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Imitation in the Renaissance. Jacopo di Poggibonsi's adoption of figural types from works by Fra Filippo Lippi bring up the issues of imitation and forgery in art. Although in the 21st century we as viewers and critics generally conceive of artistic imitation as an artist's lack of creativity and originality, Renaissance thinkers held a different opinion. In fact, the French word Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age means, "rebirth. Many artists, in all sorts of media, engaged in imitation of the antique styles and pieces. The fine arts in particular are laden with imitations, especially in the areas of painting and sculpture. Renaissance artists not only imitated Classical forms, but also each other's recent works. The Latin terms imitatio and aemulatio were coined in discussion of the contemporary reaction to and adoption of antiquity. While our culture today seems wrapped up in the importance of idolizing names instead of worshipping art, 1 artists in the Renaissance were much more focused on reviving and exploring a genre than seeking their own fame and fortune. Thus, imitation was not seen as negative and unoriginal practice, but, rather, as a great artistic challenge. It is important to make these cultural distinctions in order to gain a better understanding of how the line between stylistic imitation and deliberate, corrupt forgery or "copying for profit" has been altered and redefined throughout history. Art Forgery in Today's Terms A forged work of art can be defined as possessing "the intent to deceive, usually for financial gain, by proffering an art object as representing something other than it is. A Brief History of Forgery Throughout the entire history of art, forgeries have been made Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age the market accommodated and creative works were desired for collection. The Romans copied and adapted Greek sculptures, many of which were believed to be originals in later centuries. Today these "copies" are in museums, valued for what they are - art - understood both by their imitative nature and Roman context. Example of an easily copied Roman coin. One of the earliest forms of forgery was coin counterfeit. Copies were produced by making castings from molds of original coins. Also, some of the original dies were found and used to strike unauthorized issues. Various Byzantine emperors debased their coinage with base alloys--this dilution being the new and improved form of deception--and coins were even produced in base Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age and gilded in order to be passed off as solid gold. Counterfeit coins were made for a different type of individual profit by Jean Duc de Berry of France An art patron and coin collector, he commissioned modern copies of old Dutch and French coins to fill in gaps in his collection. An interesting modern twist on currency forgery has been made by J. Boggs, a contemporary artist. He uses his masterpieces, which resemble American currency, in exchange for goods and services. This form of forgery eventually led to the forging of works of art for profit and also exhibition. Even the highly esteemed Michelangelo had forged an "antique" marble cupid for his patron, Lorenzo de' Medici. The forgery of classical images continues in our own era. Renaissance painting especially has a permanent place in modern forgery. Otto Kurz expands on this as he recalls a recent summer day's excursion into the streets of the art district of a town in Italy: The forgers who did and do their utmost to keep pace with the demand fully avail themselves of the great advantages offered to them. Every early picture of the Italian school, and be it of the lowest artistic quality, is eagerly Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age for, and commands a high price. There is no need to produce masterpieces. We hardly ever find spurious Giottos or Duccios, while the number of dubious works by the 'minor masters' is constantly increased. The task of distinguishing between genuine and spurious pictures is particularly difficult. Genuine Trecentist or Quattrocentist Madonnas of fifth-rate quality may possess nearly all the unattractive features characterizing their counterfeits. Their colour scheme may be unrefined, faces and hands badly drawn, facial expression and gestures may be pettish and affected. The sad thing is that objects of so poor artistic quality should be such favorites with collectors. Normally, Jacopo's copying of figural types by Lippi would not have been considered inappropriate within the context of Renaissance Florence. However, because each of these artists was working for families Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age for political power, the issue took on a larger power struggle. The Medicis perceived Jacopo as a threat to Lippi and thus his otherwise innocent imitation took on Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age sinister quality. Although Jacopo was not engaged in a greedy pursuit of monetary gain, his works tread the fine line between imitation and forgery. Although he was doing more than just "developing" or "practicing" a style, he was not technically a forger bent on making his fortune on someone else's work. Jacopo is a great example of how difficult it is to grapple with the issues of imitation, emulation, and forgery in different cultural contexts. Forgery in the Modern Era. Perhaps the most prolific production of art forgeries has occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries during periods of avid collecting, when profits for forgers have proven astronomical. Ruchomovsky was commissioned to execute a number of works in the antique manner by unscrupulous dealers, who then sold the objects as antiquities. The Italian artist Giovanni Bastianiniin the third quarter of the 19th century, executed in good faith a number of fine sculptures in the manner of Donatello, Verrocchio, Mino de Fiesole, and other Italian old masters, sculptures which were subsequently sold as genuine to reputable museums, including the Victoria and Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age Museum in London and the Louvre Museum. Perhaps the most famous master forger of all time was Alceo Dossenawho successfully produced sculptures of such high quality that they were accepted as genuine by many art critics, museum directors, and famous collectors. Apparently, Dossena, a master artist, did not know he was defrauding a third party, as he merely supplied work in various styles: Archaic, Hellenistic, Roman, Gothic, and Renaissance. When he discovered that a Madonna and Child he had sold for 50, lire was in turn sold for 3 million lire, he stepped forward and proclaimed that the works were modern. Bastianini's Portrait of a Lady created in imitation of classical styles and believed to be an authentic antique by experts. Of almost equal notoriety is Hans van Meegeren who painted a number of fake Vermeer's and Pieter de Hooch's that were accepted as genuine by eminent art critics and sold to important collectors and museums for fabulous sums. In facing prison charges, he confessed to forging the painting himself. Authorities did not believe the painting to be fake and so van Meegeren painted another "Vermeer" before their eyes to prove it. Perhaps the most provocative contemporary instance of art forgery is the questionable Getty Kourosthe authenticity of which has not been resolved. This marble statue in the J. Getty Museum in Malibu may be a Greek original of the Archaic period, or it may be a modern copy. Scholars disagree to the point that an entire colloquium was recently held to solve the problem once and for all - and failed! How can one trust the authority of a document on the web, when anyone who wishes can put up a website? Thus the two main concerns that the facility of web publication raises are: How can one know that the person that posts the work is actually the author? And how can one know that the information is valid? We lack the necessary safeguards, quality control and regulations in this new age to prevent forgers from wreaking havoc on all of us. Fake or Forged Websites There are several excellent discussions on faked or forged websites. The article discusses imitation-retail websites, in which many people think that they are purchasing items but are instead providing credit card information to criminals. This article also discusses the emergence of private organizations, such as Cyveillance and Scambusters, which are attempting to moderate and verify sites, particularly sites in which the user can make purchases. A valuable resource for verifying whether or not a site is the following from zdnet. It also includes a good, general analysis of the problem of forgery on the Internet. On a more humorous level, the kidnapping of the website of a Turkish gentleman, Mahir, caused an Internet frenzy. Image Manipulation and Distribution Image manipulation is another pressing issue in the age of the Internet. The framework of the Internet vastly increases the facility with which images can be copied, shared, manipulated, and easily distributed. Forged E-mails The next largest issue in our computer-run world is the validity of authorship of electronic mail. Forged messages are, however, used by the 'CancelMoose' to manage spamming and keep it from spreading. It also has some rather disturbing instructions for forging an e-mail, but it remains a good resource on contemporary forgery and authority on the Internet. Lastly, research suggests that e-mail seems to be the prevailing venture for computer crime in the age of advanced technology. Forged mass e-mails are an excellent way to advertise freely. They continue to occur because governments still lack definitive measures of regulation and control over the Internet. An archive from ABCNews. Thus forgery of works and authorship are of utmost concern in this day and age. The Internet and e-mail have exponentially increased the problem of validating the quality of a source or author. How do we know that any website is providing truth and not forged, copied, partly false, or completely false Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age For all we know, each website source provided in this piece could be forged, copied, or a fake. In Praise of the Fake

Shipped to the United States on a diplomatic mission—escorted by the French culture minister and received by President John F. Several months earlier, an up-and-coming Pop artist named Andy Warhol, notorious for painting consumer goods, turned his attention to celebrities, including Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Instead of painting their portraits by hand, he adapted a technique from commercial printing, in which a photographic image could be transferred to canvas by pushing paint through a mechanically produced silk-screen template. Any photo could be replicated, including those in newspapers, favorite sources for Warhol since they reinforced the relationship of his paintings to mass media. The newspapers might even give him ideas, suggesting popular subjects. And in the winter offew subjects were more popular than the touring Mona Lisa. Warhol could produce her likeness in mere minutes, a silhouette instantly recognizable as a smear of black paint. He made multiple versions in various sizes. Several were diptychs. The title was as sly as his painting was cunning. Warhol gave Marilyn Monroe the same treatment, screening her face repeatedly from edge to edge of his canvas, yet his repetitions of the Mona Lisa were the most provocative expression of his disquieting vision. Unlike Monroe, whose messy life was extensively chronicled, Lisa del Giocondo was known only by her appearance. A single image was the Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age basis of her fame. All surface, no substance, the Mona Lisa was the model celebrity—and an ideal model for deconstructing celebrity in the s. Though not produced under false pretenses, works of appropriation art are fundamentally derivative. Like forgeries, they trade on borrowed status. Their significance emanates from an absent original. And almost always, as in the case of Warhol, those purposes are subversive. Appropriation is a form of critique, a mode of questioning. Yet Warhol was nearly unique in his ability to question more than merely the work he appropriated. Thirty Are Better Than One is not really about the Mona Lisa or even about art, but rather concerns the tortuous relationship between culture and media, a relationship beginning to play out in his own life as he became the first metacelebrity. And byhe was predicting a future in which everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes, a nightmare hybrid of democracy and individualism he personally set out to realize by casting anyone he met, regardless of talent, in his unscripted movies. Appropriation should be distinguished from even the strongest cases of artistic influence. His painting turns on that tradition, rather than being a painting about a painting. Warhol proved that legitimate art could be as powerful as the counterfeit. Yet his achievement also exposes the opportunities squandered by other serious artists, who could potentially have gamed the system but never even tried, preferring instead to produce angst-ridden baubles to be risklessly ogled in museums. Art has a lot to learn from forgery. If artistic activity online and in the street are any indication, radical contemporary artists perceive the Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age of previous generations. Some are attempting to make up for past indolence. One of the most notorious, known only by the pseudonym Banksy, has puckishly taken up where Warhol left off. InBanksy smuggled his painting into the Louvre, illicitly attaching it to the wall with double-sided tape. Within minutes it was found and hustled from view by museum staff. However, the anxieties it elicited cannot so easily be effaced. Where does culture belong? What can art ex press? In the fall ofnearly half a century before Andy Warhol made his Mona Lisa silk screens, Marcel Duchamp bought a postcard photograph of La Gioconda from a Parisian street vendor on the rue de Rivoli. Adding a beard and mustache as well as his own signature, he Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age the card to New York as a gift for his patron Walter Arensberg, one of the first people in the world to appreciate the readymadehis revolutionary new art form. His delight in this undisguised combination of common objects led him to more outlandish productions, most famously an upturned urinal that he signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt and submitted to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in Manhattan. In retaliation, Duchamp and a couple of collaborators published an unsigned editorial in a little magazine called The Blind Man. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object. Fountain redefined art, rejecting craftsmanship and sanctifying curation. And the idea of Fountain was to enact that redefinition. In that respect, Fountain was an ideal choice. Even the word urinal was considered indecent in ; public display of the porcelain bathroom fixture would have been nearly pornographic. He finished the thought first broached by Fountainthat authorship was entirely a matter of proclamation and that even the most famous of images could be appropriated as a new artwork because the act of appropriating it would give it new meaning. If Fountain challenged the conventional notion of art, L. And almost immediately, the opportunity suggested by Duchamp was seized by his friend Francis Picabia, who decided to print the rectified readymade in his journal Since was printed in Paris, and Duchamp and his postcard were already in New York, Picabia simply bought another reproduction of La Gioconda and drew in the mustache himself. He forgot the goatee. Given that Duchamp was a cofounder of the Society of Independent Artists and knew the other personalities involved, he must have anticipated the hostile reception his pseudonymous submission would receive and even hoped for the rejection. Exclusion from the context of exhibition contributed to the context of rebellion. As antiart, L. His readymades upset tradition to find a way forward. The way he found was so open-ended that his readymade art could be readily remade to support any message, even those he might be inclined to oppose. That open-endedness has made Duchamp irresistible to artists ever since. For the appropriation artist, he might even be said to have created those conditions. Inas Andy Warhol turned his attention from the Mona Lisa to Day-Glo hibiscus flowers, a young artist named Elaine Sturtevant asked to borrow some of his silk-screen templates Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age that she could take up his process and make paintings identical to his. Warhol was happy to oblige. Sturtevant had her first solo show the following year. At the Bianchini Gallery in Manhattan, she exhibited several Flowers remakes, as well as her reiterations of paintings by artists including Jasper Johns and Frank Stella. Not everybody was so generous. Though her case was tenuous, given how completely he transformed the image, he chose to settle out of court with a cash payment. He had Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age interest in interrogating intellectual property law and, whenever possible, made future silk screens from his own photos. She objected Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age their assessment, arguing that Pop dealt only with surfaces. The postmodern art critic Douglas Crimp was similarly motivated inwhen he curated Pictures at Artists Space in Manhattan, the first exhibition to explicitly present appropriation art as a movement. Yet the Pictures artist who was most inspired by the exhibition and who most exhaustively examined the implications of appropriation was Sherrie Levine. InLevine rephotographed a couple of dozen photographs originally taken by Walker Evans in Sturtevant made these comments to the painter Peter Halley in a September Index Magazine interview, sounding the same argument she had been making for four decades. During that time, she never stopped appropriating. Since the rephotography was completely mechanical, her entire creative role was the act of appropriation. Levine concurrently pursued contradictions in other media. For a Hunter College exhibition on the theme of repetition, she redrew a drawing by the Russian Suprematist Kasimir Malevich, copying it six times with such precision that each of her derivative originals could not be distinguished from the others. Inshe began casting urinals in bronze—the preferred material of high art—and setting them on pedestals with titles such as Fountain after Marcel Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age. Again and again, Sherrie Levine has entered into dialectics with art of the past, questioning conventional assumptions about originality and creativity and interrogating the meaning of art. Often subtle, always smart, they elaborate Duchampian riddles more imaginatively than the work of Brauntuch or Sturtevant. Yet ultimately they fall into the Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age rut. Duchamp made art about art to question what art was about. Even ina decade after the advent of Cubism, art was severely constrained by tradition, which limited the creative potential of artists. Readymades were instruments of freedom, and to a remarkable degree, they emancipated artists and liberated institutions. By the s, an artwork could be an environment, a happening, or even a concept. Yet all too often, the environment, happening, or concept would be about art. Appropriation is the epitome. The readymade has liberated artists to incarcerate themselves in their own hall of mirrors. The realm of self-reflexive art is an insular space, comfortably detached from broader society. Both artists and society may appreciate that safety, but it denies everyone the subversive function that art ought to have in our culture. The readymade has been counterproductive. At its best, the game could at least be played with a sense of irony. Publicly withdrawing from art to play chess in the s, Duchamp may have been tacitly acknowledging the readymade stalemate. Or his retirement—which was hardly permanent—can be read as a new gambit. To rejuvenate art, people had to stop behaving like artists. Boggs was behaving like an artist when they learned that he was making money. On October 31,three inspectors from Scotland Yard raided an exhibition of his currency at the Young Unknowns Gallery in London and placed him under arrest. Though his banknotes were drawn by hand, bearing his own signature as Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age cashier, the British government pressed charges under Section 18 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act, threatening to end his career with a forty-year prison sentence. Eventually, Boggs was acquitted. In truth, the threat posed by his art had nothing to do with counterfeiting. If the Bank of England had reason to be anxious, it was because people knowingly accepted Boggs bills in lieu of banknotes. At a Chicago diner one day, he ordered a doughnut and coffee. The waitress noticed, too, and liked it so much she wanted to buy it. Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age - Jonathon Keats - Google книги

The prolific forger whose fake 'Old Masters' fooled the art world. Written by Christy Kuesel. This article was published in partnership with Artsy, the global platform for discovering and collecting art. The original article can be seen here. Art dealer Eric Hebborn had a golden rule: He never worked with amateurs. Anyone looking to buy a painting or drawing from his business, Pannini Galleries, needed to be someone who specialized in art, who believed themselves able to tell if a work was a genuine Brueghel or Van Dyck. And if after they took that artwork home or sold it to another gallery or a museum, it turned out to be a fake, well, that was on them for failing to recognize a forgery. Hebborn, who died inis widely considered to be the greatest art forger of modern times. By his own estimate, he created over 1, forgeries. Hebborn's upbringing combined his astonishing artistic talent with his limitless capacity for mischief. At the age of 8, he was unjustly accused of playing with fire -- he said he responded to this allegation by actually setting his school ablaze. He picked up additional skills in imitating the Old Masters by working as an art restorer after he graduated. Hebborn later opened Pannini Galleries with his longtime romantic partner Graham Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age and developed personal and professional relationships with a number of key figures in the London art world, including art dealer Hans Calmann, and Christopher White, a specialist in Old Master drawings at the oldest commercial gallery in the world, Colnaghi. Hebborn famously befriended Anthony Blunt, an art advisor for Queen Elizabeth II who later revealed himself to be a Russian spy though Hebborn wrote in his memoir that he was unaware of Blunt's spying activities. The year after he opened the gallery, Hebborn moved to Italy. Insisting he was not a criminal, Hebborn subscribed to his own moral code. He let experts make their own opinions about his work without input from him, and he would charge similar prices for his Old Master forgeries as he did for the works he made under his own name. Refusing to be remorseful for his misdeeds, Hebborn believed the art world itself was to blame. He looked down on art experts who claimed to be able to tell whether a work was genuine based on the style, when it's difficult enough to sniff out a fake using sophisticated scientific analysis. As a master draftsman, he believed the ability to draw was crucial in being able to evaluate a work's authenticity. A forger's downfall. The master forger's attention to detail proved to be his own undoing. Many of his fakes passed muster due to the fact that he used paper from the time period of the artists he was emulating; he similarly mixed pigments himself from materials that would have been available in earlier eras. Colnaghi then issued a statement about concerns over Old Master drawings purchased from Hebborn, though the gallery did not publicly name him. Can artificial intelligence produce a masterpiece? In a letter to The Times of London inHebborn wrote: "Instead of stressing how clever the possible imitations are, it might be more rewarding to examine the abilities of those who made the attributions and on whose Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age large sums of public money were spent. The Colnaghi incident didn't slow Hebborn down; he claimed to have made another forgeries after he was exposed, and sold them to dealers who were perfectly willing to accept works of questionable provenance. In some cases, these dealers even asked him to "find" Old Master drawings, which he forged and then sold to them. The legacy of fakery. Hebborn was never charged with any crime. His appearance in the BBC documentary was among his first steps into the public eye, followed by the publication of his memoir "Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger" that same year. He charged Sotheby's, Christie's, Colnaghi and his friend Hans Calmann with subpar expertise that allowed his works to Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age their way into some of the most notable art institutions in the world. In his memoir, Drawn to Trouble, Eric Hebborn claimed he forged this etching, which ended up in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. Both the museum and Hebborn's former romantic partner dispute this account. But the mystery didn't end there: Plenty of museums dispute the fact that works hung in their galleries are actually fakes. Both the J. But in the absence of scientific evidence, we may never know how many museums still proudly display genuine Hebborns, attributed to someone else. Peter Gerard, a filmmaker working on a Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age about the master forger based on Hebborn's memoir, thinks his story is still relevant in this "era of questionable authenticity Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age images. But Hebborn scoffed at experts long before the dawn of the "Post-Truth Era. The man on the phone: What's it like making history's highest auction bid? The mythic art world swindler met an unsettling end; inHebborn was found with his skull fractured in Rome, where he had resided for 30 years. Despite rumors that the mafia was involved in his death, no one has ever been arrested in connection with the crime. Decades after Hebborn's death, concerns over authenticity in the art market remain alive and well. Last month, an Italian painter was arrested in connection to a forgery ring; he stands accused of forging works in the styles of El Greco and Correggio.