“Fakes and Forgeries: The Art of Deception”
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut.
May 12, 2007-September 9, 2007
At a time when works of art routinely change hands for sums which, not long ago, might have represented the total book value of large industrial enterprises, it’s fair to ask: why have fakes—good fakes—virtually disappeared? Everyone is familiar with the axiom that money breeds deception and that the bigger the money … the bigger … etc., vide Enron. So, indeed, apart from some petty chicanery by the auction houses, why, in recent memory, has the art world not provided us with a truly grand deception?
The question came to mind in the wake of a small but spicy selection of fakes and forgeries that, until recently, was on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. (Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, “fake” is an object inspired by, and patterned on, a known original prototype, while “forgery” denotes a more direct and exact copy; both are meant to deceive.) The exhibit’s scholarly and thoughtfully prepared catalogue did not, in fact, address the issue: a wretched, soulless, Basquiat imitation got equal billing with the star of the show, Han van Meegeren’s famous “Vermeer” concoction Supper at Emmaus, dating from the 1930s. Various products by other, more recent, celebrity forgers such as Elmyr de Hory, John Myatt, and Eric Hebborn appeared equally squalid when compared not only to van Meegeren but to works dating from that undoubted “golden age”