Art and authenticity: the importance of originals in judgments of value.

Why are original artworks valued more than identical duplicates? The present studies explore 2 mechanisms underlying the special value of original artwork: the assessment of the art object as a unique creative act (performance) and the degree of physical contact with the original artist (contagion). Across 5 experiments, participants were exposed to hypothetical scenarios in which an original object was duplicated. The type of object varied across experiments (e.g., a painting vs. a piece of furniture) as did the circumstances surrounding the creation of the original object and the duplicate. Overall, the results support assessments of performance and contagion as key factors underlying the value of original artwork, and they are consistent with the conclusion that the discrepancy in value between original artworks and perfect duplicates derives from people's lay theories about the domain of art, rather than from associations with particular kinds of art or certain cases of forgery. In May of 2000, the two major auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's, released their spring catalogues only to discover that both were selling the same painting, Paul Gaugin's Vase de Fleurs (Lilas). The two paintings were sent to an expert who identified one as the real Gaugin and the other as a forgery. However, both were traced back to the same source, an individual named Ely Sakhai. As was later revealed by an FBI investigation, Sakhai had purchased a number of lesser known paintings by impressionist and postimpressionist artists, such as Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Pierre-August Renoir, and Marc Chagall. He then hired skilled forgers to copy the original paintings and would sell the duplicates with the genuine certificate of authenticity attached. After the duplicate painting had changed hands several times, Sakhai would often have the original painting re-authenticated and would sell it as well. When he was caught, Sakhai was sentenced to 4 years in prison and was ordered to pay a fine of $12.5 million (C. Thomp- son, 2005). Why does the origin of an artwork matter so much? More specifically, why are original artworks valued more than identical duplicates? In this article, we explore the special value that people assign to original artwork as well as the underlying reasons for it. Across five experiments, we found that the value placed on orig- inals is to some extent special to art—the drop in value for a duplicate artwork is more than the drop in value for a duplicate of a nonartistic artifact. This is true even when the original artwork and the original artifact are both one of a kind, their values are equated, and the method of production is identical. Our findings suggest, then, that the discrepancy in value between original art- works and identical duplicates derives from people's lay theories about the domain of art, rather than from associations with partic- ular kinds of art or certain cases of forgery. This article also examines the psychological mechanisms underly- ing the special value of original artworks. We identify two key dimensions that are particularly important to the valuation of original artworks: the assessment of the art object as a unique creative act (performance) and the degree of physical contact with the original artist (contagion). These mechanisms and their proposed role in the valuation of art are discussed in the following sections.