In the Oxford dictionary being ‘authentic’ is defined by ‘Of undisputed origin and not a copy; genuine.’ This definition brings up ideas of ‘originality’ which has often been disputed in the art world as to whether something is original or if someone has done the same idea before.

In creative writing at Alevel I learnt that no story is truly original and that there are only really 6 narrative structures and each story written is just a different way of looking at one of those narratives. The same can be applied to art, many people can have the same ideas without necessarily knowing of the other works similar to it. We are also often inspired by other works, in fact in education we are told to let other works develop our own and use it as reference, although this helps us as developing artists to learn more about past and present artists, it hinders our artistic growth as we don’t develop any originality but rather we are told to use someone else’s style within our own work making them similar, in this way it becomes difficult to be authentic and original, ultimately authenticity can be found in someone’s work yet it is how the viewer perceives them, and how they interpret their work against some other artists. An artist may think their work authentic yet someone may have seen work like it before and there for not call it authentic.

In conclusion authenticity especially in the art world is all about perception and how someone perceives someone’s art.