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Tierra Foxworth

May 2nd, 2017

Art 101-201

Art Fakes, Forgeries, and Reproductions

Art forgery is the creating and selling of works of art which are falsely credited to other,

usually more famous artists. It is something that has been happening for at least 2,000 years and

is a huge issue in the art market. Forgeries can come in many forms. They can be exact replicas

of an original work or posed as newly found pieces from a famous artist. Today, with new dating

and analysis techniques, it is much more easier to tell if a piece of art of real or fake. Art

specialists, whom we now refer to as experts, began to surface in the art world during the late

1850s. At that time they were usually historians or museum curators, writing books about

paintings, sculpture, and other art forms. If an art piece is questioned the first thing an expert

would do is look at the pieces provenance. They would be the history of the piece telling who

owned it and where it came from originally. This is not always the most detailed of documents

unfortunately and sometimes more measures need to be taken. Modern microscopy has been

wonders in discovering fake and forgeries. By looking closely at a paint sample from a piece of

work one could tell the date, material used and other characteristics of the piece. This usually

helps determining a real from a fake. There are also techniques using x-ray and infrared

technology to aid in the telling of a piece.

The Romans copied Greek sculptures and called them their own, painter apprentices

would copy the work of their master during the Renaissance, and even people today will try to

pass something off as their own. In the world of art there are three types of people who are
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considered forgers; the person who actually made the fraudulent piece, the person who discovers

something and tries to make it into something that it is not, or the person who knows that a piece

is not real and tries to sell it as if it was. During certain eras in our world this would be

punishable by jail time or even death, today it is punishable usually by jail time and a hefty fine.

Copies, replicas, reproductions and pastiches are often legitimate works, and the

distinction between a legitimate reproduction and deliberate forgery is blurred. Artists who did

prints for example, over the years did many reproductions of their images, sometimes thousands.

In order for something to be a legitimate reproduction though the original artists either performs

of oversees the reproduction process and examines each individual print.. He or she then signs

each one and gives them an edition. There must be a certain amount from the beginning of the

process that the artist intends to create. Once the entire lot is done the original print surface is

then destroyed to avoid forgeries.

An art forger must be at least somewhat proficient in the type of art he is trying to

imitate. Many forgers were once fledging artists who tried to make a name for themselves in the

market but couldn't, and eventually resorted to forgery. Sometimes, an original item is borrowed

or stolen from the owner in order to create a copy. Forgers will then return the copy to the owner,

keeping the original for himself. In 1799, a self portrait by Albrecht Dürer which had hung in the

Nuremberg Town Hall since the 16th century, was loaned to Abraham Wolfgang Küfner (de).

The painter made a copy of the original and returned the copy in place of the original. The

forgery was discovered in 1805, when the original came up for auction and was purchased for

the royal collection. Forgers usually copy works by deceased artists, but a small number still

copy living artists. In May 2004, Norwegian painter Kjell Nupen noticed that the Kristianstad

gallery was selling unauthorized, signed copies of his personal work. American art forger Ken
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Perenyi published a memoir in 2012 in which he detailed decades of his activities creating

thousands of authentic-looking replicas of masters such as James Buttersworth, Martin Johnson

Heade, and Charles Bird King, and selling the forgeries to famous auction houses such as

Christie’s and Sotheby's and wealthy private collectors.

Claims have surfaced that art dealers and auction houses have been overly eager, by

accepting forgeries as genuine, and selling them quickly, to turn a profit. If a dealer finds the

work is a forgery, he may quietly withdraw the piece and return it to its previous owner, allowing

the forger an opportunity to sell it elsewhere. Some forgers have created false paper trails

relating to a piece, in order to make the work appear genuine. British art dealer John Drewe

created false documents of provenance for works forged by his partner John Myatt, and even

inserted pictures of forgeries into the archives of prominent art institutions. In 2016 Eric Spoutz

plead guilty to one count of wire fraud related to the sale of hundreds of falsely attributed

artworks to American masters accompanied by forged provenance documents. Spoutz was

sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit the $1.45 million he made from

the scheme and pay $154,100 in restitution.

Experts and institutions may also be reluctant to admit their own fallibility. Art historian

Thomas Hoving estimates that various types of forged art comprise up to 40% of the art market

today. The Museum of Art Fakes is a museum of faked and forged artworks that opened in Vienna,

Austria in 2005. This small, privately run museum in the Landstraße district is the only one of its

kind in the German-speaking world.mThe exhibits include works by the renowned Vermeer-forger

Han van Meegeren and the British art restorer Tom Keating, who claimed to have faked over 2,000

works by more than 100 different artists and deliberately inserted "time bombs" and anachronisms

into his paintings. Also on display are items produced by Konrad Kujau, creator of the fake Hitler
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Diaries, as well as works by David Stein, Elmyr de Hory, Eric Hebborn and Lothar Malskat. In

addition, the museum presents information on the history of the most famous forgeries, and the

sometimes very dramatic fates of their creators.

Sean Greenhalgh, along with his mother Olive, 83, and father George, 84, forged

sculptures, paintings, and rare artefacts for nearly two decades, including replicas of LS Lowry,

Barbara Hepworth, and Paul Gauguin's works. The Greenhalgh's art forgeries produced and sold

over the previous seventeen years were worth approximately $11 million. The most expensive

and well-known forgery the family, known as the Bolton Forgers, ever pulled off was fooling the

Bolton Museum into purchasing a fake Egyptian sculpture, the Amarna Princess, for $440,000.

Experts believed the sculpture dated back to 1350 B.C. Scotland Yard sentenced Greenhalgh to a

four year, eight month prison sentence.

Nineteenth and twentieth century critics describe the 1800s as the "golden age" of

forgery. They had experienced a massive increase in the productions of fake art. They believe it

happened because there was a rising demand for artwork from the past for museums and private

collectors. People were willing to pay huge amounts of money for art just to display in their

houses. It was almost seen as a competition to see who has the best or most expensive pieces.

This caused people to see a means to make money and did so no matter the consequences. They

would see which artists were being paid for the most and who wanted what more and what were

they willing to pay. They could easily learn through artists journal and news, how to produce a

fake and how to pass it off as real.

Art fakes, forgeries and reproductions are all part of a subject that is sensitive. Some

people or critics believe that the fakes should be just a prized as the originals despite the

deception that came from their creation. They say that for someone to make a fake and have it
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get through the eyes of so called "experts", then they are considered just as important and a piece

of art itself. No matter the case, art fakes are still a huge issue in the art market and one can only

guess on the future of the issue.

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References

"Art forgery." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Apr. 2017. Web. 02 May 2017.

Briefel, Aviva. The Deceivers: art, forgery and identity in the nineteenth century. Ithaca,

London: Cornell U, 2006. Print.

FutureLearn. "Using science to detect art forgeries - Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime -

University of Glasgow." FutureLearn. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2017.

Getlein, Mark. Living with art. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2016. Print.