the art of stealing -- making fake

Sixty minutes, mentioned in the previous post, aired a story last night about an art forger who solely supported one of the oldest, most established galleries in NY, the now defunct and discredited Knoedler Gallery. One guy in his garage forged the work just about everybody -- Kline, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Krasner, Motherwell, only the best, and the gallery stayed in business selling ringers. The entire caper raises interesting questions.

Remember once hearing ‘Lightning’ Hopkins in concert. He began by saying softly, ‘ain’t nobody allowed to play the blues like this but me,’ and then he played some. It was his polite challenge to anyone anywhere because no one could like that, but him. So here comes a bum working in a garage replicating all the modern ‘masters,’ and I’m sorry to be disparaging but they said he only made sixty five thousand dollars for producing fakes which sold for eighty million -- field hands get a bigger slice. How hard could it be?

The first question would be is he the only one doing it, and the stakes being high the probabilities are low that he is. It would also prove helpful to note that the financial incentives are all on the side of authenticity -- fat commissions all around if it’s, ah, real, vs nothing. There’s room for larceny here, it’s in the air, and there’s a reason. It’s because none of this is ‘real’ in any real sense. It’s all based on wizard of oz logic.

The way they decide what’s authentic gives off fumes in the first place. Don’t bother with the front, no one looks at the front, the secret, says the man with knowing authority, is to look at the back. See those smears of gesso on the stretcher, the way it’s been tacked. Rothko would never do that, it’s a clue. Then there’s forensics. Spectrographic analysis reveals a certain red dye which wasn’t included in the formulation by the company in question until, stop the presses, ten years after this thing, whatever it is, was supposedly made. Is this the pertinent fact millions of dollars turn on, and why would any serious person have gotten this far you ask, and I’m sure I don’t know. Not worth nothing, all just a kid’s game of artificial preciousness, plastic cups and pretend tea.

What about actual art you might ask, and we can guess it’s out there somewhere. Art supplies have at least a little space in drugstores and hardwares right out to the edge of habitation, and paintings are made by housewives and ex-presidents, so it seems logical that somebody out there might have gotten pretty good, so good the average sign-painter couldn’t keep up. Once the audience turns art around to embrace what’s on the front, much of this bogus fetish worship dies, and if some forger is actually talented enough to paint like Rembrandt, he won’t have to work in a garage or pretend to be somebody else.

also see -- ‘forging greatness -- getting even’ from 3 15 13

http://owningart.blogspot.com/2013/03/forging-greatness-getting-even.html