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.