Did Goodman's Distinction Survive LeWitt

Did Goodman's Distinction Survive LeWitt? Kirk Pillow The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 61, No. 4. (Autumn, 2003), pp. 365-380. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28200323%2961%3A4%3C365%3ADGDSL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.

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KIRK PILLOW

Did Goodman's Distinction Survive LeWitt?

The distinction in question is that between autographic and allographic art forms. Nelson Goodman distinguished these to explain why forgery is possible only in some of the arts, though the distinction transcends the issue of forgery. In the autographic arts, such as painting and sculpture, a history of production links works back to the hand of the artist (or his or her surrogates); a forgery of the work lacks the causal history that identifies an original as authentic. Goodman holds that allographic art forms, to contrast, cannot be forged. They typically involve the use of notational systems that allow the proliferation of multiple legitimate instances of a work, as in the myriad copies of a literary text, all of which count as instances so long as each accurately presents the sequence of words (etc.) that the author wrote. In 1968, Conceptual artist Sol LeWitt devised a form of art dubbed "wall drawings," his plans for which now number around 1,000. Each of these works consists of a set of written instructions (a plan) for executing a drawing on some wall, the drawing of which he typically leaves to some other agent, or various agents on separate occasions, to complete. The multiple components of these works, the multiple stages of their production, the multiple drawings sometimes produced, the notational form of the plans for them, and the deliberate sharing of artistic authority they entail, suggest that LeWitt's wall drawings pose a rich test of the success of Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction. As a way of distinguishing between kinds of art works, can Goodman's distinction adequately account for LeWitt's wall drawings? It will turn out that these works compromise the distinction: in them LeWitt joins allographic and autographic elements for the production of drawings

autographic yet paradoxically insusceptible to forgery.

I. THE DISTINCTION

An autographic artwork is one in which "even the most exact duplicate of it does not thereby count as genuine."' No reproduction of Autumn Rhythm, no matter how indistinguishable from Pollock's, can count as an instance of the work. Only that object identifiable as having the right history of production counts as genuine. While so far this suggests that autographic art works are unique, that is, admit of only one instance, this is not always so. Printmaking poses a case in which each somewhat different print from the plate counts as a legitimate instance of the work, and each instance is legitimated by the production history that leads from the artist's plate to the print. The example of printmaking brings into play differences of staging in various art forms, and these differences cut across the autographic1 allographic distinction in instructive ways. Painting is a one-stage form: the artist paints and the work is done. In contrast to painting, printmaking is a two-stage form: the artist first fashions a plate, and then multiple prints may be made from the plate (by the artist or by authorized others). Printmaking is not only two-stage, but is autographic in both stages. Whether the plate is genuine, and whether the prints are genuine, both depend on their history of production, both plate and prints being susceptible to forgery. Whether one- or twostage, the identity of autographic works depends on their history of production, which Goodman defines as meaning "dependent upon being produced by the artist in question or by means of something produced by that a r t i ~ t . " ~

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61:4 Fall 2003

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Allographic artworks may also involve one or more stages, but at each stage identifying an instance of the work requires no knowledge of a history of production. Literature is a one-stage form, and is allographic. Any syntactically accurate spelling-out of the text counts as an instance of the work, and Goodman maintains that any such instance counts as just as genuine an instance as the original manuscript. Music, to contrast, is a two-stage form, first composed and then performed. In the case of both music and literature, the existence of a notational system in which the work can be inscribed precludes the possibility of forgery. A forger might attempt to pass off her work as Joyce's original manuscript of Ulysses, but even this manuscript-forgery would count, if syntactically accurate, as a genuine instance of the novel. You cannot read the forgery without reading Ulysses. While an established notational system discounts the possibility of forgery in most allographic arts, Goodman has suggested that notation is not essential to all allographic forms.3 What determines an artwork as allographic is the irrelevance of history of production to the identification of instances of it; for such works, "identification of an object or event as an instance of the work depends not at all upon how or when or by whom that object or event was produced" (OMOM 140). The distinction marks a difference between kinds of works, or between criteria for identifying works. Autographic artworks require reference to histories of production for their identification, allographic artworks do not. As such, Goodman takes the terms to be "mutually exclusive": "They exhaust all cases where work-identity is established at all."4 That is, all identifiable artworks must be one or the other (and not both). Curiously, however, Goodman has suggested that "not every art can be classed as autographic or allographic." He writes that the autographic1 allographic distinction: applies only where we have some means of sorting objects or events into works-that is, where there is some criterion for identity of a work. Sometimes, as in some of Cage's music that uses nonnotational sketches in place of scores, we have no such definitive criterion and so in effect no works and no distinction between autographic and allographic, or even between singular and multiple, works. (OMOM 139-140; cf. PP 83)

This indicates that where the distinction cannot be applied there are no works to be classified. This is odd: to the extent that a form of art consists of some grouping of works, it is hard to see how there could be one that could not be classed as either autographic or allographic, since the inapplicability of the distinction implies an absence of works and so an absence of art form. Goodman seems to allow some of John Cage's music to count as an art form, while denying that the music can be identified as a set of works. But the notion of a "workless art form" is obscure at best, aside from whether this makes any sense of Cage's oeuvre. Nor will the notion offer Goodman any purchase on LeWitt's wall drawings: they will be identifiable works despite the trouble they will cause for Goodman's mutually exclusive, supposedly work-exhaustive categories. To finish laying out the distinction, and to begin to raise other issues relevant to the wall drawings, I will elaborate further the workings of the distinction across three multi-stage art forms: music, printmaking, once more, and architecture. A musical composition's first stage is its score, and music is allographic at this stage: any accurate instance of the musical notation counts as an instance of the score, the historical uniqueness of the composer's original score making it no more genuine an instance. In its second stage, music is performed, and is allographic here as well; any performance that follows the prescriptions of the score counts as a genuine performance, regardless of its quality. These multiple genuine instances allow for varieties of performance in terms of tempo and the like, at least within the constraints of what the score leaves open to interpretation. While music is two-stage and allographic in both stages, printmaking, as we saw, is two-stage and autographic in both stages. Printmaking shares with music the potential for variation at the second stage: each print off the plate will have features unique to it and likely relevant to aesthetic response to it. But in the case of printmaking, the multiple instances at the second stage are all autographic: identifying them as genuine instances requires knowing their history as prints from the right plate. Keep in mind that the multiple prints from the plate conventionally count as instances of the same work. Both music and printmaking are two-stage forms that are either allographic at both their

Pillow Did Goodman 's Distinction Suwive Le Witt? stages or autographic at both. Goodman nowhere entertains the possibility of an art form crossing over the distinction at different stages of its production, but LeWitt's wall drawings will turn out to do just this. Consider for the moment architecture; it involves at least two stages, first a design or blueprint, followed by a building in cases where the execution is completed. In the first stage, architecture is plainly allographic (as Goodman maintains; LA 21 8-2 19): any accurate representation of the plan counts as an instance of the plan (you cannot study any copy of the plan without studying the plan). A forger might pass off a blueprint of her own devising as Wright's original elevation for the Guggenheim, but the respective historical provenances of the original and the forgery are again irrelevant to identifying them as instances of the plan. You cannot study her forgery without studying the plan. Now, what of architecture in its second stage? Goodman holds that it remains allographic: "Any building that conforms to the plans and specifications," he writes, "is as original an instance of the work as any other" (LA 120). We can call to mind examples in which this makes sense: an architectural plan for a generic suburban apartment complex admits of multiple constructions on multiple sites, and each would count as a genuine instantiation of the plan. A real estate developer might use an architect's plan to build ten such complexes at once across the country, and each one is as "genuine" an execution of the plan as the others. But we can also readily call to mind examples that resist Goodman's claim. If Donald Trump obtained the plans for the Chrysler Building, and rebuilt it in Newark, I maintain that this would not count as a second genuine instance of the Chrysler Building, but would be a mere replica, lacking the history of production required to identify it as the genuine article. The replica of the Eiffel Tower at the "Paris" casino in Las Vegas is not a genuine second instantiation of Eiffel's plans, and would not be one even if it were precisely as tall as the true Tower in Paris (the Vegas one is two-thirds the height). These cases suggest that many completed works of architecture have a historic specificity, and a site specificity, that makes production history essential to their identification: they are autographic when built. I suspect that the many autographic architectural works

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comprise precisely those buildings we regard as works of art, unlike the apartment complex mentioned above. Hence, architecture may be allographic in its plan stage but autographic in its second, built stage.5 This is so even if in some cases architecture may be multiple when built (as printmaking is in its second stage). Wright built several of his Usonian houses from the same plan in the 1930s, but even so, the works are autographic (so it is not the multiplicity of generic apartment complexes that makes them allographic). A "Usonian house" built today, lacking the right history of production, would be a mere nostalgic replica. A genuine Usonian home has an historical specificity (despite the "site multiplicity" of the various instances) that a newly built "Usonian" would never have. Works of architecture need not be singular to be autographic. Goodman alludes to this matter when he remarks, "Many a composition is played only once" (LA 120), the architectural parallel being the Chrysler Building. Goodman thinks being played or built only once has no bearing on the supposed allographic status of musical and architectural forms, but his comment misses the point that singularity is not even required for architecture to be autographic. He goes on to draw an abrupt conclusion: "In that architecture has a reasonably appropriate notational system and that some of its works are unmistakenly allographic, the art is allographic." This rather weak logic hastens him to acknowledge that "insofar as its notational language has not yet acquired full authority to divorce identity of work in all cases from particular production, architecture is a mixed and transitional case" (LA 121). I suggest that architecture is an irreducibly mixed case, autographic in its historic and site specificity no matter how refined a notational language for it might become in its allographic, plan stage. I will ultimately hold that this shifting from allographic to autographic, across the stages of an artwork's production, raises substantial problems for Goodman's distinction when faced with the case of LeWitt's wall drawings. The distinction has, of course, been challenged in a variety of ways over the years. Commentators argue with Goodman's classifications, proposing, for example, that painting is not necessarily autographic.6 Goodman's ready answer is, "I never said it was. What constitutes identity of a

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism work derives from practice, and practice may ~ h a n g e . "Goodman ~ is far more committed to the distinction than he is to most classifications under it, and while he advanced reasons in Languages of Art for thinking that painting could not be allographic (LA 194-198), he later allowed that it might become allographic were a tradition and set of conventions established that accepted reproductions as no less original than initial paintings (PP 136). It would be at odds with Goodman's nominalism were he to ascribe an inalterably autographic or allographic essence to any art form. And so the many and varied arguments that musical performance is not really a l l ~ g r a ~ h ior c ,that ~ literature is not necessarily a l l ~ g r a ~ h ihave c , ~ limited critical force. Goodman's conviction that scored music is allographic reflects the notational conventions and performance traditions of the culture. I think he could have held that, were critics and musicians successful in revising convention toward seeing every performance of a score as a historically distinct work of art (rather than as instances of one scored work), then scored music could become autographic at the performance stage. Were written literature revived as an oral tradition, in the aftermath of a nuclear winter, perhaps it too might become autographic. In any case, the nearest such criticisms come to truly harming Goodman's distinction is if they liquidate the class of allographic art forms by arguing that production history is implicated in the identity of all works of art. lo This approach, if successful, would render Goodman's distinction useless, but it also satisfactorily classifies every art form under the "distinction," even if only on one side of it. For my purposes, the most pointed challenge to Goodman's distinction may be found in Jerrold Levinson's "Autographic and Allographic Art ~evisited."" Levinson argues against notational identity (or compliance with a notation) as a definitive criterion for allographic art forms. He proposes that works of music and literature are "indicated structures" identified in part by their composition by a specific person (or persons) at a specific time. He ultimately proposes revised definitions of "allographic" and "autographic." "Allographic(3)" arts are those in which "genuineness of instances is partly determined by notational identity or compliance," while "autographic(3)" art forms are those in which "the identity of genuine instances of the

work is not a t all determined" by notational identity or compliance ("AAAR 376). (The numbering is an artifact of the sequence of Levinson's arguments; henceforth I will refer to "autographic(L)" and "allographic(L)" to distinguish Levinson's definitions from Goodman's.) These adjustments bring on several significant disagreements with Goodman. All works of art become autographic in Goodman's sense, because identifying genuine instances always requires knowledge of how the candidate instance came to be (whether, for example, a copy of a text is causally linked to an author's composing at time t). Furthermore, allographic(L) works become amenable to forgery, rendering all art forms susceptible: "If I knowingly present a copy of White's poem as if it were a copy of Black's (identically worded) poem, forgery has occurred ("AAAR" 377). I will take issue with this later, and while my argument in this paper is with Goodman, rather than Levinson, it will prove instructive to follow how my position differs from Levinson's. In the end, Levinson's revised definitions will not manage the oddity of LeWitt's wall drawings any better than Goodman's definitions will. So much criticism has been heaped on Goodman's distinction that it may be hard to imagine there is anything interesting left to be said. Yet none of his critics have identified a form of artistic practice that transcends the very terms of Goodman's classification, the mutual exclusivity of its vision of work identity. None of them identifies a kind of art that blends allographic and autographic elements, a process of malung art productive of autographic results that are oddly-paradoxically-impervious to forgery. Yet when Sol LeWitt executed the first of his wall drawings in New York's Paula Cooper Gallery in 1968, the very year that Languages of Art appeared, he invented just such an artistic form.

11. LEWITT'S WALL DRAWINGS

LeWitt has produced hundreds of these works, in a variety of formats and contexts, and using a great range of materials. This varied output warns against hasty generalizations, but many of these works have the sort of structure I will regard as indicative of the genre, and as a group

Pillow Did Goodman's Distinction Survive Le Witt? raise the issues of relevance to Goodman's distinction. These works typically consist of two components, and I will argue that LeWitt's wall drawings are a two-stage art form. LeWitt first devises a set of instructions that comprise the ideational core of the work (he calls this the "plan"). Wall Drawing #366 (1982), for example, begins from these instructions: "Black arcs using the height of the wall as a radius, and black arcs using the midpoints of the wall as a radius. The arcs are filled in solid and drawn in India ink."12 Or again, for a drawing done in 1970 (#31): "500 vertical black lines, 500 horizontal yellow lines, 500 diagonal right red lines, 500 diagonal left blue lines within a 72' square."13 Second, the drawing is executed on a wall by, variously, another artist, or a trained assistant, or in some cases amateurs or even the owner, all of whom LeWitt calls his "draft~men."'~ On one occasion in 1978, LeWitt cooperated with the New York City Board of Education and the Museum of Modern Art on a project in which high school students executed LeWitts on the walls of their

school^.'^ The plan typically is inscribed on a signed and dated certificate that accompanies its execution, although these certificates have taken various forms over the years.16The instructions sometimes serve as the title of a work when the drawings are executed and exhibited formally, though in other instances a brief descriptive title serves instead. LeWitt makes clear in the minimanifesto "Doing Wall Drawings" that "the explicit plan should accompany the finished wall drawing. They are of equal importance."17 Plan and executed drawing are both integral components of the work, and the work cannot be understood (much less appreciated) without relating both components. Un-executed instructions do not by themselves constitute a work of art (LeWitt: "Ideas of wall drawings alone are contradictions of the idea of wall drawings"18), nor do the wall drawings function as the works that they are unless recognized as the results of following the plan. In one case (Wall Drawing #232 [1974]), extremely elaborate and deliberately mystifying instructions result in the draftsman producing a square on the wall; the result is not just any square, but the outcome of a complex interpretive process.19 LeWitt also states that the artist and draftsman collaborate in malung the art: "The artist

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must allow various interpretations of his plan. The draftsman perceives the artist's plan, then reorders it to his own experience and understandingw2' This means that each execution of the drawing is different. Executions of some instructions will be radically different, in the many cases where an element of randomness has been built into the instruction^.^^ But even with tightly circumscribed instructions, the draftsman makes interpretive and stylistic choices that make a difference in the result. "Different draftsmen produce lines darker or lighter and closer or farther apart," LeWitt writes in another mini-manifesto, "Wall Drawings," "As long as they are consistent there is no preference."22 LeWitt makes no preference between them, meaning that he does not prescribe one manner of drawing, but such differences still make for different works, according to LeWitt. Multiple instances of many of LeWitt's plans have been executed, and he considers each of them to be a distinct work of art. "Even if the same draftsman followed the same plan twice," he writes, "there would be two different works of art."23 Support for this claim comes from the sitespecific nature of the drawings, a feature they share with works of architecture as discussed above. Multiple executions of a plan on different sites make for multiple distinct works, because, as LeWitt writes, "The physical properties of the wall: height, length, color, material, architectural conditions and intrusions, are a necessary part of the wall drawings."24 If each execution of his instructions produces a distinct work, then the wall drawings are importantly different from prints: multiple prints from a plate, as well as the multiple performances of an allographic score, are conventionally considered multiple instances of a single work, whereas each execution of one of LeWitt's plans would be a uniquely individuated This point will be crucial to understanding the trouble that the wall drawings make for Goodman's distinction. LeWitt and others have likened these works to music, sensing an analogy between score and instructions, performance and drawn execution.26 Of the wall drawings, LeWitt has said: "I think of them like a musical score that could be redone by any or some people. I like the idea that the same work [n.b.] can exist in two or more places at the same time."27 Critic Marcus Harvey makes these two comments on the wall

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism drawings: "There is no need for reproductions; the real thing may be obtained from a label just as we obtain music from a score"; and "the same label could provide drawings for 10,000 different walls, and they would be 10,000 different drawings."28 Neither man notices the disanalogy between scored music as conventionally understood and the individuation of wall drawings they propose. (LeWitt has evidently said inconsistent things, since multiple executions are not "the same w o r k existing in two or more places if they are different works of art, as he maintains in "Wall Drawings.") Ten thousand performances of a musical score are not usually considered to be 10,000 different works of music, but, instead, 10,000 performances of one work of music. The analogy between music and the wall drawings confuses the drawings' ontology. We will see further reasons below for questioning this analogy. Multiple executions of many of LeWitt's plans exist, but need they all be made with his permission? There has been some uncertainty about this. In conversation with Andrea MillerKeller in 1983, LeWitt stated that "Anyone who would follow the plan is eligible to try": AMK: How would you feel if someone executed a wall drawing of yours without your permission but with care to follow the instructions and in an appropriate site? SL: OK. AMK: Would you consider this an "authentic" LeWitt wall drawing? SL: Yes. It would be authentic. AMK: Would you consider such an unauthorized use of wall drawing instructions unethical? SL: No. It would be a compliment.29

LeWitt insisted only that anyone executing one of his drawings be faithful to the instructions. A draftsman who violated the plan would produce "art that is a parody of the original concept."30 More recently, however, LeWitt seems to have become less generous toward potential appropriators of his plans. In 1999 he indicated that his earlier laissez-faire attitude had been too idealistic; evidently, he now insists on explicit authorization and oversight of the drawings.31 The change of heart seems to have been motivated in part by a concern that the drawings be executed well, not just by anyone with a pencil.

Even so, LeWitt has never publicly retracted the The ~ issue of permission he granted in 1 9 8 3 . ~ whether LeWitt's permission is required for production of a genuine LeWitt will take on some importance in the arguments below. With this general sense of the drawings in place, we can begin to consider their relationship to Goodman. Recall that for Goodman the autographic/allographic distinction applies only where there are criteria for identifying works. The criteria for identifying autographic works will necessarily involve reference to histories of production, while such causal stories should play no role in the criteria for identifying allographic works. One could, then, suspect that LeWitt's wall drawings can raise problems for Goodman's distinction only if no criterion for identifying these works can be specified. Perhaps the drawings somehow, like some of Cage's music according to Goodman, lack the identity of works, and so are neither autographic nor allographic. If this were true, the wall drawings, failing to be works, would pose no threat to Goodman's classification of works. And if the criterion of their identity can be specified, then the autographic/allographic distinction will, it would seem, apply to them and handily classify them (as either autographic or allographic). How, then, should we identify genuine LeWitts? Let us consider this question, keeping in mind the dual components of the drawings.

111. IDENTIFYING A LEWITT

A LeWitt wall drawing is a two-stage form, consisting of both instructions and their execution on some wall. I will consider each component separately for the moment, but will insist in the end that they must be understood together. Take the first stage, the plan or instructions. They are composed in the notational system called English and are as iterable as any literary text. Any statement of the instructions for Wall Drawing #366 is an instance of the instructions, including the one I provided earlier. Like any other textual artifact, it would appear that notational identity, or "sameness of spelling" as Goodman calls it, is an appropriate criterion for identifying instances of LeWitt's instructions. If we accept this criterion of identification, it appears that at the plan stage LeWitt's wall drawings are

Pillow Did Goodman's Distinction Survive LeWitt? allographic in nature. LeWitt's plans are akin to the architectural plans mentioned earlier, even if inscribed in a different notational system. You cannot study any copy of a LeWitt plan without studying the plan itself. Now, other critics of Goodman would not give this away to him so quickly; I do so because my quarry lies elsewhere. If we recall Levinson's revised definitions, instances of LeWitt's instructions would be allographic(L), only partly identified by notational identity. Notational identity would be necessary but not sufficient for a textual string to count as an instance of LeWitt's plans. In addition, the string would need to stand, through however elaborate a sequence, in a causal or intentional relation to LeWitt's original composing of the instructions. A textual string notationally identical to LeWitt's, but found in Ben Franklin's diary or miraculously etched on sand by hermit crabs, would not count as a genuine instance of the instructions, contra Goodman. But let us allow, for the sake of pursuing a different argument, that notational identity is a sufficient criterion for identifying an instance of LeWitt's instructions. The instructions are, then, plainly allographic. What, then, is the criterion for identifying a LeWitt wall drawing? Obviously, the criterion will not be that LeWitt drew it. I propose considering three possible candidates for the criterion in question; these three together provide a systematic view of how the choice of criterion affects the application of Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction. The first candidate is: Any wall drawing that complies with a set of LeWitt's instructions is a LeWitt wall drawing.

By "complies with" I mean that the drawing does not violate any of the prescriptions of LeWitt's plan. But surely this criterion is too broad: it would allow that a precocious child, drawing on the kitchen wall with her crayons, could unbeknownst to herself (or anyone else) execute a LeWitt if her "work" happens to comply with a set of LeWitt's plans.33There is little question that LeWitt wall drawings involve an execution of instructions absent in this child's play. What is interesting about this candidate criterion is that, were it correct, LeWitt wall drawings would be allographic in nature. Because this criterion is indifferent to the

empirical, historical question whether the draftsperson was executing a set of LeWitt's plans, how the drawing came about would be irrelevant to the identity of the child's drawing as a LeWitt. Were this the criterion for identifying LeWitt wall drawings, there would be as many LeWitts as there are drawings that just so happen to comply with a set of his instructions. And were this the correct criterion, the straightforward allographic classification of LeWitt's wall drawings would pose no challenge to Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction. The second candidate is: Any wall drawing executed from and in compliance with a set of LeWitt's instructions is a LeWitt wall drawing.

Contrast this with the third candidate: Any wall drawing executed from and in compliance with a set of LeWitt's instructions, and so executed with LeWitt's authorization, is a LeWitt wall drawing.

As we have seen, LeWitt has seemed to endorse each of these criteria at different points in his career. For my purposes, which criterion LeWitt favors matters less than their respective implications. For the third candidate, like the first, renders the wall drawings harmless to Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction. For a wall drawing to count as a LeWitt, on the third criterion, it must issue from a distinctive production history that involves an intentional execution of LeWitt's instructions with, in one form or another, LeWitt's authorization. These features of the drawing's history are essential to its identity as a LeWitt, and, hence, if this were the correct criterion, the wall drawings would be plainly autographic in nature. Because of the role LeWitt's authority would play in identifying genuine LeWitt wall drawings, favoring this criterion would have the benefit (for LeWitt and his patrons) of rendering the wall drawings more readily bought and sold. The wall drawings as originally conceived, in keeping with the second criterion, posed a challenge to the notion of ownership and to the economics of the art market, a challenge the third criterion dissolves. If LeWitt now prefers this criterion, his conservatism is matched by a diminution of the art-theoretical radicalness of the drawings'

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism peculiar ontology. If it is true that LeWitt has leaned toward this third criterion in recent years, he has done so at the expense of the wall drawing's philosophical interest with regard to the questions of artwork identity at issue here. I will focus, then, on the second criterion posed above: any wall drawing executed from and in compliance with a set of Le Witt's instructions is a LeWitt wall drawing. This seems to capture the spirit of LeWitt's original project with the wall drawings, and if LeWitt himself no longer fully endorses it, we may, for the purposes of philosophical speculation, imagine another artist, named Sol1 LeWitte, who has established all of the same wall drawing instructions LeWitt has, but with this second criterion of identification consistently in mind. On this criterion, anyone who follows a set of LeWitte's instructions for executing a drawing on some wall has produced a LeWitte wall drawing, regardless of LeWitte's awareness or permission. How does Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction apply if we take this criterion to be correct? The answer seems straightforward enough: for a wall drawing to count as a LeWitte, it must have been executed from a set of his plans, and this historical fact is essential to its identity as a LeWitte, even though LeWitte's explicit permission is not required. On this criterion, a drawing must come to be in a certain way to be a LeWitte (thereby denying the precocious child's drawing LeWitte status). Reference to a history of production is required for the identification of genuine LeWittes, and so on this criterion the wall drawings are autographic in nature. Hence, while the wall drawings are allographic in their lan stage, they are autographic when e~ecuted!~And so the charming notion that the wall drawings are like music misleads: the terms of their identification parallel instead works of a r ~ h i t e c t u r e . ~ ~ Unlike music or theater (as conventionally understood), where multiple performances are all instances of the same work, and are so with indifference to their history of production, the instructions for drawing a LeWitte provide the starting point for sequences of events that issue in multiple different works of art, with each unique sequential history relevant to identifying its outcome as genuine. In the many cases when a plan is executed more than once, the instructions

with which each draftsman begins are allographic in nature, but the process branches off autographically from there. The initial content of the drawing is a set of allographically replicable instructions that prescribe a form for the work, but the execution of that form gives rise to works the final content of which depends on the historically specific rendering choices of their draftsmen. The relevance of this history to identifying a genuine LeWitte means that each execution is not an instance of the same work, but an altogether different work, though they begin from the same allographic source. Goodman observes that in allographic art forms notational systems serve to distinguish the constitutive from the contingent properties of works: notations "provide the means.. . for fixing the required features and the limits of permissible variation in e a c h (LA 116). This is precisely how the allographic plans function within LeWitte's autographic wall drawings. In autographic painting, Goodman argues, "none of the pictorial properties.. . is distinguished as constitutive; no such feature can be dismissed as contingent, and no deviation as insignificant" (ibid.). In the autographic wall drawings, however, some features are distinguished as constitutive, namely, those prescribed by the allographic plan. Yet despite this, the interpretive and stylistic choices of the draftsman result in a drawing every feature of which is uniquely costitutive of it, in which no mark on the wall can be dismissed as contingent, as is the case with autographic painting.36 In sum, a LeWitte wall drawing is both an allographic text and an incitement to the proliferation of autographically distinct works. The wall drawings begin allographically and end autographically, as Goodman understands these terms. We may note that Levinson's revised definitions would remove (or conceal) this duality. LeWitte's instructions would be allographic(L), as we saw above, but so would the executed drawings. That is, their identity is partly a matter of notational compliance; a wall drawing is not a LeWitte if it does not comply with a set of LeWitte's notational plans (recall that for Levinson the autographic(L) arts are those in which notational identity or compliance plays no role at all). So, for Levinson, LeWitte wall drawings would be allographic(L) at both stages, as presumably would architecture. This might suggest that Levinson's alternative scheme

Pillow Did Goodman 's Distinction Survive Le Witt? resolves the oddity of the wall drawings, but it will become evident below that it does not.

IV. FORGING A LEWIlT

Having established that LeWitt's wall drawings are partially allographic and partially autographic, at different stages b f their production, we may wonder how this affects their susceptibility to forgery (nothing will be harmed by my now reverting from "LeWitte" to "LeWitt"). Goodman takes care not to define the autographic1 allographic distinction in terms of the possibility or impossibility of forgery. The distinction "is not so defined and could obtain in a world of inventive angels free of imitative instincts or ill intent" (OMOM 139). This means that the empirical question whether forgeries are attempted in a given art form depends not at all upon the validity of this distinction. The autographic1 allographic distinction could classify all art forms successfully in the complete absence of forgery as a human practice. Yet while an art form's being autographic says nothing about whether there will be forgeries attempted in that art form, "autographic" is defined such that forgery must be possible in any art form so classified. Autographic art forms are those in which reference to a history of production is requisite for the identification of (instances of) works. Forgery is a business of attempting to falsify such histories, and so every autographic art form is and must be susceptible to it. With this point in mind, the autographic nature of the executed wall drawings implies that they can be forged. The question now is whether their forgery is, in fact, possible. First, we should be clear about what "forgery" means and what sort of forgery matters. Goodman defines a forgery of a work of art as "an object falsely purporting to have the history of production requisite for the (or an) original of the work" (LA 122). The definition is flawed, first because objects do not falsely purport; forgers falsely purport that an object has the requisite history, and so on. Further, Goodman's definition is too broad, because a work innocently misattributed to artist X is "falsely purported" to be by X, but is not a forgery.37 More important, forgers deceive by first making a deceptive object, and Goodman's definition

leaves out (perhaps strategically) this act of m a l ~ n g .Suppose ~~ my neighbor counterfeits currency and gives me a bag to spend. When I knowingly spend her forged notes, I commit fraud but not forgery. Fraud does not require that an agent first make something, but forgery, on any conventional definition, does.39This point will gain importance later, because some commentators (including Levinson, as we will see) have been misled by Goodman's problematic definition into seeing forgery where only fraud has occurred. Forging a work of art, in sum, means making something that one passes off as the (or an) original of a work. Now, falung a work by an artist can take two forms, only one of which matters for Goodman's concerns. Goodman wants to explain why, in the allographic arts, "there is no such thing as a forgery of a known work (LA 112). Forgery of unknown works of music or literature is clearly possible; a sly musicologist can fake a manuscript score for some "lost" work of Chopin's. One could make up a new set of drawing plans, forge LeWitt's signature on a certificate of them, execute them, and claim to have discovered a missing LeWitt. This sort of "inventive" forgery is to be contrasted with what I will call "reproductive" forgery: reproductive forgeries attempt to fake the appearance of a known work, for example, to make us think that doctored object X really is Pollock's Autumn ~ h ~ t h m Goodman .~' is concerned only with reproductive forgery, and his position is that reproductive forgeries of works are possible only in the autographic arts. By contrast, in the allographic arts one can forge an instance of a work but not the work itself (cf. LA 113, n. 9). For example, one can forge a first edition of Pride and Prejudice, but the forgery, if notationally identical to Pride and Prejudice, will still count as an instance of the novel. One, thus, will have forged a first edition while failing to forge the novel itself. Note that this difference matters primarily in the allographic arts; forging a particular printing from Hogarth's plate would amount to forging both the work and an instance of it. Yet oddly enough, this difference will matter for LeWitt's autographic wall drawings. As before, we must consider both components of LeWitt's works. We determined that the plan for each work is allographic, and, hence, it should not be possible to forge it. As a

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism document of a transaction, a certificate of instructions can be reproductively forged, and you can pretend to own a LeWitt by displaying a forged certificate (at least until you are asked where the drawing is). You can forge the certificate, but you cannot forge the instructions, because any notationally correct statement of the instructions is an instance of them. To the extent that the plans provide a notationally expressible form for the drawings, not only can they be multiply instantiated, but the notational plans provide the sort of "theoretically decisive test for determining that an object has all the constitutive properties of the work in question without determining how or by whom the object was produced," as Goodman puts it (LA 122). While you can produce a reproductive forgery of an instance of LeWitt's plans, you cannot forge the plan itself. As in the architectural case earlier, you cannot study a forged instance of LeWitt's plan without thereby studying LeWitt's plan. While, on Goodman's view, the plan would be allographic and insusceptible to forgery, Levinson's revised conception of the allographic produces a contrary result. Instances of allographic(L) art forms are partly, but not only, identified by notational identity or compliance. Because "facts of origin have a bearing on authenticity in those arts as well as in all others," the allographic(L) arts are susceptible to forgery, according to Levinson ("AAAR" 376-377). That is, the textual string found in Ben Franklin's diary and notationally identical to one of LeWitt's plans could be passed off as an instance of LeWitt's instructions. Actually, passing off the diary entry as one of LeWitt's plans amounts to fraud, but this does not constitute forgery, as Levinson imagines. Levinson mistakenly construes such fraud as forgery because he explicitly relies on Goodman's flawed definition of forgery to make his argument (cf. " A A A R 377). If we acknowledge what Goodman's definition obscures, that forgery requires making a replica, as I argued above, then Levinson's own example of Black and White's textually identical poems, as well as his other examples of "forgery" in the allographic(L) arts, turn out to be cases of mere fraud. Turning to the executed drawings, first note how the answer to the forgery question varies depending upon which criterion we adopt for identifying LeWitts. Were the first criterion

preferable-any drawing that complies with Le Witt 's instructions is a Le Witt-the allographic nature of the wall drawings would render them insusceptible to reproductive forgery. Any attempt to forge the work would simply result in another genuine instance (so long as it complies with LeWitt's plan),41 because how the drawing comes to be is irrelevant to its identity. Were the third criterion correct-only those executions explicitly permitted by LeWitt count as genuine LeWitts-the wall drawings would be readily susceptible to reproductive forgery. Any drawing executed from LeWitt's plans but without his authorization could be passed off as the genuine article. Now consider the somewhat different results were we to adopt Levinson's revised definitions. Levinson thinks both allographic(L) and autographic(L) art forms are susceptible to forgery, although I have argued that his putative examples of forgery in the allographic(L) arts are really just instances of fraud. On the first criterion for identifying LeWitt wall drawings, Levinson would classify them as allographic(L), and a drawing compliant with a LeWitt plan, but not executed from it, such as the child's kitchen drawing, could be fraudulently passed off as a LeWitt. Relying on Goodman's flawed definition, Levinson would call this, I think mistakenly, a case of forgery. Now on the third criterion, as we saw, Levinson would classify the wall drawings as allographic(L), and interestingly enough, they would indeed be subject to reproductive forgery. The forger who makes a drawing from and compliant with a LeWitt plan, but without LeWitt's permission, and who passes it off as an authorizd LeWitt, achieves a reproductive forgery (or would so if we accepted both Levinson's definition of "allographic" and the third criterion for identifying LeWitts). This shows that reproductive forgery, and not merely fraud, is sometimes possible in the allographic(L) arts. Levinson's own examples tend only to demonstrate the unremarkable possibility of fraud, because the deceptions he describes do not include the act of fabrication evident in the forgery just pulled off by this con artist. I argued adoption of the second criterionany wall drawing executed from and in compliance with a set of LeWitt instructions is a LeWitt wall drawing-and will now consider at greater length whether LeWitts so identified are

Pillow Did Goodman 's Distinction Survive Le Witt ? susceptible to forgery.42 This criterion is not only truer to LeWitt's original conception of the drawings, but is also the only criterion of the three proposed that fulfills the revolutionary potential of the genre LeWitt devised. A LeWitt is a wall drawing executed from and compliant with a LeWitt plan; how, then, would a forger proceed with forging such a work? Let us begin by imagining our forger consulting a set of LeWitt's instructions as she begins her work. She follows these instructions in forging her drawing on an appropriate wall, and discovers to her dismay that she has executed a genuine LeWitt! Her work is not a copy of a LeWitt, but a LeWitt as original as any other, possessing the requisite history of having been executed from a set of his instructions. So far our forger seems trapped in the position of the attempted forger of the allographic Pride and Prejudice, who cannot get it right without producing the genuine article. There is a second parallel to nonforgeable allographic literature here. Instances of works in allographic art forms can be forged, yet the works themselves cannot be. Our forger could attempt a forgery of draftsman X's execution of a LeWitt, by mimicking that draftsman's drawing style (his preference for thick lines, say), even though the result would be just another LeWitt (if executed from LeWitt's instructions). But note that the parallel with literature breaks down when we recall LeWitt's position that each execution of one of his plans constitutes a distinct work of art. Any attempt at forgery would not only not be a copy of a LeWitt, it-would not even be an instance (much less a forged istance) of some other wall drawing. It would instead be a unique work in its own right. So long as our forger works from LeWitt's instructions, the outcome will be autographic (unlike copies of literary texts) and yet never manage to be a forgery. Clearly, our forger needs a way to forge a LeWitt without executing a set of LeWitt's instructions. This seems feasible enough; suppose that she photographs an executed wall drawing, and produces a slide from this that she projects, at 1:l scale, on some other wall of identical dimensions. She then traces all of the markings onto the wall, following the guidance of the slide projection. What results is a replica of a LeWitt that she can pass off as having been executed from LeWitt's instructions, when in

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fact she never noted his instructions at all. She thereby falsifies a genuine LeWitt production history for her drawing, and appears to achieve a reproductive forgery. But does she really? We have seen that LeWitt allows choices of interpretation and variations in drawing style when his draftsmen are at work, such that each execution of a set of his instructions results in a (minutely or grandly) visually different work. The slide-projection tracing method will fail quickly for many of LeWitt's wall drawings, most clearly those that feature some element of randomness in the instructions (it will turn out to fail in all cases). Instructions that stipulate "lines not straight, not touching"43 could not possibly be executed the same way twice, and any mere tracing of a previous execution would lack the uniqueness in appearance that a work must have to be a genuine LeWitt. It would lack the uniqueness in appearance that a forgery must have to look like a genuine LeWitt. Hence, our forger finds herself in a peculiar situation not met with by most of her colleagues in crime. While the typical requirements of forgery include producing an object visually indistinguishable from the target object, a forgery of a LeWitt wall drawing (as opposed to a forgery of a particular executed instance of a LeWitt plan) must be visibly different from other executions! (Perhaps here we can begin to see the true oddity of LeWitt's accomplishment in devising this genre.) So our forger needs a way to forge a LeWitt without executing his instructions and without producing a drawing visually identical to the execution she traces from. And this too seems feasible enough; she simply, for example, thickens or shortens the lines as she traces them, to affect a different "style" and appearance than that of the draftsman whose work she projects on the wall. And perhaps the rather inexact science of tracing from a projection would be sufficient in its own right to render her "execution" distinct. The result appears to have been executed from LeWitt's intructions, enjoys the uniqueness of every genuine LeWitt, and can be passed off as an outcome of faithfully following LeWitt's instructions. Our forger appears to have reproductively forged a LeWitt, as should be expected to be possible from its autographic identity. But has she really? For how does she know that the "stylistic variations" she has introduced

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in her tracing comply with LeWitt's instructions? Suppose she traces from a wall-drawing instance that consists of one-foot-long straight lines; she opts to shorten the lines to ten inches. Unbeknownst to her she has attempted to forge Wall Drawing #81 (1971), the instructions for which read: "Straight lines, one foot long, drawn vertically, not touching, distributed evenly over the wall, making no design or figure. 9'x 1 7 ' . " ~She ~ has violated LeWitt's plan by changing the length of the lines, though in the case of other of his plans this choice might have been left to her. Or perhaps she undertakes forgery of a drawing that consists of curvy lines on a brick wall. She projects her slide onto sheet rock and opts for straight lines; alas, she has gone awry with what turns out to be Wall Drawing #78 (1971): "Lines, not straight, drawn on a brick Most of LeWitt's instructions do not stipulate the sort of wall to be drawn on, but some do. In general, the instructions may require something of the draftsperson, or only negatively exclude a course of action ("not straight"). The instructions may or may not stipulate the type of wall, the dimensions of the wall, the type, length, orientation, number, color, or thickness of lines, specific figures in specific arrangements, and so on. Needing above all to avoid reading LeWitt's instructions, our forger cannot know which if any of these she can vary to produce a unique "LeWitt" without departing from the letter of LeWitt's requirements. Our forger appears condemned to freedom: she must make-her own decisions about what differences to introduce into her "execution," yet she cannot count on any choice resulting in a forgery of the work. And if she cannot know whether what she draws will be a forgery of a LeWitt, in what sense can she be said to be forging? Her only means of knowing is the plan itself. and if she refers to it she will surelv then be executing it, thereby returning herself to her original dilemma. Her slide projection becomes a fifth wheel, and her drawing becomes a genuine LeWitt. Hence, the only way of attempting a LeWitt forgery requires a reference to his instructions that undermines the very attempt, and renders the "forgery" genuine. For this reason, Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, however autographic when executed, are not susceptible to reproductive forgery.

Furthermore, I earlier proposed considering LeWitt's works in terms of their two separate components, and if we stop doing so their imperviousness to forgery will become fully evident. A LeWitt wall drawing is not merely a drawing on a wall: it is a drawn execution of drawing instructions. To forge a LeWitt you must forge not a drawing on a wall, but an execution of drawing instructions. If when forging this execution you execute a plan not devised by LeWitt, the result is not a reproductive forgery, but an inventive one. If when forging this execution you execute (follow and comply with) LeWitt's plan, the result is a genuine LeWitt. If you attempt to forge a LeWitt without the act at all involving an execution of instructions, as was the case with all but the first of our forger's efforts thus far, the result cannot be a forgery of a LeWitt, because a LeWitt is an execution of instructions. Suppose our forger discovers that her child has drawn on the kitchen wall in a way that just happens to comply with one of LeWitt's plans. Can she not now pass this off as a LeWitt? Drawing on previous arguments, we know that she can commit the fraud of claiming this is a LeWitt, but doing so does not constitute forgery. Forgery requires the making of a deceptive object, something our forger does not undertake here. But more remarkably, LeWitt wall drawings have the process of their making built into their ontology in such a way that an attempted forgery of them must be made rather than found. The drawing on the wall is only the outcome of a more complex process; the entire process constitutes a LeWitt, and the forger who aspires to fake a LeWitt must attempt to forge this process. Undertaking that process means executing a plan, which can result in either an inventive forgery (if the plan is not LeWitt's) or a genuine LeWitt, but not a reproductive forgery of a known work. The peculiar ontology of LeWitt's wall drawings-they are allographic plans that undergo a process of transformation into autographic works-renders them insusceptible to reproductive forgery. Our tenacious forger, unwilling to accept this conclusion, devises a final strategy for forging a LeWitt. She shuts down her projector and simply dreams up a set of "LeWittish" instructions on her own. She executes them on a suitable wall, and then peruses the various catalogues that summarize LeWitt's wall drawing output

Pillow Did Goodman's Distinction Survive LeWit over the years, praying to find an exact duplicate of the instructions that she made up. If she gets lucky, and happens to have repeated a set of LeWitt's instructions, could she not now pass off her drawing as an execution of LeWitt's plan, when it is truly an execution of her own, identical plan?46 Her method in this case avoids the problems she encountered earlier. (1) She can draw freely, because she follows her own directions. (2) Her actions involve the sort of making required for forgery. (3) She undertakes a process that results in a drawn execution of drawing instructions. But has she produced a reproductive forgery? Recall that forging a LeWitt requires producing a unique execution of his plans. Our forger needs to hope not only that her invented instructions are notationally identical to a plan of LeWitt's, but also that her execution is graphically distinct from every other prior execution of these instructions. She may well get lucky here, too, but recall as well that each execution of LeWitt's instructions produces a distinct work of art. What, then, has she forged? She has "blindly" produced a unique execution of LeWitt's instructions, executed differently than they have yet been executed by anyone else. So then what known work is she forging? Because forging a LeWitt requires production of a unique drawing, this drawing cannot be a replica of any prior execution. The forger can pass off her work as an inventive forgery of LeWitt: what she made looks like a new LeWitt but is not, because it was executed from her own instructions, not LeWitt's. But her work does not stand in a reproductive relation to any prior execution of LeWitt's plans, for each of those executions is as distinct a work as her own inventive forgery (except that they are genuine LeWitts). No one denies that inventive forgeries of LeWitt or anyone else in any art form are possible, but LeWitts once again prove insusceptible to reproductive forgery (the kind of concern to Goodman). Our forger throws up her hands, retires from the forger's life, and acquires a taste for Borges. This conclusion also allows me to complete my disagreement with Levinson. While Goodman's definitions make the wall drawings allographic in their first stage and autographic in their second, Levinson would classify them as allographic(L) in both their stages. Whatever progress this might suggest is canceled out by

the fact that for both Goodman and Levinson the wall drawings should be susceptible to reproductive forgery, but they are not. Neither philosopher's definitions avoid the paradox posed by LeWitt's works: autographic (or allographic(L)) when executed, yet insusceptible to forgery. Levinson could only make the wall drawings appear subject to forgery by mistaking fraud for forgery, something invited by his reliance on Goodman's flawed definition of forgery. Despite Levinson's valiant efforts to revise the autographic/allographic distinction, the wall drawings prove unaccountable to his categories, too.

V. DID GOODMAN'S DISTINCTION SURVIVE LEWITT?

If we accept the second criterion for identifying LeWitts, as I think we should, only those drawings with the right sort of causal history, executed from and in compliance with LeWitt's notational plans, count as LeWitts; the wall drawings as LeWitt devised them are autographic works grown from allographic seeds. And this striking ontology renders them impervious to forgery (of the relevant sort), a fact quite at odds with the entailments of the term "autographic." Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction is supposed to apply wherever we have criteria for the identification of works. Yet having identified the wall drawings adequately, in which case Goodman's categories should encompass them, these works force us into paradox: the executed drawings are autographic, and so should be subject to forgery. But they are not subject to forgery, and hence seemingly not exactly autographic. Identifiable works are either autographic or allographic; the wall drawings, if not autographic, must be allographic. Yet the executed drawings, identified via appropriate production histories, seem thoroughly autographic, and so on. The identity of the wall drawings can be established even while throwing the distinction between autographic and allographic art forms into confusion. Recall Goodman's position: "The terms 'autographic' and 'allographic' are mutually exclusive, and they exhaust all cases where work-identity is established at all" (PP 83-84). Sol LeWitt's wall drawings are identifiable works of art that transcend Goodman's schema of work identity. A defender of

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Goodman might propose that the wall drawings fall into the nebulous category of "workless art forms" mentioned earlier. But this will not do, for we have established sufficient criteria for identifying LeWitts as individuated works. Goodman cannot avoid the problem for his distinction by denying work identity to the wall drawings. What about LeWitt's drawings places them in this striking position, at odds with Goodman's mutually exclusive categories? In part, their symbiosis of allographic and autographic components is not anticipated by Goodman's distinction (and I think he fails to acknowledge this symbiosis in architecture, as well). However autographic in the end, the wall drawings' notational core serves as a prophylaxis against their forgery, though only by inviting their continual proliferation by as many executors as will follow the plans. The wall drawings buy their freedom from forgery at the price of their potential ubiquity. But my final arguments show that the unprecedented ontology of the drawings also results from LeWitt's remarkable stipulation that each execution of a particular plan makes for a distinct work rather than an instance of one work. In every two-stage art form Goodman considers, whether autographic or allographic, the multiple instances at the second stage (in music and printmaking) all count as instances of the same work. One might argue that LeWitt should be held to the same "rule," and that we should not take seriously his claim to the contrary. But as we have seen, this "rule" is conventional, the outcome of cultural traditions and practices, and Goodman himself countenances the possibility of such practices changing. LeWitt had the temerity to invent his own genre, and as its originator who else but he would establish its founding conventions, the starting-point for its traditions? The partisan of scored music performance, who would have each concert be a distinct work, faces an uphill battle against centuries of precedent. But LeWitt, standing at the origin of his art form, had only to write "Doing Wall Drawings." Of course, this tradition is also subject to change, and seems to have undergone one if LeWitt has indeed come to favor the third criterion in recent years. But the wall drawings as LeWitt first conceived them gave a radical meaning to the term "multiple," and thereby dissolved the possibility of their forgery.

Perhaps I have granted LeWitt too much discretion over the ontology of his genre, too much authority over the identity of his creations. Should we reject the notion that each executed drawing becomes a uniquely individuated work, the one instance of a work despite the existence of multiple executions of the same plan? We need not simply take LeWitt's word, however, or bow to his artistic authority, for the unique individuation of these works is secured by their processual nature and their site specificity. A LeWitt wall drawing is finally the result of a process-of interpreting and executing a planmarked decisively by the locale in which the process unfolds. The work cannot be separated from the place and process of its execution. If the owner of a LeWitt were to move from the dwelling in which the drawing was executed, and wished to take the LeWitt, the old drawing would need to be erased and a new one drawn at the new location. The result would be an execution of the same plan, but would not be the same work, would not even be an instance of the same work, that the owner possessed before. The new execution would be an altogether new LeWitt. The circumstances of their production is so intensely relevant to the identity of the wall drawings that they seem the pinnacle of the autographic. Yet through their extreme site specificity, and the integration of process into their ontology, they defy the forgeability of autographic art. Sol LeWitt's wall drawings pose a paradox for Goodman's autographic/allographic distinction, and it was, after all, the explicit aim of the Conceptual artists among whom LeWitt counted himself to make art in ways that reconfigured the field of possibility in art. LeWitt forged a kind of art that establishes a work identity alien to Goodman's classification. LeWitt's revolutionary works began making trouble for Goodman's categories the very year that Goodman proposed them (hence the past tense of my title question), and remain a silent commentary on key elements of Languages of Art. In this light Goodman's insistence on the mutual exclusivity of his distinction sounds imperial: the distinction between autographic and allographic, seemingly meant to describe a difference among art forms, begins to look like a prescription supposed to constrain what artists may do. Short of such theoretical tyranny, we are left with this: if LeWitt's

Pillow Did Goodman 's Distinction Survive Le Witt ? wall drawings were not works of art at all, then Goodman's distinction might have survived. But they, often quite beautifully, are.47 KIRK PILLOW

Department of Philosophy Hamilton College Clinton, New York 13323

1. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), p. 113. Subsequent references will be abbreviated LA in the body of the text. 2. Nelson Goodman, "Selections from Problems and Projects," in The Forger's Art, ed. Denis Dutton (University of California Press, 1983), p. 114. 3. See Nelson Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters (Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 139. Subsequent references will be abbreviated OMOM in the body of the text. He has not to my knowledge ever provided an example of a nonnotational allographic art form. 4. Nelson Goodman, Problems and Projects (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Menill, 1972), pp. 83-84. Subsequent references will be abbreviated PP in the body of the text. 5. This claim perhaps requires a more elaborate defense, but it is not the aim of this paper to provide it. My arguments concerning Goodman and LeWitt do not depend on my being correct about the autographic status of buildings. 6. Cf., for example, W. E. Kennick, "Art and Inauthenticity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44 (1985): 11, n. 13. 7. Nelson Goodman, "A Note on Copies," The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 44 (1986): 291. 8. Cf., for example, Jerrold Levinson, "What a Musical Work Is," The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 5-28; John A. Fisher, "Rock 'n' Recording: The Ontological Complexity of Rock Music," in Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music, ed. Philip Alperson (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); Theodore Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise; An Aesthetics of Rock (Duke University Press, 1996). 9. This is the upshot of the elaborate debates over Jorge Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," in Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962). Cf., for example, Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 33-39; Nelson Goodman and Catherine Z. Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), pp. 49-64; Christopher Janaway, "Two Kinds of Artistic Duplication," The British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997): 1-14; Janaway, "Borges and Danto: A Reply to Michael Wreen," The British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (1992): 72-77; Michael Wreen, "Once is Not Enough?'The British Journal of Aesthetics 30 (1990): 149-158. Cf. also Susan Wilsmore, "The Literary Work is Not Its Text," Philosophy and Literature 11 (1987): 307-3 16. 10. Cf., for example, Joseph Margolis, "Art, Forgery, and Authenticity," in The Forger's Art, ed. Denis Dutton

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(University of California Press, 1983), pp. 153-17 1; Margolis, "Artworks and the History of Production," Communication and Cognition 17 (1984): 89-106; Richard Wollheim, "Are the Criteria of Identity that Hold for a Work of Art in the Different Arts Aesthetically Relevant?" Ratio 20 (1978): 29-48. 11. Jerrold Levinson, "Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited," Philosophical Studies 38 (1980): 367-383: reprinted in Music, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics (Cornell University Press, 1990). Subsequent references will be abbreviated "AAAR" in the body of the text. 12. Sol LeWitt, Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984 (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1984), p. 137. 13. Ibid., p. 34. 14. Many of the wall drawings involve an intermediate stage, in which LeWitt makes a diagram that accompanies the plan and gives a sense of how the instructions might be followed (in some cases, he has completed a small-scale drawing on paper to provide guidance). LeWitt emphasizes that the diagram is a distinct entity from the certificate; the diagram for Wall Drawing #366 states, "It should accompany the certificate if the wall drawing is sold or otherwise transferred but is not a certificate or a drawing" (John S. Weber, "Sol LeWitt: The Idea, the Wall Drawing, and Public Space," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, ed. Gary Garrels [New Haven: Yale University Press, 20001, p. 90). For my purposes, the diagram does not play a significant role in the ontology of these artworks; it will suffice to treat them as two-stage works instead of three-stage works. 15. Cf. Ann Sargent Wooster, "LeWitt Goes to School," Art in America 66 (1978): 82-84. 16. Cf. Andrea Miller-Keller, "Excerpts from a Correspondence, 1981-1983," in Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, pp. 22 and 25, n. 21. 17. LeWitt, "Doing Wall Drawings," reprinted in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 376. (First published, 1971.) 18. Ibid. 19. LeWitt, SolLeWin Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 181. 20. LeWitt, "Doing Wall Drawings," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 376. 21. As in, for example, Wall Drawing #55 (1970): "Short vertical lines, four colors, each color drawn randomly for one hour." LeWitt, Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 44 22. Sol LeWitt, "Wall Drawings," reprinted in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 375. (First published, 1970.) 23. LeWitt, "Doing Wall Drawings," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 376. 24. LeWitt, "Wall Drawings," in Sol LeWitt; A Retrospective, p. 375. LeWitt even holds that imperfections of the wall surface that affect the final look of the drawing, something obviously different for each execution, "should be considered a part of the wall drawing" (ibid.). 25. Multiple executions of one of LeWitt's plans could be versions of one LeWitt without being instances of one work. See my "Versions and Forgeries: A Reply to I v y , " The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 177-179. 26. John S. Weber, "Sol LeWitt: The Idea, the Wall Drawing, and Public Space," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 91. 27. Andrea Miller-Keller, "Excerpts from a Correspondence, 1981-1983," in Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 19681984, p. 21.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28. Marcus Harvey, "Notes on the Wall Drawings of Sol LeWitt," in Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 205. 29. Andrea Miller-Keller, "Excerpts from a Correspondence, 1981-1983," in Sol Le Win Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 22. 30. LeWitt, "Doing Wall Drawings," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 376. 3 1. Brenda Richardson, "Unexpected Directions: Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 38. 32. According to John Weber, "Sol LeWitt: The Idea, the Wall Drawing, and Public Space," in Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, p. 99, n. 5. 33. Perhaps she "executed" Wall Drawing #87 (1971): "Square 12"x12" filled in by using all of the Crayola crayons in the pack." Sol LeWitt, "All Wall Drawings," Arts Magazine 46 (1972): 43. 34. This is the case on both the second and third criteria for identifying LeWitts, but it will become clear that the question whether the drawings can be forged turns on which of these criteria is adopted. 35. Perhaps it will not surprise that in the mid-1950s LeWitt worked for a year in the offices of architect I. M. Pei. Cf. Andrea Miller-Keller, "Excerpts From a Correspondence, 1981-1983," in Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 23. 36. LeWitt even considers minor mistakes to be constitutive of the work: "The draftsman may make errors in following the plan without compromising the plan. All wall drawings contain errors, they are part of the work" ("Doing Wall Drawings," p. 376). 37. W. E. Kennick, "Art and Inauthenticity," pp. 6 and 12, n. 17. 38. On this point I agree with Kennick, "Art and Inauthenticity," pp. 5-6; and Christopher Janaway, "What a Musical Forgery Isn't," The British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (1999): 6 7 4 8 . It may be worth noting that Goodman replied to Kennick's article without responding to this or the previous criticism. Cf. "A Note on Copies." 39. One might find an exception in the case of found art. If Duchamp, through his artistic gesture, can transform a snow shovel into In Advance of the Broken A n , perhaps one can forge his ready-made simply by finding a shovel of

identical manufacture and passing it off as a Duchamp. The forger seems to have forged the Duchamp without malung anything. Even if one considered this forgery, however, the case of found-art forgeries would represent at best an exception, rather than a counterexample, to the rule that forgery requires making. Forgery, unlike fraud, generally does require malung something, and it will become clear below that the processual nature of LeWitt wall drawings makes the making of a drawing essential to any attempt to forge them. 40. Levinson distinguishes "referential" from "inventive" forgeries in "Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited," p. 377. I adopt his term "inventive" but prefer "reproductive" to his "referential," though they effectively mean the same thing. 41. If the drawing did not comply with LeWitt's plan it would be at best an inventive forgery. 42. Note that both for Goodman (for whom the wall drawings are autographic) and for Levinson (for whom they are allograpic(L)), LeWitt's wall drawings should be susceptible to forgery. I will argue that they are not. 43. Sol LeWitt, Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984, p. 80. From the plan for Wall Drawing #I96 (1973). 44. Sol LeWitt, "All Wall Drawings," p. 42. 45. Ibid. 46. The easy way out would be to side with Goodman: any textual string identical to LeWitt's instructions is an instance of LeWitt's instructions, so she in fact executed LeWitt's instructions, not any instructions of her own, and she produced a genuine LeWitt. But this will not fly for Levinson: on his view, her allographic(L) instructions are causally distinct from LeWitt's, so the executed result is a work of her own with which she can forge a LeWitt. My argument will show that this scenario really only results in an inventive, not a reproductive, forgery. 47. A much different version of this paper was first presented at the American Society for Aesthetics national meeting in Minneapolis, October 2001. I am grateful to John Fisher for very helpful comments on that occasion. An anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism provided constructive comments that helped me to improve the paper. Added thanks to Milton Bloch, Joe Miller, Peter Rabinowitz, Krystyn Schmerbeck, and Mitchell Stevens for invaluable discussion of these issues.