FALSIFICATIONS
In the art history
The falsifications are so ancient as the art. In the ancient Rome they were circulating silver bowls «Egyptians« made by Phoenicians ready to exploit a fashion. There were done falsifications of works of some Italian teachers of the Renaissance when his authors were still living.
The delight with which the newspapers narrate the discovery of falsifications and forgers makes a detour to the question of an irresistible attraction. It presents forgers to itself like Hans van Meegeren, Elmyr de Hory and Tom Keating like romantic heroes, capable not only of cheating the wealthy and presumptuous ones, but also to sedicentes expert in art, which workmanship reveals fallible good to itself.
As is said «Corot painted 10.000 pictures, of which there is 25.000 in the United States». The prank has his real base. During the last years of the XIXth century, the sceneries of Corot they reached so many popularity, that his falsification received the proportions of handmade small scale industry. A similar test of the popularity of an artist was the one that there gave in more recent epoch the forgers of the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Picasso, and more than one millionaire of the oil tejano has turned out to be forced to admit that a most of his impressionists' costly collection falsifications are.
But the reports on the teachers of the falsification that the press gives are almost always sensationalist exaggerations. The convincing falsifications are extraordinarily rare. Most of the experts are so good as they try. There were those who allowed to deceive themselves for the "Vermeer" of van Meegeren, but they were not all, not much less, and most of the experts doubted the authenticity of "Samuel Palmer" of Keating long before his fraud were putting themselves to the overdraft. The victims of the forgers are most of the times too proud persons to consult an expert or too dumb to buy a picture to a reputation dealer.
It turns out to be extremely difficult to make a falsification only convincing by half. Not few difficulties it already presents the fact of imitating the style of another person. And even more difficult it is to do it using the same type of materials so that it resists a scientific examination. Most of the falsifications would not manage to cheat even a fan provided with an imperfect knowledge of the work of the artist in question.
FALSE OR REAL?
The look of the expert, sensitive one to characteristic peculiar of style of artist, rarely it is allowed to cheat, and in case of doubt, it is possible to resort to the science and to the papers. The science can calculate the antiquity of a painting, of the cloth, of the wood or of the metal; the x-rays can reveal what exists behind the surface. In some cases, the documents can provide a chain of connections that mend us to the past, sometimes, up to coming to the proper artist. The genuine objects, in contrast to the imitations, always have history.
WE RECOMMEND
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Elmyr of Hory |
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He was the most elegant of the sharks. By chance, one of his paintings was sold in Paris as a Picasso: and Elmyr de Hory found the lode. |
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Glossary You Auction |
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Definition of the terms most used in the auctions.
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EVALUATION OF THE WORK OF ART
 to inability to define the artisticidad of an object produced by the man, and that we call conditionally an art, it does that the works of art are valued according to not artistic criteria or esthetic sobreañadidos, especially after the collected work or museada and out of his context, it has lost his functionality. Hence almost all the values sobreañadidos have been born for reasons of the collecting, of the commerce of the art and as a result of the museography.
The antiquity
The historical reflection forces us to consider the ancient value of an object if it has more than hundred years. On this evaluation there has been constructed the whole channel of the commerce of the art of the antiquarians. But the antiquity must not make a mistake with the historicity of an object: the first one is a chronological value and the second one a cultural value (popularly it expresses itself with the saying "not everything old is ancient").
Of ancient other considerations join the value: the origin of the object, because of his owner or exceptional or rare culture; the exoticism and the oddness as for little frequency of the guy or model; the series o belonging to a finished or not set; the unicidad opposed to the multiplicity in the shape of copy or reproduction; the integrity of the entire preserved object, partially or restored. An object is considered to be complete and marketable if it preserves more than 25 % of his first and original integrity. These considerations are evaluations, especially, of mercantile and commercial type.
The responsibility
The recognition of the author of the piece, with signature or without her, increases the evaluation of the work, that every time more of the author depends, since the Renaissance men advise to sign the works. Teacher, workshop, school are staggered values of more at least in such a way that the autentificación of the signature or falsification of the same one provokes a scandal, although more in the commercial world that in the creative one, but it affects also the museográfico.
The price
The final price of the piece depends on two previous ones and on the importance that wants to be offered by the specializing criticism. The price does that the fiction reaches translatable numbers of the following form: the more expensive is a piece, the more artistic it seems. The value of the investment and commerce of the art rests in this beginning: it is an art what costs money and is revalued. The artist triumphs when it has reached certain prices. The reference "value of sales" is the scale of the success of the artist.
The work of art, in his real sense, nothing has to do with the price, because it has no purchasing power. It is possible to steal as maximum, a work, but it is not possible to sell.
That's why the art history, the other way round that the commerce of the art, has to be based on different evaluations: the art has cultural, esthetic and historical value.
FAMOUS FORGERS
Keating
Keating, the English forger more famous of after the war, has denied up to the weariness that it should ever have tried to make to spend his pastiches for works of other artists. Nevertheless, in 1976 an exhibition was celebrated in a gallery deprived of London of «you work recently patrollings of Samuel Palmer». All the exposed works belonged to Keating.
Han van Meegeren
The Dinner of Emaús, of Han van Meegeren, in the style of Vermeer (1632-75) in oil on cloth it is a question of the most obtained falsification of the biggest forger of our time, who so well made swallow the bait to the experts. But it did not manage to cheat all. His temporary success owed partly to the fact of which it painted his pictures immediately earlier and during the Second World war. The unusual circumstances prevented a suitable examination.
Some experts allowed to deceive themselves up to such a point for the falsifications of van Meegeren who were refusing to believe his affirmation of which he had painted them himself (many forgers feel a pathological need to give to publicity his fraud). In 1945 it painted a "Vermeer" under the supervision of the police. In 1947, shortly before his death, it was taken to judgment.
Elmyr of Hory
In the "Woman with hat", of Elmyr de Hory we cannot say that we should be before a falsification, but rather before a bad copy of the celebrated portrait fauve that there did Matisse of his wife (Woman with hat, 1905, private collection). The Hory extravagant one was trying to have sold a lot of falsifications of modern paintings to private collectors, not so much for his personal profit as to reveal the prevailing corruption and avarice in the world of the art. Nevertheless very few were the experts who allowed to deceive themselves for the pastiches of Of Hory. When it became famous, De Hory made the living doing pastiches and copies that he was signing with his own first name.
Lionel / John Constable
A comparison of a scenery of John Constable ("Trees of Hampstead: the footpath of the church", of John Constable; oil on cloth; 91 x 72 cm.; 1821?, Victory and Albert Museum, London), with other of his son Lionel ("In the precincts of Stokc-by-Nayland, oil on cloth; 36 x 44 cm.; c 1820; Tate Gallery, London) demonstrates the easy thing that proves to attribute mistakenly a picture. The scale of colors, the treatment of the sky and of the foliage as well as the approach of the topic turn out to be surprisingly similar in both. Only one inspired picture and a patient investigation can end in a guessed right attribution. |
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Vincent van Gogh 
Collecting
Collecting
Small Art
Actuality 
Confidential
