Five Notes: on fakes, forgeries and other criminal acts

By Sarah Robayo Sheridan

1. The History of a Hoax: Edmund Lester Pearson, John Cotton Dana, and the Old Librarian's Almanack by Wayne Weigand

I came across this title in a Pittsburgh bookshop. The brown linen cover embossed with gold type coaxed me to pull it off the shelf. The frontispiece records that it is part of a series of chapbooks put out by Beta Phi Mu, a fraternity of librarians. (How nerdy is that?) Wiegand’s book is a detailed study of a literary hoax perpetrated by Edmund Lester Pearson, himself a librarian, but best known as a true-crime writer. Pearson published The Old Librarian’s Almanack under a pseudonym in 1919 and claimed that it was a reprint of a lost title from 1774. The whole thing is an elaborate parody that pokes fun at the figure of the librarian as a misanthropic gatekeeper. The fiction was so convincing that it was accepted as legitimate by a number of critical sources. I’m fascinated by fakes and forgeries, especially where this occurs in such a narrowly determined field. This book’s obscure subject is equivalent to the insularity of art world in-jokes.

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2. Margit Carstensen's blog by Bruce Hainley

I saw Bruce Hainley completely confound an art school audience in a public lecture at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco when I was a student there. He began his lecture by screening a deliciously cruel clip from Fassbinder’s Martha (1974) in order to situate the actress for the uninitiated. Under the highly suspect auspices of the actress’s own Internet blog, Hainley read a number of entries concerning the work of German painter Tomma Abts. The audience was divided between those who thought Hainley’s presentation was a complete cop-out — reading off someone else’s blog? — and those applauding the performance as a hall-of-mirrors coup, just the right fix in the otherwise dead-in-the-water genre of Internet criticism. While the blog was originally accessible online, I can’t seem to find it anymore. But, if you want to read it, the print version appears in the Phaidon monograph on Abts.

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Sturtevant: Beuys La rivoluzione siamo noi (1988).3. Sturtevant as Beuys

Long before the Pictures Generation, Elaine Sturtevant was producing her own knock-offs of big name contemporaries like Warhol, Lichtenstein and Johns. Never insinuated into exhibitions as forgeries but, rather, presented as her own interpolations, Sturtevant’s artworks were prescient of a now-prevalent attitude of simulation and repetition that shades the reception of art since Duchamp changed the rules of the game. Sturtevant is the crown princess of the art world in-joke and her Joseph Beuys is way more interesting than the man himself.

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4. Steve Reinke’s update of Adrian Piper’s calling card

As acerbic as Reinke’s four-word statement reads, I still consider this to be a fan letter to Adrian Piper. The business card appears as a prop in Reinke’s video Hobbit Love is the Greatest Love (2007) and is based on Piper’s My Calling (Card) #1 (1986). For the record, that card reads:

“Dear Friend, I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past, I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative, or socially inappropriate. Therefore my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are no black people present, and to distribute this card when they do. I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me. Sincerely yours, Adrian Margaret Smith Piper.”

Reinke argues that his more compact statement “I hate them, too” serves a new and improved function. He explains in his video voiceover: “While we applaud Piper's interventions, we feel compelled to note certain deficiencies and offer—as a corrective—our own version (which, it must be noted, is completely and directly derived from the Piper). The first deficiency is one of scope: we require a calling card that anyone could deploy in any instance of racism, classism, misogyny, homophobia, or intolerance of any kind. Secondly, we prefer work that does not indulge in that increasingly impossible category: autobiography.” You can watch the full video on Reinke’s site.

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5. Pardon card found at Dufferin station

This business card is possibly an improvement on Steve Reinke’s card. Its scope is entire and its promise 100 percent full and complete forgiveness for a past indiscretion at a reasonable price. This card fits into that freewheeling category called “ephemera” but somehow manages to trump many an artists’ self-conscious attempts at the same.