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Snark Hunting in Canadian Law: Art and Authenticity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

Josh Nelson
Affiliation:
PhD Candidate Department of Art HistoryQueen’s University13jn13@queensu.ca
Adie Nelson
Affiliation:
Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Legal StudiesUniversity of Waterlooeds@uwaterloo.ca

Abstract

This reflection on the social construction of authenticity analogizes the quest for artistic authenticity to snark hunting. To illustrate the instability of this term, it employs various Canadian examples, including the “Michelangelo” terracotta sculptures donated to the Museum of Vancouver, the “Igloo tag,” the importation of a sculpture by Edward Chukwuweike Madukaego, and the work of Bill Reid. It posits that proclamations of authenticity and fraudulence are ultimately utterances denoting and invoking power relations. It also reveals, through the use of specific examples, how negotiations around artistic authenticity in settler societies can replicate and re-entrench colonialist power.

Résumé

Cette réflexion sur la construction sociale de l’authenticité tente de démontrer l’absurdité de la quête d’authenticité artistique. Pour illustrer l’instabilité du sens donné à ce terme, divers exemples canadiens sont étudiés, y compris les sculptures de terre cuite supposément de Michel-Ange qui ont été données au Musée de Vancouver, le fameux certificat d’authenticité connu sous le nom de « Igloo tag », l’importation d’une sculpture d’Edward Chukwuweike Madukaego et le travail de Bill Reid. La réflexion permet de constater que les déclarations d’authenticité et de fraude sont souvent, au bout du compte, le prétexte à l’établissement de relations de pouvoir. La présente étude révèle par ailleurs, au moyen d’exemples spécifiques, que les négociations entourant l’authenticité artistique chez les populations colonisatrices peuvent à la fois reproduire et entériner de nouveau le pouvoir colonialiste.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2017 

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121 The Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act, 3rd Sess, 40th Parl, (assented to 15 December 2010), SC 2010, c 18.

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128 Fred Myers, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 332.

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131 Supra note 95 at 253.

132 Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation (Aldershott, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 32.

133 See e.g. Solen Roth, Culturally Modified Capitalism: The Native Northwest Coast Artware Industry (PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2013); Jarrett Martineau and Eric Ritskes, “Fugitive Indigeneity: Reclaiming the Terrain of Decolonial Struggle Through Indigenous Art,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3, no. 1 (2014): 1; Laura Fisher, Aboriginal Art and Australian Society: Hope and Disenchantment (London: Anthem Press, 2016); Christine Alder, Duncan Chappell, and Kenneth Polk, “Frauds and Fakes in the Australian Aboriginal Art Market,” Crime, Law, and Social Change 56 (2011): 189.

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136 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (Mineola, New York: Forgotten Books, 1999), 81.