6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

INTERVIEW «Beauty is the true scandal in today's art»

Wolfgang Beltracchi has made a career as an art forger and was convicted. Now he leads a second life as an artist with his own handwriting. He keeps little of the genius cult - as well as of the international art scene, which celebrates the ugly above all. In a big interview he disenchanted the myths of the art business.

René Scheu 26.6.2018, 05:30 clock

Mr. Beltracchi, when you perform or exhibit, people come in droves. Then fall reliably the predicates "master counterfeiters" or "century counterfeiters". What sound do these words have for you?

Oh. Hm. "Master" is not bad. (Consider.) Look: I see myself as a master painter, that's how I really understand myself, as a master of my craft. I have, I believe, sufficiently proven that I master the subject.

ADVERTISING

inRead invented by Teads

Alone, art is more than painting – or has the 20th century not taken place in your eyes? https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 1/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Yes, yes, something has already happened. And art history is also one of my hobbyhorses. Only, I'm not one of those who think that art has to be ugly and repulsive so that it turns out to be art. That would mean that fine art is not art. I think this idea is completely absurd. Of course, yes, art should be beautiful too. I'll say it in a nutshell: I like beautiful art the best.

With that, you identify yourself as an art nostalgic.

Because of me. Such stencils peel off on me. There are master classes at the colleges of the arts. The students who graduate are master students. That sounds good. But the substance behind the etiquette has long since evaporated. Because no one is more a master today – certainly not at universities. What follows? The graduates are not master class students at all, they only call themselves that.

What do you mean exactly?

The professors know the art of the 20th century, they understand everything possible about everything possible. They are experts in dialectics, highly educated, eloquent. There is nothing wrong with that. Only they do not master their subject anymore, painting.

So art is a higher form of craft for you?

Without crafts no art. It hapers today everywhere the craftsmanship. The students also tell me that when they shout sadly: "Mr. Beltracchi, we have never learned to draw life, we have not practiced anatomical drawing enough." The professors pretend that this craft is backward, art of yesteryear. They pretend they do not want that. In truth, they just can not.

You are a living anachronism!

Is exactly right. That's right, I confess to classical art.

You mean: to a genuine naturalism?

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 2/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Call it what you like it. In any case, there is a correspondence between image and object, and it is the skill of the artist who is able to create this correspondence. In twenty or thirty years, what I'm doing is no longer an anachronism, it will just be a reminiscence. But that does not bother me in the least.

Naturalistic art has an indisputable advantage: it can be shown. And with that she can sell herself. Hardly anyone places installation art voluntarily – this is pure museum art, made for a museum, so to speak.

The museums' stores are crammed full of stuff that does not know where to go. But I have to tell you honestly, installation and video art fascinate me completely. I mean, these are often crazy things. I only find sad that the craftsmanship is forgotten and dies out.

When I go to the Kunsthaus with my children and go through the permanent collection, the little ones are fascinated by all sorts of paintings. The epoch does not matter, they dive into distant worlds. Alberto Giacometti is also still, especially his dog is a must. By contrast, they encounter newer art with incomprehension. They become restless and say, "Daddy, did someone leave something here?"

The art becomes a specialty for art experts at the moment where it is a) no longer beautiful or b) in need of explanation.

The art lovers play the game?

That's how it looks. People like you and me have not understood art for a long time. Nobody understands. The museum and art makers do not even want the commune to understand that. For there it goes – now it comes - to a knowledge of domination, which is reserved for only a few.

And so the kids would be the only ones who say, "Look dad, the emperor is naked!"?

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 3/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Naturally. For who already likes to be a cultural beast? I've been to the Barcelona Art Museum a few times, and every time I've got a depression. The building is really great, but no one goes in there. You feel lonely in the collection, and when you look at the whole work, you come across a kind of artistic permanent charge. At some point you're just sick, you can not do anything. And who wants to feel bad all the time?

In return, hundreds of thousands of people run into the exhibitions with works by the old masters or classical modernism.

They do it for one simple reason: because they just like what they see there. Beauty is the true scandal in today's art.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and standards change with time. Fifty years ago, Giacometti was not considered aesthetically pleasing either.

That may be true. But you do not seriously believe that postmodern brutality will someday be considered beautiful or worth seeing? That remains material for art historians. And why do I sell my pictures so well? Because people say: I like that, I have to. I can not keep up with the production.

There is an aesthetic of reception by the Germanist Emil Staiger with a simple basic thesis: Only when the spark leaps from the work to the reader or viewer, a plausible interpretation gets going. Without this emotion everything is nothing.

Man has to be touched by a picture. If he does not and buys it anyway, he's either a bluffer or a speculator. Both are okay, but both take art ad absurdum.

Many collectors claim that they buy a work only when they relate to it, so the spark has jumped over. So you do not have to care if you have a Max Ernst or a Wolfgang Beltracchi hanging in your living room - because the fact that the work hangs there proves that you have been touched by it.

That's how it should be. But it is not always like that. Rhetoric and reality diverge. Here it shows how hypocritical the whole operation can be.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 4/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

And what about the alleged aura of a work of art?

Nonsense. There is no aura. Benjamin was wrong.

Benjamin defined the aura as "a unique appearance of a distance, as close as it may be". Can not you do anything with it?

No. I've proven by my actions that the aura is not unique – you can make it at will. In this sense, there are neither unique artists nor unique works of art. Today everyone feels like a little genius. The truth is: there are no geniuses – with the exception of very few. That may hurt some, but that's the way it is.

You do not consider yourself a genius?

I reject this predicate completely. I am concerned with ability and talent, in a word: with wealth.

Do you see yourself in a series with counterfeiters like Han van Meegeren, Elmyr de Hory, who received a film memorial from Orson Welles in F for Fake, or Eric Hebborn, the master forger of Old Master Drawings?

Honestly and immodest: I'm a few numbers bigger. My ability goes far beyond their performance, which I acknowledge.

In fact, you have not forged a single existing work by an artist. Rather, they have created images that you thought were missing in the oeuvre of Max Ernst or Heinrich Campendonk, or, positively, had to exist. And then you helped, but you – and that was the Corpus Delicti - signed with a foreign, so wrong name. So you are not a counterfeiter, but a document forger.

That is correct. I was indeed convicted of document forgery and fraud because of false signatures that deceived people and because I sold the pictures under a false name. The matter, however, is more complex than it seems at first glance. After all, many renowned art experts have declared the incriminated works to be genuine. And since the presumed authors could no longer provide any information because they had long since died, these experts are just considered the last instance of truth.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 5/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

They were sentenced in 2011 by the Regional Court of Cologne. They were transferred by a Campendonk, which contained a Titanweiss, which could have made it impossible at the time of origin of the work. Not the experts recognized the image as a forgery, but the chemists.

It was not that easy! In the civil case, all reports have said that the picture is real, despite Titanweiss. Then it became too colorful for the court, and they demanded a top opinion from a German museum director, who was well versed in Expressionism. She also came to the conclusion that this was a real campendonk. Only in the subsequent criminal trial was I convicted because I confessed.

What was the attraction of counterfeiting for you then?

The craftsmanship – the signature – was perfect.B ut there were also numerous chemical expertises, which guaranteed the authenticity of the works. Everyone was euphoric, the museum directors, the art historians, the auctioneers, the collectors – all said: This work has shaped history. And you know silently that you have created the work by yourself. So you wrote history. That knowledge, that certainty, that recognition gave me an eerie kick.

Roger that. But what is the enjoyment exactly? Is it the certainty to be better in terms of craftsmanship than the supposed artist genius? Is it a sense of superiority because you can fool all involved parties?

Of course, I find all the guys ridiculous who say they have a special eye and recognize an artist's handwriting. I also find the talk of the artist genius ridiculous. All this mischievous mastery is a big joke. I like to admit that, but that was not my point. It was a quiet enjoyment. Through my work I have changed the history of art, and I did that only for myself.

But you yourself have taken a position of domination: they have all watched while you could act unobserved.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 6/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

That's true. But you always have to see the starting point. I have the genetic defect that I can recognize artist's handwriting and make it my own. I imagine a picture, I feel into the picture, I penetrate into the subconscious of the artist, without thinking of anything, intuitively, and then I know: that's how I can paint. So I just did what I – and only I – could do.

When did you discover this talent in yourself?

I had it as a kid, but I did not notice it until later. I remember exactly: I saw the first pictures in the museum in Amsterdam. I am half dutch, my grandfather owned windmills. During the holidays we visited the relatives in the north, and they always dragged me to the museum. That was nice. As a ten-year-old I stood before the ice-pleasure pictures of Hendrick Avercamp, and my aunt commented: This artist was deaf and dumb. I thought: man, the poor guy did not hear the sounds that slide skates make, that sh-sh. And yet these pictures evoke exactly such a soundscape. Great! I somehow felt like a soul mate, I heard the picture, the cold, I literally felt it. Later, such pictures were also my first fakes.

Would you say that you are a particularly sensitive person?

I grew up in the Teutoburg Forest. In the first years of my life I only saw forest, next to it in the meadow some cows, I collected wood and fallen fruit with my sister. I met the first car when I was six years old. I felt comfortable in this seclusion. I had very little contact with other children, and I was very sickly, and they avoided me. , ,

, , , were you a kind of modern Kaspar Hauser?

At first. Somehow. But then we moved to a bombed-out settlement in a small town. Everything had to be rebuilt first, it was dull. But suddenly I was confronted with all the influences of modern civilization, with cars and planes, with the radio and the pictures of the television. And this change of location triggered a shock of perception in me.

You do not idealize?

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 7/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

No, that's exactly how it was. I experienced total sensory overload, and there was no night I did not sleepwalk. My parents locked everything off, at night I could only walk in the hall and in the bathroom. For many years, I hardly slept properly, I had several times in cure. It was not until I was 13 or 14 that I learned to handle the impressions by not really looking anymore.

When you portray a person, what do you do?

I'm talking first. If I feel no basic sympathy, I do not paint the person. Once she sits in front of me, very close, very intimate, I act cautiously. I take my time, and I paint what I see.

What do you see?

I see a human, in the true sense of the word. I remember what the teachers at the Werkkunstschule in Aachen used to say: you have to learn to see. But nobody could see, not even the professors. Some saw surfaces, others some art-historical categories. But they did not see the people. In the last six months I have portrayed two people, one of them was an older man, really great. When I showed him the portrait, he spontaneously said, "That's me, that's me. What you do is magic. "That's what touches me, of course.

How many false-signature works did you circulate in your earlier career as a counterfeiter?

Around the 300th

You remember the works?

I guess so. However, I have already leaf through catalogs, and then suddenly startled to say: My God, I had forgotten this work. For example Helmuth Macke. It was there many years ago a retrospective to Macke in the museum in Krefeld. Many pictures seemed familiar to me, because I had made such a small group of works. And now you pay attention: At first I did not recognize a picture, but said to my wife that it had to be painted by a right-handed person, even though Macke was a left-hander. We puzzled briefly, looked at each other – and snorted. That was one of my first pictures, because I have not taken it so exactly right and left.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 8/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

They got themselves on the track. Is there a list of images that you have mistyped?

No. I'm not crazy.

Around 60 of the 300 plants have since been identified. Let's prove the origin of the other 240 with the current state of knowledge because easily?

No. The fake works were only found because they carried a fake sticker of the gallery owner Flechtheim. I created that in 1992. He is exposed as a forgery, but he has also entered the history of art.

And if collectors have a picture with the wrong signature of yours and find a Flechtheim adhesive on it, then. , ,

, , , then they do not come to me with it, but scrape it off.

Do collectors then circulate counterfeit works knowing that they are Beltracchis?

Everything is possible in this crazy world. After the trial, we learned things from the files that we did not know. There are great stories about the art market and its protagonists.

Which one?

Traders and middlemen change the titles of works at will, they also change the provenance by laying new trails when it comes, for example, to looted art. In one of the largest private art collections was a picture, which was originally dedicated to "Else Lasker-Schüler," the former wife of Herwarth Walden, who was Jewish. It was officially a lost work of Campendonk from the year 1914, the title was indeed so handed down. Then it suddenly appeared. The art world was thrilled. In truth, it was not a Campendonk, but a Beltracchi. The picture suddenly had a different name, and Flechtheim's label was gone. That's how it went – and that's how things continue.

So there is tricking according to all the rules of the art?

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 9/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Yes of course! We have never sold to private individuals, but only to dealers and auction houses. In the wake of the bankruptcy, we have notified them that they would like their buyers to contact you if they suspect they have a Beltracchi in their collection. Then I would faithfully provide information. And what happened? A few have contacted each other who wish to have a Beltracchi. Otherwise, nobody was present. Nobody.

What does that tell us?

The works have expertise, they hang in private collections and museums.

And if you see a Beltracchi hanging in a museum, will not you work on your own?

No. I do not want to spoil the good mood of anyone else and do not harm anyone else.

But even if – the curators would doubt your statement. You would have to prove that it is a Beltracchi, and that would not be easy.

I agree. Often there are expert opinions and scientific opinions that authenticate the authenticity of the works. If I doubt that, it means the same: Since one wants to inflate. But I do not want that.

Does it happen that you are credited with the works of great artists that you did not paint?

That's it! An art professor from Heidelberg has written a book in which he identifies works as mine, which they are not. And he has delivered downright outrageous justifications. I had made him aware before the release that I never painted them. The pictures were really bad. The counterfeiter was a not very talented junkie from Berlin. But what did the professor mean? He said I should prove that I did not paint them.

They all confused, the mess is done. To turn it positive and say postmodernly: you have deconstructed the mechanisms and protagonists of the art market. The collectors are often followers, the dealers are dilettantes, the experts are ignorant, the price setters are metaphysicians.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 10/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

That's the way it is. And I can assure you: the whole art elite in Germany hates me.

That does not really surprise you?

I questioned their power of domination. There is this "Art Review" Power 100 ranking with the main protagonists of the contemporary art scene. It's always the same names that frolic around. And the top ranks are not occupied by artists, but by art makers. They need the artists who are in vogue to keep the market going. These creators decide what art is and what is not, what is valuable and what is not, what is sold at the auctions and what is not. They form the bottleneck. The art business is organized in a strong cartel style.

That is now very critical, but in the wind. Because obviously most collectors and art viewers appreciate this operation.

Not quite. Because who does not play along with the galleries, is away from the window. Only the ones who stick to the rules of the artmakers can get to the international art fairs, which are springing up like mushrooms. And those who stick to it also earn their good money. To return to the rankings: All known artists today run factories with hundreds of employees, from Ai Weiwei to Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. They have to, because they supply the whole world with their art. The art scene is international today. The really interesting art, however, takes place elsewhere, in the studios and at the workplaces of 95 percent of all active artists. Only nobody knows. They also do not come to the fairs. You get their works for a sandwich.

Based on Marcel Duchamp's readymade, Boris Groys once defined art as simply as possible and convincing: art is what is in the museum. And what was once there, remains art. Reality, on the other hand, is everything that has not yet been declared art.

Outstanding! It is exactly like that. And the museums are really a kind of sacred buildings today, in which people like the pious pilgrimage once.

According to Groys, it does not matter to the artist how he comes to the museum, through personal contacts, through burglary, through performance, through deception. Either you can do it – or you can not do it.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 11/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

The idea is correct in principle. But in reality, things are much more solid. The big gallery owner tells the museum director: Look, I have a super artist here, do an exhibition, I sponsor it. And, of course, the museum director is at his service. Because both benefit. It's all about a lot of money in the international art market.

Do you have something for money?

Not at all. Money is okay. But you have to see the dimensions to understand the whole operation. The factories convert hundreds of millions, these are real corporations.

And they continue to paint in your studio?

Clear. The creative work must be fun. I am now doing my own art.

Have you also developed your own handwriting?

The recognition I reject completely. Recognition means repetition. And why, please, should I keep repeating myself? I'm a creative person who works with knowledge, ability and the subconscious. I always try new things.

Why do you actually sign your works? Your dream should be to put works into the world that have no author, no sender. Only then will they really stand alone.

That would be my dream indeed. But the buyers would then tag the images with my or other signatures – and we would have a mess again. I would like to avoid that now. That's why I sign all my works very well with Wolfgang Beltracchi.

Together with a Munich patron you have started a project in which you capture 25 crucial moments in art history. And this project is virtually staged.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 12/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Right. I paint 25 Kairoi from 2000 years of art history. These are, so to speak, historical images that never existed. There flows in there a lot of art historical expertise, of scientists, of historians, of me. The project is tailored to me, only I can do this creative work. And people love that. On the other hand, the project is also a burden for me because I am doing something that I have perfected in my counterfeiting career.

You could say: you act as a virtuoso illustrator of art history.

Just. The work is beautiful, it is difficult, and I can do something new. But people accuse me of repeating manuscripts – of all things that I've never just repeated.

The money – the pain money – solves the dilemma?

Money is always good, but money does not solve a problem, it just spills it. The stimulus for me is something else. I rebuild all these images and put them in a modern context. This epoch-making work challenges me – and that's what makes me burn for the cause.

(Wolfgang Beltracchi walks through his studio.)

Look – I've painted Gustav Klimt here, in a special moment that I've come up with, in his handwriting. Klimt is sitting in front of the mirror, his last picture in the background. He gets a stroke, the mouth is open, he is scared to death, the whole scene is represented symbolically. But now I asked myself – how could Klimt have banished the symbolism of death to the screen? And then I painted a second picture, look.

So what does he see in the face of approaching death – are these his children?

I agree. Klimt was a pronounced chauvinist. He had a lot of illegitimate children, of whom he recognized two or three. That was not nice. But morality does not interest me in this context, painting is neither moral nor immoral. I am concerned with the motif and the symbolism. And because Klimt also became a pop icon long ago, I also staged it in Pop Art style à la Warhol, with gold, but also with a bit of diamond dust.

They portray one who never portrayed himself. With this you will raise the Austrian art lovers against you. https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 13/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

Yes, of course, that's the way it is. What can I say? There are many who have painted Jesus Christ. And there is even one who painted God in the Sistine Chapel. Then I have to ask – who is Gustav Klimt, please?

In the background I recognize someone who looks deceptively similar to you.

Caught! That's me.

Why this?

Well, I did that to annoy somebody.

Do you carry private feuds on paintings?

Oh, I would not see that. I just think that creative work must be fun too.

You are a player?

Absolutely. Keep that for minutes: artists are players.

Life as a changeable painter

rs. Wolfgang Beltracchi was born in 1951 in Höxter in North Rhine- Westphalia. In the youth he began to paint, initially unpainted works of old masters, later also Art Nouveau and expressionists for flea markets. He was already in the sixties often in European cities on the go, in whose centers he painted plaster for money. In 1978 he exhibited his first neo- surrealistic paintings at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Despite his success, he was not attracted to the status of an established painter - and he created paintings in the handwriting of well-known artists such as Heinrich Campendonk, Max Ernst and Max Pechstein, whom he inducted into the art market. In 2011, Beltracchi was convicted by the district court of Cologne for commercial gang fraud. Already in custody he works on his second life as an artist. He has depicted his life in the book "Selbstporträt" (Rowohlt 2014). Wolfgang Beltracchi lives and works with his wife Helene in Meen. The next exhibition entitled "Inquisition and Angels" will take place in 2019. More underwww.wolfgang-beltracchi.com

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 14/15 6/28/2018 "Beauty is the true scandal in today's art" | NZZ

The aura of the artwork is dead. Long live the charm of money Why are people banned from Jeff Koons sculptures? Are you touched by the aura of the work? No, they see the price tag.

Sarah Pines / 19.6.2018, 06:30

So much bad art! But why should one recognize them? Indications for bad art can be found.

Christian Saehrendt / 10.6.2018, 05:30

Copyright © Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Eine Weiterverarbeitung, Wiederveröffentlichung oder dauerhafte Speicherung zu gewerblichen oder anderen Zwecken ohne vorherige ausdrückliche Erlaubnis von Neue Zürcher Zeitung ist nicht gestattet.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/schoenheit-ist-in-der-heutigen-kunst-das-wahre-skandalon-ld.1397738 15/15