Art Games and Forgeries

Sotheby's Art Auction (NYTimes)

If you ever doubted that the ‘Art World’ is an insider’s game, read the recent article in the New York Times, As Art Values Rise, So Do Concerns About Market’s Oversight. A detailed chronicle of failed or ignored regulations, accepted practices visible only to those already in on the ‘rules,’ and tricky high-stakes finance, the article paints a vivid picture of what you probably already suspected. It’s dangerous territory for the naïve, the innocent and, certainly, for those of only moderate wealth. For most artists too -–although art is the commodity on which this all hangs, very few reach a point of having the power to dictate terms of sale. Despite what it may have cost them in real life terms, an artist’s work becomes the glittering ball tossed around in a game of (mostly someone else's) greed and gain.

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Degas: After the Bath 1900

But if you think that the world of legitimate art is dark and nefarious, try the underground labyrinth of art forgery. I’ve just finished two books on the subject, one a novel, one an intriguing call for the acceptance of art forgery as ‘the great art of our time.’ The novel, The Art Forger, by B. A. Shapiro, has gotten quite a lot of press, mostly enthusiastic. I agree that it’s a good read, with a compelling main character and a twisty plot that is fun to follow. Shapiro, who is not a visual artist, gets some of her art history wrong - Ernest Meissonier was a far more important painter than she allows for example, and she credits Edgar Degas with a bubbly, flirtatious personality that flies in the face of everything that’s ever been said about him. But this is fiction and those are irritations rather than flaws in her tale. The core of the story is the famous theft of paintings from the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, a mystery of mythic proportions.
The (real) Degas shown here is similar to the work that is the centerpiece in 'The Art Forger'.

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Missing: empty frames at the Gardner

One March evening in 1990 thieves dressed as Boston police walked out with 13 extraordinarily valuable works, including Vermeer’s The Concert (one of only 35 known paintings by the artist) and Rembrandt’s only seascape, leaving empty frames that remain on the walls in anticipation of their return. No person or any information has ever come forward to explain the theft or reveal the whereabouts of any of the stolen art. The story is a novel already, but Shapiro has the fun of taking it further into ‘what if?’ territory, leading her heroine into ever-narrowing tunnels of personal integrity and artistic identity.

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Van Meegern: Supper at Emmaus 1937

When she gets to the details of how a forgery can be pulled off, Shapiro borrows from art forgery royalty, the real life Hans van Meegeren, a Dutch charlatan who fooled experts and amateurs alike into believing his ‘Vermeers.’  Using a cobbled, incredible technique involving Bakelite - a 30s era plastic - he created previously unknown ‘masterpieces;’ one of his most ardent collectors was Hermann Goring. Van Meegeren’s ersatz Vermeers are the sappiest, most lugubrious religious scenes imaginable, impossible to take seriously, but one of the truths running through Shapiro’s story and through the second book, Why Fakes are the Great Art of our Age, is the mantra ‘people see what they want to see.’

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Too many Mona Lisas

As the author Jonathon Keats proves over and over again, this truth holds even if those people are the curators of major museums, art scholars and experts, and wealthy experienced collectors. For Keats, however, the prism of art forgery is colored differently; instead of seeing a scourge and a crime, he believes that forgery does art’s proper job of provoking and disturbing. He trumpets forgery as the perfect art for our current ‘age of anxiety.’ The theory is intriguing, both specious and valid, and he makes his case with anecdotal evidence ranging from Raphael to recent forgers hell-bent on wreaking havoc.

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Tom Keating painting a Van Gogh

Wreaking havoc is, in fact, a common thread for a number of forgers, at least in recent cases, and that is where a hole tears into the fabric of Keats’ theory. Revenge - in retaliation for slights by art dealers, for a lack of recognition of ‘genius,’ for invisibility when someone else gets all the glory - is not the stuff of great art. Many artists, famous or not, can relate to the feelings, but if those angry negatives take over they will certainly dim the light of honest creation. Real art needs real heart, not simply classic technique and clever tricks.
photo by Rob Ebdon

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Fake Modigliani by Elmer de Hory

Another indisputable truth, emphasized in both books, is that successful forgers are very good art makers; they may lack the true artist’s inner fire of inspiration but they are exceptional technicians. Although the number of works by forgers hanging in major museums can never be known, it is openly acknowledged to be large - astonishingly so.

If you’re tempted to enter into the game of art at the highest levels, be cautious. And remember this: forgery may not be mentioned in the hushed halls of the big auction houses, but it is surely a wild card in a complex game. 

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card from Open Studio event in Wash DC

P.S. Buy local, go to studios and small galleries, attend Open Studio events, seek out your own original treasure. Real art is everywhere. When you buy art from real artists you don’t have doubts about the art or the heart–- and you have something worth millions - at least to you.  



http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Forger-A-Novel/dp/1616201320  
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Why-Fakes-are-Great/dp/0199928355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359572179&sr=1-1&keywords=jonathon+keats  
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/arts/design/as-art-market-rise-so-do-questions-of-oversight.html

Tom Keating photo courtesy of most of the shebang
http://www.stephenbrookes.com/arts/2007/8/7/fine-art-of-the-fake-makers.html

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