Trompe L'oeil
April 30, 2018 2:19 AM Subscribe
Étienne Terrus was a French painter, one of the precursors of Fauvism. He has a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace of Elne. Unfortunately it has just been discovered that 82 of his paintings there - over half - are fakes.
It's not an isolated incident...
20 Works in Major Modigliani Exhibition Have Just Been Confirmed as Forgeries
How Sotheby’s Got Hoodwinked: The Art World’s $20m Forgery Scandal
Old Masters, new scandal, as a ‘Parmigianino’ painting is deemed a fake
Scandal in China over the museum with 40,000 fake artefacts
It's not an isolated incident...
20 Works in Major Modigliani Exhibition Have Just Been Confirmed as Forgeries
How Sotheby’s Got Hoodwinked: The Art World’s $20m Forgery Scandal
Old Masters, new scandal, as a ‘Parmigianino’ painting is deemed a fake
Scandal in China over the museum with 40,000 fake artefacts
I wish I could Fauverite this post, but I guess I’ll have to Fauxverite instead. Don’t look too closely at your counts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:40 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:40 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
In view of how the world is developing, shouldn't we start respecting the art of the forgerer? Yes, the odd ink signature may wipe off and there may be some anachronisms, but it takes a lot of devotion, courage and skill, to make a good fake.
posted by Laotic at 3:44 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Laotic at 3:44 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
The real ones are sitting in private collections, or worse, vaults or freeports.
Kinda makes me wish art were considered worthless, because then greedy folks would leave it the hell alone.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:09 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Kinda makes me wish art were considered worthless, because then greedy folks would leave it the hell alone.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:09 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I kind of like the idea of forgeries. If the reason, say, a Modigliani, is valuable is because of the artist’s technique and vision, shouldn’t a very good copy of that be nearly as valuable? If curators, dealers, and collectors deem a work worth, say, $1 million, why should a dispute about the creator reduce that to $0? Indeed, if they can make that mistake, why do we need curators and dealers?
Things get a little trickier when an artist is alive and trying to make a living off their production, but I have somewhat less concern for their heirs and considerably less for the mass of art parasites that often eat better than the artist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:11 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Things get a little trickier when an artist is alive and trying to make a living off their production, but I have somewhat less concern for their heirs and considerably less for the mass of art parasites that often eat better than the artist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:11 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
...shouldn't we start respecting the art of the forgerer?
In fact, there are forgers whose work is highly collectable on their own merit.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:45 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In fact, there are forgers whose work is highly collectable on their own merit.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:45 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm not going to lose sleep over some billionaire getting ripped off buying a fake. However in some areas like, for instance, early 20th C Russian avant garde art - because it's easy to forge and there's plenty of newly rich Russian people wanting to buy it - there's now so many fakes it's making actual scholarship of art history increasingly difficult.
The Faking of the Russian Avant-Garde
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:58 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
The Faking of the Russian Avant-Garde
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:58 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
The collector's market for these paintings is only accessible to people with billions of dollars to launder. As such, traditional considerations of appeal, authorship, provenance, and historical relevance don't particularly matter; the only thing that matters is whether somebody else is also willing to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for it. In fact it's entirely possible their nominal owners never see the paintings nor even know they own them. Both the buyers and sellers at major art auctions are often proxied and anonymized, so fine art effectively materializes out of nowhere and disappears again, only existing in the common world for the time it had been cataloged by the auction house. It's never been easier for forgeries to enter the market, especially forgeries of painters with known-incomplete catalogs, which is nearly all of them, especially any Europeans exhibiting before World War II.
Ultimately the only thing that matters is whether a painting in a collection can be churned out before it is discovered to be a forgery. The last one holding the hot potato has few means for recompense, but depending on the country they're in they might be qualified for insurance payout or a tax writeoff on the devaluation; the seven or eight digit cash loss is regrettable but the remaining money is now well-laundered, so the real goal was achieved anyway.
posted by ardgedee at 5:10 AM on April 30, 2018 [6 favorites]
Ultimately the only thing that matters is whether a painting in a collection can be churned out before it is discovered to be a forgery. The last one holding the hot potato has few means for recompense, but depending on the country they're in they might be qualified for insurance payout or a tax writeoff on the devaluation; the seven or eight digit cash loss is regrettable but the remaining money is now well-laundered, so the real goal was achieved anyway.
posted by ardgedee at 5:10 AM on April 30, 2018 [6 favorites]
Just a reminder that everyone should see orson Welles’ F is for Fake.
Here’s hoping a bunch of rich assholes got suckered by fakes that they can’t resell later.
posted by dis_integration at 5:10 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Here’s hoping a bunch of rich assholes got suckered by fakes that they can’t resell later.
posted by dis_integration at 5:10 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
> Here’s hoping a bunch of rich assholes got suckered by fakes that they can’t resell later.
The people playing this market are far too wealthy for a mere forty million dollar devaluation to have any meaning. Inasmuch as there are victims, they are usually the historians potentially ruined by their now-invalidated publications, and the museums that have wasted money on space, labor, and security to house fakes.
posted by ardgedee at 5:15 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
The people playing this market are far too wealthy for a mere forty million dollar devaluation to have any meaning. Inasmuch as there are victims, they are usually the historians potentially ruined by their now-invalidated publications, and the museums that have wasted money on space, labor, and security to house fakes.
posted by ardgedee at 5:15 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Chapeau m'sieur for your headline.
BTW among the historians potentially ruined in this instance are those who failed to notice that some of the fake Terrus pieces showed buildings which were built after his lifetime.
posted by aqsakal at 5:40 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
BTW among the historians potentially ruined in this instance are those who failed to notice that some of the fake Terrus pieces showed buildings which were built after his lifetime.
posted by aqsakal at 5:40 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm a little annoyed that the fakes were discovered by ordinary common sense-- they included buildings constructed after the artist's death.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, and I mean both the forgers and the museum.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:41 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, and I mean both the forgers and the museum.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:41 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Kinda makes me wish art were considered worthless, because then greedy folks would leave it the hell alone.
My interpretation of the value of art a parallel to stock valuation: art, I believe, has an intrinsic value, which is expressed in the cost of materials and some compensation of the artist's time. Beyond that its value is market, or speculation value.
I have figured that the overblown figures paid for fairly worthless art (the less talent involved in creating it, the better) is just a money-laundering gimmick, exactly like ardgedee above writes - a game played by the rich investor. Where else can you dump untold millions into a small object with next to no inherent value, but fairly high uniqueness? Once the price you paid is advertised, it becomes a de facto price, only to increase by the percentage you specify when you next sell it.
On the one hand it makes me sick, on the other it makes me free to choose art that I like and that expresses my interests, as long as it comes at a price very close to the intrinsic value.
posted by Laotic at 6:00 AM on April 30, 2018
My interpretation of the value of art a parallel to stock valuation: art, I believe, has an intrinsic value, which is expressed in the cost of materials and some compensation of the artist's time. Beyond that its value is market, or speculation value.
I have figured that the overblown figures paid for fairly worthless art (the less talent involved in creating it, the better) is just a money-laundering gimmick, exactly like ardgedee above writes - a game played by the rich investor. Where else can you dump untold millions into a small object with next to no inherent value, but fairly high uniqueness? Once the price you paid is advertised, it becomes a de facto price, only to increase by the percentage you specify when you next sell it.
On the one hand it makes me sick, on the other it makes me free to choose art that I like and that expresses my interests, as long as it comes at a price very close to the intrinsic value.
posted by Laotic at 6:00 AM on April 30, 2018
I'm a little annoyed that the fakes were discovered by ordinary common sense-- they included buildings constructed after the artist's death.
Wait. So the Pont de l'Archevêché DIDN'T have a Hardee's next to it in 1879?
posted by delfin at 6:07 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wait. So the Pont de l'Archevêché DIDN'T have a Hardee's next to it in 1879?
posted by delfin at 6:07 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
: art, I believe, has an intrinsic value, which is expressed in the cost of materials and some compensation of the artist's time.
Surely art primarily has value for its expressive content and meaning. Some of my favorite works, (Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings for example), are essentially unforgeable, because they are just a set of instructions for curators to implement later in the exhibition.
This fact is what complicates the obsession with authentic originals in the art world so much. Does a stroke-for-stroke reproduction of a painting have the identical expressive content? Or does it really matter that it was in fact touched by the hand of the master? I'm pretty happy with a poster, but also recognize that the experience of the work in the museum is superior in some respect. But then I wonder if that's just a matter of scale and accuracy-- it's impossible to (easily) reproduce a lot of art, because of the composition of the pigments or other materials (the otherwordly character of El Greco's Assumption or the corporeal horror of Kiefer's Breaking of the Vessels which impresses not the least because the instinctual fear of broken glass) are so very particular. Anyway, it shouldn't matter how much the materials cost or how long the artist worked on it, but on the result and its meaning.
posted by dis_integration at 6:12 AM on April 30, 2018
Surely art primarily has value for its expressive content and meaning. Some of my favorite works, (Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings for example), are essentially unforgeable, because they are just a set of instructions for curators to implement later in the exhibition.
This fact is what complicates the obsession with authentic originals in the art world so much. Does a stroke-for-stroke reproduction of a painting have the identical expressive content? Or does it really matter that it was in fact touched by the hand of the master? I'm pretty happy with a poster, but also recognize that the experience of the work in the museum is superior in some respect. But then I wonder if that's just a matter of scale and accuracy-- it's impossible to (easily) reproduce a lot of art, because of the composition of the pigments or other materials (the otherwordly character of El Greco's Assumption or the corporeal horror of Kiefer's Breaking of the Vessels which impresses not the least because the instinctual fear of broken glass) are so very particular. Anyway, it shouldn't matter how much the materials cost or how long the artist worked on it, but on the result and its meaning.
posted by dis_integration at 6:12 AM on April 30, 2018
Inasmuch as there are victims, they are usually the historians potentially ruined by their now-invalidated publications, and the museums that have wasted money on space, labor, and security to house fakes.
Uh, let’s not presume innocence. I think given the obviousness of the forgeries and the inherently gray nature of the art market today, it is far more likely that the validating experts were in on it. Everyone gets paid when someone has to launder money. No one likes to disappoint the guy who’s handing out money.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:01 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Uh, let’s not presume innocence. I think given the obviousness of the forgeries and the inherently gray nature of the art market today, it is far more likely that the validating experts were in on it. Everyone gets paid when someone has to launder money. No one likes to disappoint the guy who’s handing out money.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:01 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
The collector's market for these paintings is only accessible to people with billions of dollars to launder.
Just to be clear: Terrus was a minor painter who was largely forgotten until 20 years ago. Local "masters" were a dime a dozen in 20th century France and they don't attract many experts. The article quotes prices up to 15,000 €, and I found that one watercolour was sold at Drouot in 2011 for 500 € (the asking price was 20 €!). The estimate for the loss is 160,000 € for 82 works, so that's 2000 € per work, ie not a lot, and well in the range of what many people can afford. We're not talking billions here. So it's not surprising that this flew under the radar. It's just easier to make fakes of minor painters than of famous ones. In fact, it looks that there's a forgery network operating in the Pyrénées-Orientales and that forgeries of other French Catalan (or French Catalonia-based) painters such as Pierre Brune, Balbino Giner and Augustin Hanicote have been circulating for a while, targetting local collectors of local painters.
posted by elgilito at 7:36 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Just to be clear: Terrus was a minor painter who was largely forgotten until 20 years ago. Local "masters" were a dime a dozen in 20th century France and they don't attract many experts. The article quotes prices up to 15,000 €, and I found that one watercolour was sold at Drouot in 2011 for 500 € (the asking price was 20 €!). The estimate for the loss is 160,000 € for 82 works, so that's 2000 € per work, ie not a lot, and well in the range of what many people can afford. We're not talking billions here. So it's not surprising that this flew under the radar. It's just easier to make fakes of minor painters than of famous ones. In fact, it looks that there's a forgery network operating in the Pyrénées-Orientales and that forgeries of other French Catalan (or French Catalonia-based) painters such as Pierre Brune, Balbino Giner and Augustin Hanicote have been circulating for a while, targetting local collectors of local painters.
posted by elgilito at 7:36 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Surely art primarily has value for its expressive content and meaning.
That can be your definition of value of art, but it's rather difficult to quantify. I need a little more certainty in life and so I take intrinsic and market values as bases. If they are too far apart I smell fish.
Also, I'd rank Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings under interior design... art. Even moreso if he himself wanted it to be reproduced.
posted by Laotic at 7:45 AM on April 30, 2018
That can be your definition of value of art, but it's rather difficult to quantify. I need a little more certainty in life and so I take intrinsic and market values as bases. If they are too far apart I smell fish.
Also, I'd rank Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings under interior design... art. Even moreso if he himself wanted it to be reproduced.
posted by Laotic at 7:45 AM on April 30, 2018
art, I believe, has an intrinsic value, which is expressed in the cost of materials and some compensation of the artist's time.
That would make 99% of art valued at $20, same as in town.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:13 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
That would make 99% of art valued at $20, same as in town.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:13 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Also, I'd rank Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings under interior design... art. Even moreso if he himself wanted it to be reproduced.
The point of Sol Lewitt’s art is that it’s a concept which allows everyone to participate in the game of art by democratizating and deconstructing the ego of said “game of art”.
The value of an artwork is based on the amount of decades and centuries the work inspires a perspective and critical thought and action. By that measure Sol Lewitt has created an enduring art that in my opinion is among the greats.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:57 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
The point of Sol Lewitt’s art is that it’s a concept which allows everyone to participate in the game of art by democratizating and deconstructing the ego of said “game of art”.
The value of an artwork is based on the amount of decades and centuries the work inspires a perspective and critical thought and action. By that measure Sol Lewitt has created an enduring art that in my opinion is among the greats.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:57 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Surely art primarily has value for its expressive content and meaning. Some of my favorite works, (Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawings for example), are essentially unforgeable, because they are just a set of instructions for curators to implement later in the exhibition.
Most forgery isn't duplicating works of art, but the style of the artist. It's the signature that's valuable in that manner, not the work itself necessarily. In Lewitt's case, a forgery would be a faked set of instructions for a wall drawing, not the wall drawing itself since Lewitt's participation was more in the conception than the physical rendering of his vision.
The intense fascination people have for/with artists as "geniuses", the aura that accompanies biography, is as much the problem as any forgery matching the most significant artwork the artist created. This kind of forgery relies on the artists already having achieved some measure of fame, which in kind requires some exceptional or notable work to have come from the artist to which the rest of their body of work will be held to for examples of changes in style, theme, or ability. From my perspective, the loss to art history is in creating false narratives of their history, but not much else as the forged works aren't the basis of fame for the artist, and the loss to the casual viewer is minimal aside from feeling "ripped off" by believing something attributed to a liked artist wasn't really made by them at all perhaps.
That's possibly somewhat cynical and I wouldn't want to dismiss entirely the deeper value a body of work can provide in seeing artists how style and themes change as the artist matures, but I also find there to be an unpalatable mix of something like hero worship involved in art, where the "great man" ideal carries more weight than it should, where at times it treats artists more like saints with anything they touched, or were alleged to, becoming sanctified by dint of contact with their greatness. Celebrity worship, in all its forms is deeply troubling.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:00 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Most forgery isn't duplicating works of art, but the style of the artist. It's the signature that's valuable in that manner, not the work itself necessarily. In Lewitt's case, a forgery would be a faked set of instructions for a wall drawing, not the wall drawing itself since Lewitt's participation was more in the conception than the physical rendering of his vision.
The intense fascination people have for/with artists as "geniuses", the aura that accompanies biography, is as much the problem as any forgery matching the most significant artwork the artist created. This kind of forgery relies on the artists already having achieved some measure of fame, which in kind requires some exceptional or notable work to have come from the artist to which the rest of their body of work will be held to for examples of changes in style, theme, or ability. From my perspective, the loss to art history is in creating false narratives of their history, but not much else as the forged works aren't the basis of fame for the artist, and the loss to the casual viewer is minimal aside from feeling "ripped off" by believing something attributed to a liked artist wasn't really made by them at all perhaps.
That's possibly somewhat cynical and I wouldn't want to dismiss entirely the deeper value a body of work can provide in seeing artists how style and themes change as the artist matures, but I also find there to be an unpalatable mix of something like hero worship involved in art, where the "great man" ideal carries more weight than it should, where at times it treats artists more like saints with anything they touched, or were alleged to, becoming sanctified by dint of contact with their greatness. Celebrity worship, in all its forms is deeply troubling.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:00 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Celebrity worship, in all its forms is deeply troubling.
+10000 favorites for your comment and a resounding "yes" from me.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:32 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
+10000 favorites for your comment and a resounding "yes" from me.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:32 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
This is all very easy to say in hindsight, of course, but that Parmigianino--it's odd to me that it was ever authenticated. It doesn't look Mannerist in, well, any of the ways I was taught Mannerism looked. Am I wrong?
I wouldn't want to dismiss entirely the deeper value a body of work can provide in seeing artists how style and themes change as the artist matures,
Surely there's a lot of value in this, if you think the artist has anything worthwhile to say? Not to mention those who would be responding to the work? I have zero taste for the middlebrow worship of cultural geniuses, but if you think anything's worth understanding as a historical artifact, an accurate knowledge of its context is important.
posted by praemunire at 10:20 AM on April 30, 2018
I wouldn't want to dismiss entirely the deeper value a body of work can provide in seeing artists how style and themes change as the artist matures,
Surely there's a lot of value in this, if you think the artist has anything worthwhile to say? Not to mention those who would be responding to the work? I have zero taste for the middlebrow worship of cultural geniuses, but if you think anything's worth understanding as a historical artifact, an accurate knowledge of its context is important.
posted by praemunire at 10:20 AM on April 30, 2018
Surely there's a lot of value in this, if you think the artist has anything worthwhile to say?
There certainly can be, if one looks, or in fact can look, at the body of work as a whole as art historians try to do, but collecting can defeat that very thing by removing works from the body and isolating them in private collections. That is where the issue of forgery gains its hold. There would be, I have to assume, much less of it if its only purpose was to hinder historians and deeply interested parties from piecing a history together.
Even so, there also seems to me stronger demand/interest for even third rate art by a famous name over first rate art by a "nobody" from all parties, which suggests name before work to me to at least some meaningful degree. But that is moving a bit from the issue at hand I suppose.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:38 AM on April 30, 2018
There certainly can be, if one looks, or in fact can look, at the body of work as a whole as art historians try to do, but collecting can defeat that very thing by removing works from the body and isolating them in private collections. That is where the issue of forgery gains its hold. There would be, I have to assume, much less of it if its only purpose was to hinder historians and deeply interested parties from piecing a history together.
Even so, there also seems to me stronger demand/interest for even third rate art by a famous name over first rate art by a "nobody" from all parties, which suggests name before work to me to at least some meaningful degree. But that is moving a bit from the issue at hand I suppose.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:38 AM on April 30, 2018
Even so, there also seems to me stronger demand/interest for even third rate art by a famous name over first rate art by a "nobody" from all parties, which suggests name before work to me to at least some meaningful degree.
There's so many assumptions and fallacies packed into that sentence I'm really not sure which end to take hold of to have an unmuddled follow-up discussion. Maybe just "all parties?" You must know that isn't true.
posted by praemunire at 1:35 PM on April 30, 2018
There's so many assumptions and fallacies packed into that sentence I'm really not sure which end to take hold of to have an unmuddled follow-up discussion. Maybe just "all parties?" You must know that isn't true.
posted by praemunire at 1:35 PM on April 30, 2018
" If the reason, say, a Modigliani, is valuable is because of the artist’s technique and vision, shouldn’t a very good copy of that be nearly as valuable? If curators, dealers, and collectors deem a work worth, say, $1 million, why should a dispute about the creator reduce that to $0? Indeed, if they can make that mistake, why do we need curators and dealers?"
That's not really why any art work is valuable and why art is valuable and at what levels is a lot messier than anything so sensible.
As for why we "need" curators and dealers, we probably don't except for that the art market in general is some sort of weirdass rich people money laundering type of thing and dealers and curators play a role in that whole freaking mess.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:38 PM on May 1, 2018
That's not really why any art work is valuable and why art is valuable and at what levels is a lot messier than anything so sensible.
As for why we "need" curators and dealers, we probably don't except for that the art market in general is some sort of weirdass rich people money laundering type of thing and dealers and curators play a role in that whole freaking mess.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:38 PM on May 1, 2018
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