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Page 180
comes more important than the presence of irreproducible features. Thus in statuary, where it is sometimes possible to cast a copy which possesses all the features of the original, temporal priority plays a crucial role, even though the original may have lost some of its features (for instance, the nose is broken) while the copy is exactly as the original originally was. In such cases one says that artistic fetishism prevails over aesthetic taste (see section 4.1.4, and the difference between the Parthenon of Athens and the one of Nashville).
3. Forgery and False Identification
From a legal point of view, even doubles can be forged. But forgeries become semiotically, aesthetically, philosophically, and socially relevant when they concern irreproducible objects and pseudo doubles, insofar as both possess at least one external or internal "unique" property. By definition, a unique object can have no double. Consequently, any copy of it is either honestly labeled as a facsimile or erroneously believed to be indiscernibly identical with its model. Thus a more restricted definition of forgery could be expressed so: any object which is producedor, once produced, used or displayedwith the intention of making someone believe that it is indiscernibly identical to another unique object.
In order to speak of forgery, it is necessary but not sufficient that a given object look absolutely similar to another (unique) one. It could happen that a natural force shapes a stone so as to transform it into a perfect copy or an indistinguishable facsimile of Michelangelo's Moses, but nobody, in terms of natural language, would call it a forgery. To recognize it as such, it is indispensable that someone asserts that this stone is the "real" statue.
Thus the necessary conditions for a forgery are that, given the actual or supposed existence of an object Oa, made by A (be it a human author or whatever) under specific historical circumstances t1, there is a different object Ob, made by B (be it a human author or whatever) under circumstances t2, which under a certain description displays strong similarities to Oa (or with a traditional image of Oa). The sufficient condition for a forgery is that it be claimed by some Claimant that Ob is indiscernibly identical with Oa.
The current notion of forgery generally implies a specific intention on the part of the forger, that is, it presupposes dolus malus. However, the question whether B, the author of Ob, was guilty of dolus malus is irrelevant (even when B is a human author). B knows that Ob is not identical with Oa, and he or she may have produced it with no intention

 
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