Imagine you are strolling through a swap meet and you find a booth with several paintings for sale. You wouldn’t normally bother, but as you pass, the owner of the booth proudly proclaims everything he sells is original.
The claim piques your interest, so you approach the nearest bin at his booth and start sorting through a series of paintings stacked up against each other. You’re just about to give up and head back to the market when something catches your eye.
You pull it out for a closer look…
You know this painting! You follow this artist on Instagram, she’s one of your favorites! Her photo of this piece popped up on your feed a couple months ago and you loved it.
Wait… how could it be here? You’ve never seen any of her pieces go for less than twenty thousand.
You ask the owner of the booth how much for the piece and to your surprise he asks for only a hundred dollars. You decide it’s worth the gamble and pay up.
The more you clean it up, the better it looks. You scan the entire piece, looking for flaws, but you can’t find a single one. Every brush stroke looks immaculate. As you test out where you’re going to hang it, you notice the color of your walls compliment the piece perfectly.
However, you eventually notice your excitement begins to wane, steadily replaced by a growing unease. How do you actually know if this is original or not? The owner of the booth could have easily been lying. You love the painting, but eventually this uncertainty grows until you can’t ignore it any longer. Is this the real deal? Or is it fake? You have to find out.
So you send the artist a picture of the painting through her website with a message explaining the situation. Perhaps she can at least let you know if it’s possible this particular piece could have ended up at the swap meet.
A few agonizing days pass until one morning you check your inbox and there sits the reply from the artist that you’ve been waiting for. You nervously scan the text for the verdict.
It’s fake.
She explains with absolute certainty that she gave this piece to her friend as a gift. In fact she sees it hanging in her friend’s home every time she visits. You read on to see her also point out various flaws in the piece that don’t match her style. You thank her for her reply and go take another look at the rectangular paperweight sitting on your dresser. Once a vibrant piece of art, this painting now feels dull and irrelevant.
So what happened? How did you go from feeling such excitement and appreciation about the painting to feeling so disappointed?
Since the physical painting didn’t change, maybe it was the money. A couple of days ago, you thought you had at least twenty thousand dollars sitting on your wall. Now you’re in the hole for a hundred bucks.
Let’s run a quick thought experiment to see if that’s the case. Assume you somehow learned that despite your painting being fake, it was still worth the exact same as the original. Would such knowledge restore the joy you felt when you first brought the painting home? If we’re being honest, probably not. This forged version would still feel lesser.
What is behind this angst? Why can you no longer enjoy this piece of art? Psychologist Paul Bloom would say it is because you are an essentialist. In this context that means that you, like all other humans, care about the story attached to an object as much (or more than) the physical attributes of the object itself.
Throughout this journey, the story of your painting changed and as a result, you perceived it in a completely different way, despite it not changing in any physical manner.
But what makes one story better than another, especially when it comes to art? Why is the story behind a forgery so much less satisfying than the one behind an original? Bloom explains that this is due to an innate appreciation we have for effort, creativity and intention.
In the case of your painting, the original piece was the result of a creative and effortful process, in which the artist intended to create something original from a mere idea. As far as you’re concerned, the forgery was made with the intention to deceive, required less effort, and needed no creativity.
In fact, experiments have shown that people will routinely be more satisfied with products and services they associate with effort and good intentions, even if it requires more effort or inconvenience to receive them.
In a world that becomes more automated each day, many of us can feel anxious about where we will fit into the future.
Nobody knows exactly what kind of world lies ahead, but I personally find the idea that we have an instinctual appreciation for each others’ effort and creativity to be a source of comfort and motivation to continue creating.
* Our first blog of 2025 features a guest author, Max Ouweleen. Max works in the television industry and is a creative contributor to several publications.
** In case you wonder, BOTH of these artworks are handpainted originals created by two of our gallery artists, E. E. Jacks and Marie Lavallee.
