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A review by ridgewaygirl
Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats
4.0
If the purpose of contemporary art is to unsettle and to cause anxiety, might forgeries then be true art? asks Jonathon Keats in Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age. Of course, it only achieves its goal when it is revealed to be a fake, which is usually not the goal of the forger. But some, upon being discovered, tell all, or a version of all, in which some forgeries are possibly left unrevealed and fingers pointed in so many directions that museums, collectors and experts are left scrambling.
The body of Keats' book tells the stories of several famous forgers and a history of the roots of forgery, beginning in renaissance Italy, when copies were made of coveted works, leading to arguments later as to which version was the original. In this book, forgers seem to have similar motivations; technically brilliant, but lacking a personal vision or style, these artists were rejected by the critics and art community. They found work as restorers and their dissatisfaction allowed them to justify the deception. When their forgeries were celebrated, they could enjoy a secret laugh at the gullibility of the art community. Of course, revenge is only fun when the targets know they have been duped.
My favorite story concerned the restoration of the Schleswig cathedral in 1937. It had been badly restored in the nineteenth century with significant overpainting and as Lothar Malskat began work, entire frescoes crumbled to dust. So he simply recovered the walls with his own freehand painting. The church's restoration became a Nazi success story, with Himmler having books about the project distributed to schools across Germany. With the reputation of the Nazi party at stake, the discovery of a group of turkeys embellishing a painting supposedly painted in 1300 had to be explained away, turkeys being new world animals. And so a group of German vikings who sailed to the new world and brought back the animals was "discovered", because questioning a Nazi endorsed project was too dangerous.
The body of Keats' book tells the stories of several famous forgers and a history of the roots of forgery, beginning in renaissance Italy, when copies were made of coveted works, leading to arguments later as to which version was the original. In this book, forgers seem to have similar motivations; technically brilliant, but lacking a personal vision or style, these artists were rejected by the critics and art community. They found work as restorers and their dissatisfaction allowed them to justify the deception. When their forgeries were celebrated, they could enjoy a secret laugh at the gullibility of the art community. Of course, revenge is only fun when the targets know they have been duped.
My favorite story concerned the restoration of the Schleswig cathedral in 1937. It had been badly restored in the nineteenth century with significant overpainting and as Lothar Malskat began work, entire frescoes crumbled to dust. So he simply recovered the walls with his own freehand painting. The church's restoration became a Nazi success story, with Himmler having books about the project distributed to schools across Germany. With the reputation of the Nazi party at stake, the discovery of a group of turkeys embellishing a painting supposedly painted in 1300 had to be explained away, turkeys being new world animals. And so a group of German vikings who sailed to the new world and brought back the animals was "discovered", because questioning a Nazi endorsed project was too dangerous.