davies, Art as Performance (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2004), chaps. 1 and 8; Mark Sagoff, “The
Aesthetic Status of Forgeries,” in The Forger’s Art, ed. De-
nis Dutton (University of California Press, 1983), pp. 131–
152. See also Matthew Kieran on “essentiality of origin” in
Revealing Art (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 14.
28. As Riegl puts it, the cult of age value “contributes
to its own demise” (“The Modern Cult of Monuments,” p.
33).
29. Randall Dipert observes that a restored artifact is
one “in which an artifactual feature deteriorated but whose
original nature was correctly inferred by a second agent in
a way causally connected to the original intention/feature
and was as a consequence of this influence by the second
agent intentionally reimpressed on the deteriorated object.”
Randall Dipert, Artifacts, Art Works, and Agency (Temple
University Press, 1993), p. 122.
30. “A reproduced artifact is an object created by agents
intending to follow, and succeeding in following, the inten-
tions of an artist or intentionally copying the physical aspects
of the artifactual features of the original artifact” (Dipert,
Artifacts, Art Works, and Agency, p. 123). In the case of repro-
duction for market, presumably those intentions will have
been supplemented with economic motives.
31. See Walter Benjamin’s famous discussion of aura
in “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” from his
book Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken
Books, 1969).
32. Here, where one might expect the genuine ar-
ticle always to prevail, there are traditions of replica-
tion that could serve as counterexamples to my argu-
ment. The so-called Black Madonna of Czestochowa has
been copied numerous times in the past centuries and
sent into battle to ensure divine protection. An object
that is believed to be the Ark of the Covenant rests in
an ancient rock church in Aksum in the mountains of
Ethiopia, and replicas are carried in religious processions.
These sorts of cases confound the sequence from “real” to
“reproduction.”
33. See Jos de Mul on aesthetics and database ontology
in “Database Aesthetics/Globalizing Worlds,” International
Association for Aesthetics Newsletter 30 (2006): 1–3.
Korsmeyer Aesthetic Deception: On Encounters with the Past
34. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condi-
tion: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington
and Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1984),
passim.
35. Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (Lon-
don: Thames and Hudson, 1990), pp. 21–23; Frima Fox
Hofrichter, “The Eclipse of a Leading Star,” in Judith
Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her Work (Yale University
Press, 1993), pp. 115–121.
36. On authenticity of flavor, see Constance Classen,
David Howes, and Anthony Synnott, “Artificial Flavours,”
and Lisa Heldke, “But Is It Authentic? Culinary Travel and
the Search for the ‘Genuine Article,’” both in The Taste Cul-
ture Reader, ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer (Oxford: Berg, 2005),
pp. 337–342; pp. 385–394.
37. Nadia Seremetakis, “The Breast of Aphrodite,”
in The Senses Still, ed. Nadia Seremetakis. (West-
view Press, 1994), discusses the taste of a peach from
her childhood that is now to be found nowhere in
Greece.
127
38. One might be tempted to parse authenticity of tastes
in parallel with discussions regarding the “authentic” perfor-
mance of music. Problems of comparing contemporary taste
experiences with those of the past have some similarity with
questions of reproducing in our own day musical sounds—
understood as the aural experiences—as they would have
been heard in the past. (For skeptical arguments about this
possibility, see Peter Kivy on “sonic authenticity” in Authen-
ticities, chap. 3. See also Dipert, Artifacts, Art Works, and
Agency, chap. 11.) I suspect that this parallel is less illumi-
nating than at first it might appear. Although both recipes
and scores are written instructions for actions, for example,
they are quite dissimilar in terms of the detail and scope of
the attention they command and, above all, in their relative
complexity. Moreover, while the intentions of the individual
composer might be consulted to decide performance choice,
with the exception of moments within traditions of haute
cuisine, cooking instructions issue from generations of tra-
dition with necessarily variant practices. In any event, my
focus on tangibility here directs me to other concerns.