The Art Of Faking Art

Writen by Michael Russell

It would seem that all art is not truth. Three fake Mona Lisas have been made and sold. The Tate Gallery in London discovered that their archives were tampered with and false documents inserted to "prove" fake works. Just recently, Italian police uncovered more than ten million dollar's worth of fake art sales. Even more disturbing was a former director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art declaring that almost half of the paintings sold on the market are forgeries or semi-forgeries. It seems that fake art has made its own supply and demand and art experts are raking handsome fees for "fakebusting" services.

Vermeer once remarked that as long as there is art, there would be forgeries. The ugly truth that collectors and museums must face is that copying and forging art are inseparable. Even Greeks and Romans produced reproductions so well that today, it is difficult to separate original Greco-Roman work from their copies. Although many people forge art for money and profit, some people also view art forgery as a twisted complement to the original artist.

There have been many famous forgers throughout history, but none as famous as Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, whose reproduction of Vermeer's Disciples at Emmaus fooled even senior art experts. He proceeded to reproduce and profit from his Vermeer copies to he tune of more than $5 million dollar and only went bankrupt because he confessed to making the forgeries later in his life.

Forging art nowadays has become a relatively easy endeavor, in part due to the evolving techniques of the forgers and in part due to the new technology they use to artificially "age" a painting. Forgers learn the original artist's style and match the color pigments he used on his canvasses. Then they create the work using the original artist's brush stroke patterns. Art forgery has even gone as far as inventing new artists with corresponding fake biographies to sell a whole line of artwork. Some art forgery circles have even adopted sophisticated fraud modus operandi that involved inserting professional-looking catalogues and documents into museum archives like the Tate, where ironically, experts go to authenticate art.

Fakebusters, on the other hand, rely on forensic science and police investigators to determine the authenticity of an art piece. They analyze fractions of fingerprints or palm prints that forgers leave on the painting surface, then scan the work with x-rays and UV light (black light) to determine the use of modern fluorescent paint. They analyze the composition of the paint used by the artist by using chromatography, after which a color "fingerprint" of the artist can clearly come through. The process is usually long and slow.

Despite the abundance of fakes on the art market, most buyers do not show any signs of slowing down. This persistent demand has even opened a niche for painters selling "legal" fakes. Customers who patronize these honestly forged paintings are the type who would want to spend a thousand dollars for a painting that looks like the original rather than spend millions on a piece that might turn out fake in future. Forging painters claim that there are many big-name collectors and celebrities who knowingly buy fakes now. What seems to be the most interesting is how well the whole system of fake art survived the crackdowns and how the art business has tolerated the massive amount of frauds that has infiltrated museums and private collections all over the world. A Christie's art specialist calls it "a very, very clever, even artful scheme".

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Fraud