Posts Tagged ‘forgery’
“The tale is old as the Eden Tree – as new as the new-cut tooth – For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth.”*…
Mendacious politicians, duplicitous corporations, AI slop– it’s getting harder and harder to find authenticity, to get to the truth. Further to our occasional posts on misinformation in history, a look at Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, a tangible demonstration that humans have been creating fan fiction and fake news for millennia…
In “The History of Fake News From the Flood to the Apocalypse,” the course Earle Havens [see here] teaches at Johns Hopkins University, he presents undergrads with a formidable challenge. They have to create historical forgeries and then defend the authenticity of their deceptions.
Forgeries, hoaxes, and other types of literary fakery have preoccupied Havens, a rare books and manuscripts curator at the university’s Stern Center for the History of the Book, for many years now. As part of his curatorial brief, Havens oversees the Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery, available via JSTOR. It includes more than 2,000 items—rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera—and was the brainchild of Arthur and Janet Freeman, who amassed most of its holdings over a period of some fifty years. Johns Hopkins acquired the majority of the collection from the Freemans in 2011; it has continued to expand in the years since…
Sara Ivry interviews Havens: “Enchanting Imposters,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social and @saraivry.bsky.social.
* Rudyard Kipling “The Conundrum of the Workshops” (quoted by Orson Welles in his remarkable film F for Fake)
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As we grab for a grain of salt, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that the Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show performing Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (and closing the show with “Time Is On My Side”).
The band’s appearance on the show generated over a million dollars in ticket sales for their fall concert tour, and despite outrage from conservative adults who disapproved of the Stones’ “unkempt” image, the group returned to The Ed Sullivan Show for another six appearances throughout the rest of the 1960s. – source
“In the world of art, authenticity is often just an illusion”*…
Kelly Grovier with the simple rules to use in identifyng art forgery…
It’s everywhere: fake news, deep fakes, identity fraud. So ensnared are we in a culture of digitised deceptions, a phenomenon increasingly augmented by artificial intelligence, it would be easy to think that deceit itself is a high-tech invention of the cyber age. Recent revelations however – from the discovery of an elaborate, if decidedly low-tech, art forger’s workshop in Rome to the sensational allegation that a cherished Baroque masterpiece in London’s National Gallery is a crude simulacrum of a lost original – remind us that duplicity in the world of art has a long and storied history, one written not in binary ones and zeroes, but in impossible pigments, clumsy brushstrokes and suspicious signatures. When it comes to falsification and phoniness, there is indeed no new thing under the Sun.
On 19 February, Italy’s Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage uncovered a covert forgery operation in a northern district of Rome. Authorities confiscated more than 70 fraudulent artworks falsely attributed to notable artists from Pissarro to Picasso, Rembrandt to Dora Maar, along with materials used to mimic vintage canvases, artist signatures, and the stamps of galleries no longer in operation. The suspect, who has yet to be apprehended, is thought to have used online platforms such as Catawiki and eBay to hawk their phoney wares, deceiving potential buyers with convincing certificates of authenticity that they likewise contrived.
News of the clandestine lab’s discovery was quickly followed by publicity for a new book, due for release this week, alleging that one of The National Gallery’s highlights is not at all what it seems. According to artist and historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis, author of NG6461: The Fake National Gallery Rubens, the painting Samson and Delilah – a large oil-on-wood attributed to the 17th Century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and purchased by the London museum in 1980 for £2.5m (then the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction) – is three centuries younger than the date of 1609-10 that sits beside it on the gallery wall and is incalculably less accomplished than the museum believes.
Doxiadis’s conclusion corroborates one reached in 2021 by the Swiss company, Art Recognition, which determined, through the use of AI, that there was a 91% probability that Samson and Delilah is the work of someone other than Rubens. Her assertion that the brushwork we see in the painting is crass and wholly inconsistent with the fluid flow of the Flemish master’s hand is strongly contested by The National Gallery, which stands by its attribution. “Samson and Delilah has long been accepted by leading Rubens scholars as a masterpiece by Peter Paul Rubens”, it said in a statement given to the BBC. “Painted on wood panel in oil shortly after his return to Antwerp in 1608 and demonstrating all that the artist had learned in Italy, it is a work of the highest aesthetic quality. A technical examination of the picture was presented in an article in The National Gallery’s Technical Bulletin in 1983. The findings remain valid.”
The divergence of opinion between the museum’s experts and those who doubt the work’s authenticity opens a curious space in which to reflect on intriguing questions of artistic value and merit. Is there ever legitimacy in forgery? Can fakes be masterpieces? As more sophisticated tools of analysis are applied to paintings and drawings whose legitimacy has long been in question (including several works attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, such as the hotly disputed chalk and ink drawing La Bella Principessa), as well as those whose validity has never been in doubt, debates about the integrity of cultural icons are only likely to accelerate. What follows are a handful of handy principles to keep in mind when navigating the impending controversies – five simple rules for spotting a fake masterpiece…
When a work of art isn’t what it appears to be: “Rembrandt to Picasso: Five ways to spot a fake masterpiece,” from BBC. Eminently worth reading in full.
* B.A. Shapiro, The Art Forger
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As we ferret out the faux, we might send carefully-secured birthday greetings to Linus Yale, Jr.; he was born on this date in 1821. After launching a promising career as a portrait painter, Yale joined his father’s lock business and became the nation’s leading expert on banklocks. He created many locks, among them, the one for which he is best remembered, the “safe door lock,” the first modern “pin tumbler lock” (AKA “the Yale lock”).
“Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.”*…
German artist Edgar Mrugalla was incredibly prolific in his lifetime, having painted more than 3,500 pieces by the time he was 65. And yet, not one of those was an original work. Mrugalla was an expert art forger, copying the works of Rembrandt, Picasso, Renoir and many other masters. His self-taught skill even earned him two years in prison, only to be released by working with authorities to uncover which artworks might be forgeries, including his own.
Though none were original, some of Mrugalla’s works are now on display in a museum: the Museum of Art Fakes in Vienna. Diane Grobe, co-owner and founder of the museum that opened in 2005, credits Mrugalla with the inspiration for the opening. “[I was inspired by] his exciting stories,” Grobe told Smithsonian.com via email. “He gave [the museum] our first forgeries — [paintings copying] Rembrandt, Müller [and] Picasso. After this meeting, we [looked] for other counterfeiters with similar exciting lives, [including Thomas] Keating, [Eric] Hebborn [and Han van] Meegeren, and then we began to collect their forgeries.” Now, the museum holds a collection of more than 80 forged works…
Forged Matisse
Begin your visit (if only, for a start, virtually) at: “Everything in This Museum Is Fake“; browse the collection here.
* James Fenton
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As we ruminate on the real, we might wish feliz cumpleaños to Pablo Picasso; he was born on this date in 1881. So prolific in so many forms that he (almost) outran forgers of his work, he was also so impactful– he is probably the best-known artist of the 2oth century– that he attracted them like flies.
Picasso in 1908
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