There seems to be a lot of news about fake Rembrandt paintings these days.  Back in January a Portuguese gallery discovered that two of its Rembrandt paintings were fake.  Yesterday I read that the  National Gallery in Copenhagen discovered that two paintings that they thought to be fake Rembrandt’s turn out to be in fact genuine. Last year I read how what was thought to be a fake Rembrandt had in fact been painted over  by another artist and the real painting lay underneath.

It amazes me how much energy goes into this.  A genuine Rembrandt is valued so highly that a lot of time and effort goes into figuring out which ones are real and which are fake.
It’s odd to see the work reduced to almost  black and white terms, real Rembrandt,. fake Rembrandt.  What’s even weirder in my mind is the way the work morphs from real to fake to real again, I mean for god sakes make up your mind!  How do you view such work?  Is the name attached to it the only thing that makes of breaks it? Maybe to the galleries involved this is nothing more than an exercise in an objects monetary value, who knows. It’s the conceptual shift in the viewer that interest me.  How does the viewer react when a work shifts from real to fake and then back again.  Is the work really seen all that differently?  Is the name really that important?