The winner of the Turner Prize (best young British artist) this year was Martin Creed, who's best known work is "Lights Going On and Off", which is, well, an empty room where the lights go on and off every few minutes. As a fan of minimalist art, I've no room to bash this piece, and I actually find the idea a little appealing. However, I propose a new set of dastardly international crooks that will sell forgeries of Creed's work. Not too original, except that our crooks will claim that the act of forgery makes the conceptual work even more complex, thus more valuable. (Deliberations with gallery owners will decide if selling the forgery with the original title or "Copy of Lights Going On and Off" yields a better return at auction.)

Subsequent targets include Creed's "A4" (a crumpled sheet of paper), Dan Flavin's fluorescent tube sculptures, and Jeff Koon's basketballs/vacuum cleaners.

An alternate strategy is to start a company to manufacture copies of conceptual art marketed under the same "similar to" scheme that is used by perfume knockoffs (e.g. "If you like Chanel No. 5, you'll love Sha-Nel No. 6!")

Sotheby's look out!
-- beauxeault, May 03 2002

Baked. http://www.halfbake...rt_20Forgery_20Ring
Let's see if the value holds up as predicted. [phoenix, May 03 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Well, what do you know about that! I do find this to be more valuable than the original. You get a croissant. The original gets a fishbone wrapped in a crumpled sheet of A4.
-- half, May 03 2002


Well done. (If my ego was bigger, I'd treat this as an "homage.") Gotta give you the point.
-- tspyz, May 03 2002


What about Avant Garde artists and some of their art?
-- 1kester, May 03 2002


I declare my kitchen sink to be art. I call it 'Bachelor's Irresponsibility.'
-- RayfordSteele, May 05 2002


Wow! tspyz, it looks like your theory has been confirmed. The copy is not only as valuable as, but evidently many times more valuable than the original. Because your point has been so successfully demonstrated, I've croissanted the original (making it a bit less persuasive, ironically).

I really expected this to be dropped pretty quickly, and was sincere about the fully-functional mfd tag I gave it. After all, this is really not an idea itself but a special form of annotation to tspyz' idea. But with 14 positive votes, I've considered removing the mfd tag in case 14 or so people want to keep it around. On the other hand, it could be that the votes are contingent on the mfd.

moderators, what's your preference?
-- beauxeault, May 08 2002

















-- Jem, Feb 19 2003


Hey, you stole that blank space.
-- snarfyguy, Feb 19 2003



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