L is for Ledger, F is for Fake

October 20, 2020 8:48 PM

Ledger Art (previously) is art drawn by Native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Someone has been selling ledger art on EBay that has unknown provenance and bears a very close resemblance to known pieces.
posted by larrybob (4 comments total)

This is the way to make counterfeits. Don’t counterfeit Cézanne or Picasso, counterfeit a lesser known but academically/institutionalized artist. One that has a solid if unspectacular track record in the auction houses. Though these works are a little too similar to existing works, really - for obvious reasons.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:05 PM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

“I know more about what they sell, I think, than they do,” he says.

Confirmation bias is a helluva drug. Fraudulent indigenous artwork is an aggression, and continuing to display it knowing that it's fake is arrogant.
posted by scruss at 1:58 AM on October 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

Under the rubric "fraudulent indigenous artwork":

A friend who is Native once told me that, back when he was married, he would sell beadwork to stores. Not just his work, but the work his wife did. She was white, and learned beadwork under his direction. To make the pieces look more authentic (he worked with deerskin, usually), he "aged" them by tossing them around a bit in vacuum cleaner bag lint. He didn't see a problem with any of it.

Mind you, that was the 90s, and I'm not sure he could get away with it now. People see a market, and sometimes integrity (of all sorts) gets tossed aside, or trampled.

I don't think he knew about IACA.
posted by datawrangler at 5:21 AM on October 21, 2020

Obviously many of these are copies of older works, but people should be aware that several modern-day Native artists use this style, but are not trying to pass their work off as historic: painting or drawing on old documents or maps is common.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:19 PM on October 21, 2020 [3 favorites]