CHENNAI: Human ingenuity is unparalleled. The methods employed in duping fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth are even award-worthy. Scams are unearthed on a daily basis. Counterfeit money is everywhere. Adulterated products fill market shelves and forged documents are fiercely argued about in courts. No matter how many reports we read or how informed we are, we can’t help but fall prey to these tricksters on occasions.
You may think the art world is far removed from such impurities. For who would want to take the trouble to copy a work of art so painstakingly, sometimes with greater effort than the original creator ever did? Sadly, forgers have been the curse of the art market for centuries.
The need to create a copy of an original masterpiece many times, stems from a deep-rooted grudge against the system that never gave the perpetrator his due. Take the case of one of the most famous art forgers in history, Han van Meegeren. Feeling humiliated by the lack of interest shown by the critics in his work, the Dutch artist decided to make flawless reproductions of the paintings of the famous artist, Vermeer. He got so good at it that even Vermeer experts declared his paintings as authentic.
No hoax can last forever thankfully and van Meegeren had to confess to his forgery in the aftermath of World War II. So close to perfection was his skill that he had to prove his statement by painting under police supervision!
It’s not just paintings that can be forged. In the late 1980s, Robert Driessen forged at least a thousand sculptures by Giacometti, the renowned Swiss sculptor, once again disillusioned by the dismissal of his paintings by the artworld. He still lives out of reach of the authorities in Thailand.
Then there are those who make brand new paintings of celebrated artists from years or even centuries ago, often creating works which were thought to be lost. Wolfgang Beltracchi and his wife, thus fooled collectors and galleries for years until 2011, when experts found traces of a paint in a 1914 painting which did not exist during that time. In another incident, the chief librarian at the Academy of Fine Arts in China not only stole over 140 paintings, replacing them with fakes, but also sold them for incredible amounts at auctions. Strangely, his fakes were also found to have been replaced by similar fakes in the Academy! The Indian situation is no different.
A multitude of Indian artists have had fake copies of their art circulating in the market. During an exhibition in 2011 in Kolkata, 20 Rabindranath Tagore paintings were found to be fake by art historians. Art forgery thrives especially because these artists are not alive anymore. There even exists a Museum of Art Fakes in Vienna dedicated to the history of art forgery in an attempt to bring on awareness.
What really makes art original then, you may wonder. Every artwork is the unique expression of an individual, which has its roots in the artist’s journey in life. And no forgery in the world can ever fake that!
