Forty Found Fakes
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- Forty Found Fakes
- 1979
- artist book, print on paper, 48 pages
- 43 x 28 cm
In his 1979 work "40 Found Fakes," Ernst Caramelle plays with the myth of authenticity and the associated character of art reception. This work, realized as a catalogue, shows 40 found photos. Both the captions attributing each to a certain artist, as well certain coincidental similarities to the indicated artists’ oeuvres, give rise to the impression that they indeed are works by these artists—who include Joseph Beuys, Donald Judd, Daniel Buren and Hermann Nitsch. But even so, Caramelle’s ambiguity toward the system of art is neither disparaging nor destructive: it much rather looks at precisely those factors that give these artists’ works their meaning while simultaneously undermining their institutionalized status. S.E.