The workshop "Securities of art. On the history of authentication between work, text and context" will examine artistically conceived authentications that have become constitutive for the status and value of artworks since the early 18th century. The guiding assumption is that artists in particular interrogate specific methods of authentication – such as signatures and titles, but also certificates, contracts and other securities in the broadest sense – and integrate them into the structure of their works. Examples range from specially designed subscription tickets for the purchase of prints in the early 18th century to NFTs and contracts in works of contemporary art. The key focus is on exploring an art history of authentication in overarching social, economic and legal-historical contexts on the one hand, and on the other, delineating the theoretical contours of the relationship between the authenticating and the authenticated, between work and parergon, and between text, paratext, and context. We will engage in a historical and theoretical analysis of the shift from the authentication of art to authentication as art.

Conceived and organized by Tobias Vogt and Lukas Töpfer with the support of Judith Brachem

-

PROGRAM

16:30 – 17:00 | Introduction
17:00 – 18:00 | Tobias Vogt: Subscription and Speculation. William Hogarth’s "Boys Peeping at Nature"
18:00 – 19:00 | Ian Haywood: The Art of Money: Travels in the Realms of Gold in Georgian Britain

09:30 – 10:30 | Ursula Frohne: The Art of Making Money
10:30 – 11:30 | Lukas Töpfer: A Certified and Notarized Original Reproduction. Marcel Duchamp and the Excess of Authentication
(short break)
11:45 – 12:45 | Antje Krause-Wahl: Gold Diggers of ’84. Values in General Idea’s Securities

(lunch break)

14:30 – 15:30 | Judith Brachem: Four Stitches. Signing without Signature in Martin Margiela’s Parerga
15:30 – 16:30 | Felix Vogel: Eva Barto’s Contracts
(short break)
16:45 – 17:45 | Sophie Cras: Committed to Art. Jonas Lund’s "Smart Burn Contracts"
17:45 – 18:30 | Conclusion