Remember when you were in primary school, and got sent to the principal’s office for a chat about the way you scratched some stars and your name on the school toilet door... but it wasn’t you who did it? No? Only me? That’s false attribution – when someone attributes a work to someone else.
You have the right to not have a work falsely attributed to you.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but signing that imitation with someone else’s name is called fraud or forgery, and that’s not cool. It’s also illegal. Passing off your work as someone else’s for your financial gain is criminal, and it potentially devalues the body of work of the original author, their reputation, the reputation of institutions of galleries and auction houses (who believe it’s authentic, or are forced to investigate their provenance) and so on, by association.
Now, I do love a good film about forgeries and heists, and, if we want to believe those, forgers are, by and large, lovable rogues, or talented students being passed over in favor of their inflated egotistical teachers. Karl Sim is possibly NZ’s most notorious and prolific forger, having falsely attributed his forged work to that of more than 50 master painters. He and his accomplice, Garry Skinner, had a rollicking time passing off Sim’s work as originals, until Sim was caught and punished in 1985. You can read more on that story here.
Forgery is almost an acceptable crime of rebellion; the middle finger to a hoity-toity world of “fine art.” But what about when an overseas sweat shop is churning out “authentic New Zealand” work? How about when your friend puts down a lot of money for an “original” that turns out to be a fraud? Fake art harms the investors’ financial interests, undermines the integrity of the art market, and introduces wobbles into the world’s historical and cultural record.
It’s not just the visual arts; there are fakes in the music world, whole books being stolen and all manner of fraudulent happenings. But you should know that you, as a creator, have legal protections against that sort of infringement. So do your due diligence to monitor that, and don’t be afraid to speak up, should you see your name on something that you definitely didn’t do.