Dating and backdating a work

What is the dating of a work?

Dating is establishing the year to which a work belongs — when it was made, or possibly when its idea was born. A seeming trifle, yet the year fundamentally affects how we place a work within an artist's development and within art as a whole. Its price follows from that.

How does dating work?

With a classic painting it is usually simple: the year the artist painted it applies. With conceptual artists it is more complicated, because the question arises whether the decisive date is when the idea of the work came into being or when the work was physically made. And those need not be anywhere near the same.

What is backdating?

Backdating means a situation in which a work is dated differently from its actual physical making, typically to an earlier year. Damien Hirst provoked precisely such a dispute when he dated some works retrospectively. In doing so he opened the question of what actually decides in conceptual art: the idea, or its execution?

Why does it matter to a collector?

Because the date directly affects a work's placement within an artist's development and its final price. A work from a “breakthrough” early period may be valued differently from a later variation on the same theme. So when there is a dispute over dating, it is not merely an academic debate but a question that shows up in money.

What should you watch out for?

Be careful precisely with conceptual artists, where it is not a given that the year stated matches the physical making of the work. Hirst's example shows that backdating can cause a great stir and undermine trust. With such works it pays to ask what the date actually refers to.

— Anna Pulkertová, founder of Art Part Club