The Mind Creative March 2014
Wikipedia lists three varieties of art forgers “The person who
actually creates the fraudulent piece, the person who discovers a
piece and attempts to pass it off as something it is not, in order to
increase the piece’s value, and the third who discovers that a work
is a fake, but sells it as an original anyway.” If art forgery can be
labelled as a manifestation of creativity then the first variety from
the above definition suffices all the needs of the creative mind.
In the centuries gone by, art was produced more for history and
religion rather than money. The subject matter in those times was
far more important than the artist. Yet, forgery in art can be traced
back to the times when Romans copied Greek sculptors. History
also tells us that copying styles in art was (specially in the
Renaissance years), considered to be more of a tribute from the
student to the master. It was only in the 14th and 15th centuries that
various forms of art came to be looked upon as valuable
acquisitions. In that period, art succumbed to commercialism and
the artist’s name was to be forever identified with the artist’s work
and its value. It was also during this period that fraudulent works
of art started creeping into the market. It might interest the reader
to know that even well-known artists succumbed to forgery. None
other than Michelangelo created a sleeping figure of Cupid and then
applied acidic earth on top to give it an ancient look. He later sold
it to a cardinal, was caught out and had to return a part of the
money!
Art forgery needs a lot of skill and a perceptive eye that can
replicate lines, colours and styles of other artists. Many forgers took
to this dubious form of art driven by their lack of success in the art
market. Many of them produced forgeries from borrowed or stolen
paintings. An extraordinary example is that of a self-portrait by
Albrecht Dürer (displayed by the Nuremberg Town Hall since the
sixteenth century) which was loaned to the painter Abraham
Wolfgang Küfner in 1799. Küfner simply made a copy of the original
painting and returned the forged piece to the museum! The forgery
was discovered years later in 1805.
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