Autographic and Allographic Arts

Nelson Goodman's distinction between autographic and allographic arts provides the most precise framework for understanding how origin matters differently across artistic media. In autographic arts—painting, sculpture, etching—the work's identity is tied to its specific history of production. A forgery of a Rembrandt, no matter how perceptually perfect, is not a Rembrandt, because the history of production (who made it, when, under what circumstances) is part of what the work is. The autographic work cannot be instanced correctly by anyone other than the originating artist. In allographic arts—music, literature, architecture—the work's identity is determined by compliance with a notation. Any performance that correctly follows the score is a genuine instance of the musical work; any text that correctly reproduces the word-sequence is a genuine instance of the literary work. The performer or printer contributes to the realization but not to the work's identity, which is fixed by the notational specification. The distinction turns on whether a notation exists that can specify the work's identity-determining features with sufficient precision that