ABSTRACT
For a time, the Canadian painter Emily Carr sold pottery and rugs with Indigenous motifs under the name ‘Klee Wyck’. In December 2021, two white men misrepresenting themselves as Indigenous were arrested for selling masks, “totem” poles, and pendants on the Seattle art market. Aloha Poke is a Chicago-based restaurant chain “inspired” by Hawai‘i, but with no actual ties to the islands and their people. These are all obvious cases of inauthenticity; they are, in a word, fakes. A number of very different issues find themselves grouped under the banner of ‘authenticity’, all of which may be at stake in different articulations of the paradox. Among these, in particular, are questions about genuineness as opposed to forgery, and about a work’s artistic merit or value. The paradox of authenticity is clearly a double standard, and people can all agree that double standards are morally bad. One natural way of thinking about authenticity is in terms of aesthetic value.
