The Art of Forgery

"Yes. The different sections of the book are very compelling—crime, greed, whether it’s the money, or revenge… Forgery has been with us since ancient times. Even Michelangelo is alleged to have made forgeries. What’s interesting about today is the uptick in the amount of forgery, and that of course is related to the rise in values, there’s no doubt about that. If you can sell something for 10 million you can invest a million in getting one of the many, technically outstanding Chinese copyists to produce decoys. This is by no means to criticize Chinese artists or their work. But it is striking that Pei-Shen Qian, a Chinese painter working out of Queens, managed to hoodwink, over a number of decades, buyers of high-end art, and maybe the Knoedler Gallery itself. The gallery have always claimed they were taken in by the forgeries as well, but as they have settled all the lawsuits bar one, there hasn’t really been a conclusive finding about this. Noah Charney points out that it’s not all big ticket artwork being forged. You’ve got people who are just forging for money by making some cheap prints. Everyone hears about the high-priced forgeries, things that hit the headlines, but actually there’s a huge number of forged prints being made and sold. Nowadays, printing techniques are really very sophisticated. It’s now very difficult to tell the difference between a forgery and an original. These forgers are just in it for the money, selling their counterfeits over the internet. “For a start, the victim is art history itself” At the other end of the scale, particularly for Old Masters, it’s not just for greed, it’s also making a point, proving that you can do it and proving that you can hoodwink supposed connoisseurs. In fine art, the term “Old Master” traditionally refers to great European painters practising during the period roughly 1300-1830. In addition there is an element, which Noah Charney points out, that though it’s considered a victimless crime, it’s not. For a start, the victim is art history itself. When people actually go in, and forge provenances the way John Drewe famously did, they corrupt our knowledge of art history. I think this notion of these forgers being folk heroes, of being Robin Hood figures, is very unfair. To my mind they are not folk heroes—they’re villains. Robin Hood supposedly robbed the rich to pay the poor. Forgers are robbing the rich; they aren’t paying the poor…. I don’t think that forgery is going to peak out. An interesting case is ongoing at the time—it concerns a man called Giuliano Ruffini, who has handled some quite spectacularly good apparent forgeries of Old Masters. There’s a Hals, there’s a Gentileschi, a Cranach and there’s a Parmigianino—all under suspicion. And in some of the cases the experts disagree—for example, the Gentileschi was exhibited at the National Gallery. Forensics is part of the solution, and technology is improving, which will make it more difficult for forgers. But it’s not necessarily going to stop them, because of the money involved, and also because of the motivation of some collectors. They’re not necessarily going to take their work to be examined. What is more, while science can prove, in most cases, that something is 100% a forgery, it can’t prove that something is 100% genuine! Who held the brush in the case of an Old Master? The artist, or a talented assistant in his studio? The situation is complicated by the fact that workshops—such as Rubens’—employed lots of assistants. How much was Rubens by himself? Today’s artists don’t always make a work of art themselves; they might just give instructions. This has notably been a problem with the Warhol estate, particularly that series of works that were first accepted as original, and then rejected. I think that the market will always prize, for example, Damien Hirst’s early spot paintings, because those are the ones Hirst was actually involved with. A vast difference in prices reflects that. It’s true that Damien Hirst, when he produces what he produced in Venice, isn’t forging himself—he’s producing luxury goods. Of course, counterfeiting is the bane of the luxury goods industry, absolutely. Interesting you should say that. We see a lot of art world startups using Blockchain technologies to actually produce their own cryptocurrency. One of them is actually called “Art”, which is extraordinary. Art world people who are selling using Blockchain or working with it in some way claim that it’s going to contribute towards more transparency, which isn’t something that the commercial side of the art world likes, necessarily. Lack of transparency can be good business when dealing with the class of courtiers, dealers and curators. The idea is that once you put information on to the Blockchain about a work of art, then that is secure and a complete representation of provenance and ownership. The whole point, of course, is that it’s a decentralised register—anyone can access the information. I think it still needs to play out a great deal, until we see exactly how Blockchain could benefit the art world. I think it could definitely be of a benefit to living artists. Where they can make a work of art, and then they can put it on the Blockchain, and that will enable them to protect their own intellectual property. If fakes are produced in the future, this technology will enable one to go back and compare. So digital technologies like Blockchain, from the point of view of new artists, could actually be rather a good thing. It does not, however, necessarily assure an art work’s value. “Art world people who are selling using Blockchain or working with it in some way claim that it’s going to contribute towards more transparency” They’re like giant bank notes, as you say. But the thing with cryptocurrencies is they’re not actually underpinned by The Federal Reserve of the United States America, or by a government or some higher authority. You can completely lose your money if you get involved in some of these newer cryptocurrencies being produced. There is a parallel here to works of art: I personally think that, although we probably won’t be around to see it, in a few decades, a great deal of work by Damien Hirst and Company will be virtually unsaleable. I think there will be a massive devaluation because there’s just so much of it. It’s all being sustained at the moment by demand, but markets are cyclical, and always have been. And fashion is fickle."