What's in a signature? I had some interesting discussions over the past couple of months with several different artists, on the topic of signatures. The doctor's signature is stereotypically illegible; the teenage girl might sign all of her 'i's with hearts instead of dots (a running joke from an artist's panel I attended last month), and the size of the signature could have a lot to do with that person's own feelings of importance or self-worth (e.g., "John Hancock"). But what about artists? Why is an artist's signature so important? Over the years, I've carefully observed how artists sign their paintings. Some of them take care to scratch their name deeply into the wet paint, so that it can never be forged or scraped off. Others line up their let…
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