12 May

This Modigliani nude sold for over A$235 million. The art market is an ocean of fakes and forgeries, trying to cash in on the enormous money a tiny handful of works attract. Modigliani is one of the most copied artists (he died in 1920 at 35, penniless). The art market tells us everything about human life. Nearly everything in it is a copy, an imitation. Often there’s no way to tell a copy from an original. And that’s where it gets interesting, because if you can’t tell the difference, why does it matter? McLuhan said that the whole idea of an ‘original’ only exists after there are copies. This is a chicken and egg question with an answer. The copies come first, then the original. How else could it work? Without copies, there’s not even a concept of original. Something just is. Social media now runs our societies, and it’s an imitation/status machine. The economy of likes. Thus the simultaneous epidemic of yearning for authenticity. But there is no more authentic life to find, it’s an artefact of all the imitation.