Eight of the most notorious art forgeries
Art forgers are cool.
No, I’m not pro-crime, but I think about how much we love the great fictional villains, the geniuses who constantly provide work for superheroes and superspies in their own universes. What makes a great Bond film? The memorable bad guy. What makes a great superhero film? The criminal genius whom the hero has to outthink. We love Wo Fat and Lex Luthor and Goldfinger and, in a way, we kinda root for them.
In real life, most criminals are complete buffoons who get away with their schemes only when law enforcement is overburdened, understaffed, underfunded, or hamstrung by constitutional limitations. But art forgers are an exception.
Art forgers don’t make a living by fooling overworked cops with high school educations, but by outsmarting the people who claim to be the ultimate authorities in their fields. Like aspiring chess champions, they pit their skills against the very best minds in their field. Let’s face it, that is pretty fuckin’ cool. They are real-life supervillains.
And we don’t feel guilty rooting for them because when the forgers win, most of us are unaffected. So they bilk a few million out of some billionaire, or scam some Nazis. Big deal.
(Yes, I know it’s more complicated than that. Just go with it.)
And here’s one of the coolest things about them. We only hear about their failures. How many counterfeit treasures are housed, still unmasked, in collections public and private alike? The legendary fraud Shaun Greenhalgh claimed that some of his forgeries were still out there, fooling the art world. I believe him.
And I don’t think he’s the only one who ever succeeded.
A criminally unknown Orson Welles movie called F is for Fake does a great job of looking at the whole phenomenon of authenticity and at a famous and talented forger, Elmyr de Hory. Same deal as Lee Israel, people will now pay good money for a “genuine” de Hory.
Jason Patric was in a movie called Incognito. I remember really liking it and it certainly started my love of forgery. It is probably painfully 90’s now but it did feature some nice Irene Jacob nudity as well.
Melissa McCarthy starred in a well rated 2018 drama about letter forger Lee Israel called “Can You Ever Forgive Me.” (Melissa McCarthy should stick to making dramas.) I said at the time I read about the film that I’d bet some of her forged letters are worth a lot of money as forgeries.
Don’t forget Whistler’s Mother…