The Issues of Authenticity: Art Forgery

    It is a known fact that museums across the world display various beautiful works of art by famous artists, old and new alike. Walking amongst the decorated walls and aisles and gazing upon the talent and majesty of the works, it sparsely occurs for anyone to believe that, perhaps, these pieces of arts' origins were, in fact, false. Sadly, throughout history many forgeries have unknowingly been portrayed in museums as an artist’s original piece, bruising the credibility of the museums and casting doubt and suspicion on the pieces therein. While technologies such as x-rays and special gases have been created and used to help single out these fabrications, it is a double edged sword that also advances the ability to create even more convincing fakes.

What is Forgery?

Before going any further, one must ask the question: what is art forgery? As Paula Cohen puts it in her Article, “The Meanings of Forgery”,

"The philosopher Nelson Goodman has explained that representations can be delineated into two kinds: allographic (works that are based on a notation that exists outside the representa- tion itself) and autographic (works that have no antecedent notation and exist as singularities) - and that only autographic works can be forged. Thus, one can forge a painting or sculpture, a signature, an original manuscript, or, for that matter, an identity (though once the human genome has been thoroughly mapped, this may change). One can not forge a novel, a piece of music, or a play, except insofar as one can forge an original manuscript of these things (the case of the famous Shakespeare forgeries in the eighteenth century).”

There is also a distinct difference between art forgery and plagiarism of a work of art. A forgery is defined as a work of art that is misrepresented in the history of its production by someone to an audience for financial gain (Dutton). Plagiarism is not unlike forgery, however instead of falsifying the history of a work it is instead the ownership of said work that is falsified, and is not always used as a means for financial gain. Art forgery can also be shown in various examples.

Plagiarism: Rashidi Barrett's version (left); the original of Brazilian artist Rubens LP (right)

Forgery: (Left) Johannes Vermeer Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665, (Right) John Myatt Girl with a Pearl Earring 2012

Popular Examples of Art Forgery

A popular example of unknowingly displaying unauthentic artworks would be the Brooklyn Museum in New York. In 1932, the Brooklyn Museum received an astounding 926 pieces of art from the philanthropist Col. Michael Friedsam, a collector of presumably original pieces of Renaissance paintings, jewelry and furniture as well as pottery from the Roman and Qing dynasty (Fanelli). 

After a few decades of receiving the pieces and having displayed many of them, in 2010 the museum’s growth in ability to identify authenticity had revealed that 229 of the donated pieces were either forgeries, fakes, attributed to the wrong artist, or were simply too poor of quality to exhibit any further (Fanelli). 

Fake coptic sculpture of a woman acquired by the Brooklyn Museum in the 1960s

A year before in 2009, the Brooklyn Museum displayed an exhibit entitled “Unearthing the Truth: Egypt’s Pagan and Coptic Sculpture”, where a third of their collection of coptic art, in which they were considered to have one of the largest collections of in the world, were revealed to be fakes (Thomas). These exhibited forgeries are not limited to a single continent however, even existing in France, home of the famous Louvre. 

(Left) Forgery attributed to Lucas Cranach (1950), (Right) Lucas Cranach’s Venus (1531)

In a gallery in Aix-en-Provence, a painting of Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder was revealed to be a modern forgery in 2015, and was only revealed as such by an anonymous tip to the french police (Subramanian). While the old masters are the most popular targets for forgeries, the problem arises in contemporary works as well. 

Front and back of forged Damien Hirst Spin Painting

In 2014, pastor Kevin Sutherland was convicted for trying to sell two forgeries of the contemporary artist Damien Hirst’s paintings, specifically from the “Spot” and “Spin” series (James C). While Sutherland was arrested for 2nd degree grand larceny, the actual forger was revealed to be Vincent Lopreto, who distributed these forgeries through eBay with the inclusion of fake documents that deemed the forgeries as originals (James C). 

To have these pieces displayed in exhibitions years before even reaching the expertise needed to reveal them to be forgeries and fakes, some even being modern forgeries, truly shows how indistinguishable forgeries can be and how their creation is still ongoing. However, discoveries of new methods have been made to help in identifying these fakes.

Identifying Forgeries

X-ray of The Wounded Man (L'Homme blessé) - Gustave Courbet (1844-1854).

As technology and methods have grown to make forgeries more convincing, so too have they grown to identify them. A common way of identifying a forgery is to look at past forgeries to discover the process that was used to create the work. Han van Meegeren, a dutch artist born in 1889 and died in 1947, was part of one of the most famous cases of fraudulence and misidentifications of artworks in the last century, and therefore an excellent source to study from (Dutton). In Denis Dutton’s “Authenticity of Art”, she stated:

“This forgery, Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus, was completed in 1937. To produce it, van Meegeren studied seventeenth-century pigment formulas, incorporated volatile flower oils in his pigments to create hardness, and used badger-hair brushes (a single modern bristle embedded in the paint would give him away) on canvas recycled from an unimportant seventeenth-century painting. He conceived a way to produce a craquelure, the fine web of surface cracking characteristics of old paintings, and concocted a plausible provenance for the work, claiming that it had come into his hands from an old Italian family that had fallen on hard times and wanted to dispose of the painting under strict confidentiality” (Godley 1967;Dutton 1983).

X-rays and gases are also somewhat newer methods of identifying forgeries, the x-rays being able to discover if the canvas had a past painting underneath which is common for old masters to paint over unsuccessful works, and gases reacting to pigments and chemicals that were not present or used in the era the painting is trying to mimic. 

Finally, a keen eye is one of the oldest ways of identifying a fraudulent piece, artist experts studying an artist’s techniques, brushstrokes, signature, how their paintings aged and cracked, etc. If one of the many requirements of verification was not met, even slightly, the possibility of a forgery is piqued. With all of these necessities needed to identify a forgery, and yet still some frauds are able to get past, a new, and somewhat controversial, viewpoint on forgeries was created.

Pro Art Forgery?

Some experts convey a different attitude towards art forgeries, instead praising them on their talent and how closely they mimic the originals, as well as holding the belief that authenticity shouldn’t be a major factor in aesthetic value. Aline Saarinen, once a well-known critic of art and architecture, even stated the idea that, “If a fake is so expert that even after the most thorough and trustworthy examination its authenticity is still open to doubt, is it or is it not as satisfactory a work of art as if it were unequivocally genuine?” (Subramanian). Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian British Author of “The Act of Creation”, maintains this belief that forged artwork can be appreciated, stating, “If the forgery is indiscernible from an original (in the case of an identical copy), or if it fits perfectly into the body of work left by an artist, and produces aesthetic pleasure of the same kind as other works by the original artist, then there can be no warrant to exclude it from a museum”(Marantz). Finally, In his article “Art: Authenticity, Restoration, Forgery”, David Scott asserts,

“Mark Sagoff (1978a), in his paper on restoring and reproducing art, suggests that authenticity is a necessary condition of aesthetic value— that a work of art cannot be appreciated simply for its appearance or for the feelings it induces but must be appreciated for other conceptual factors. In practice, this is not always the case, and some admired artworks may indeed be quite recent forgeries, known and accepted as such, but that retain an aesthetic value” (David A. 122)

Art forgery can be seen as many things: a crime, a misrepresentation of an artist, and an admired talent. While technologies will keep advancing and art forgeries and the methods of identifying them will continue forward, it can be assumed that forgeries will continue to be identified. However, the stigma and bans of being shown in museums against them will lessen, and perhaps be celebrated more openly in future exhibits.

Sources:

Scott, David A. Art: Authenticity, Restoration, Forgery. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press at UCLA, 2016. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvdmwx02. Accessed 21 Oct. 2020.

Subramanian, Samanth. “How to Spot a Perfect Fake: the World's Top Art Forgery Detective.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 June 2018, www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/15/how-to-spot-a-perfect-fake-the-worlds-top-art-forgery-detective. 

Dutton, Denis. “Authenticity in Art.” Denis Dutton on Authenticity in Art, 2003, www.denisdutton.com/authenticity.htm.

COHEN, PAULA MARANTZ. “The Meanings of Forgery.” Southwest Review, vol. 97, no. 1, 2012, pp. 12–25., www.jstor.org/stable/43821007. Accessed 1 Dec. 2020.

Fanelli, James. “Brooklyn Museum May Have to Pay Hundreds of Thousands to Store Fake Art.” DNAinfo New York, DNAinfo New York, 7 Jan. 2013, www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130107/prospect-heights/brooklyn-museum-may-have-pay-hundreds-of-thousands-store-fake-art. 

Thomas, Suzie. “Brooklyn Museum and Fake Coptic Art.” Brooklyn Museum and Fake Coptic Art " Trafficking Culture, 2012, traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/brooklyn-museum-and-fake-coptic-art/.

Mckinley, James C. “Pastor Is Convicted of Trying to Sell Counterfeit Art.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Apr. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/nyregion/florida-pastor-is-convicted-of-trying-to-sell-fake-damien-hirst-paintings.html.