From "Van Gogh or Faux? Weeding Out Fakes Is Starting to Take a Toll. Attributing a work to the artist generally requires authentication by the Van Gogh Museum, but lawsuits and an influx of requests have made it reassess that role" (NYT).
I like the idea of a "theoretical Van Gogh." (It makes me want to craft a joke about a vincentretical Van Gogh.) You can imagine how many people have tried to paint like van Gogh — either to pull off a fraud or just because they love Van Gogh. And here's this guy suing over something he bought cheap that would be worth many millions if it were a real Van Gogh.
He says: "I am sure that my painting is a real Van Gogh. The entire painting radiates van Gogh. Everyone who sees it only thinks of Van Gogh." But that would be the mark of a fake Van Gogh! How would you fake Van Gogh? You'd try to make the entire painting radiate Van Gogh. The curly colorful strokes, the petals and tree trunks, the little man in the field. Everyone who sees it would only think of Van Gogh!
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56 comments:
Keeping fakes from circulating is an important task but led to lawsuits that threatened their broader work
What is this broader work they speak of? My spidey sense is detecting a bunch of Williams art mafia grads raiding the till to give to the Democrats.
If I had publishing access to this blog I would have an Art Fraud tag because this topic has been interesting to me for decades and only gets more interesting as technology improves. The incentive to validate fake art is very high and will always attract the best forgers and the worst gatekeepers. Nostalgia Fraud would also be fun (“baseball given to Albert Einstein by Babe Ruth and signed “To Al, name a neutrino after the Bambino,
Kind of a secret but not really- museums and prominent private collectors have copies made. While the originals sit in archival warehouses the copies hang in galleries and living rooms without shame…and mostly without detection. Professional forgers are good…
People are eternally hopeful that they will happen upon a unique find, an overlooked masterpiece, a "lost" work by a great artist that turns up at an estate sale. It's difficult enough already to authenticate items of value, especially paintings, without great expense for testing that may or may not alter the "original" and devalue it.
When it comes to paintings, you really can't tell by looking if the fake is done well: it can require chemical assays, x-rays, UV photography, etc. So it takes money to prove worth, and expertise beyond the reach of private parties who aren't wealthy. Just wait until someone hooks up a "talented" AI to one of those new biomechanical arms and starts churning out identical copies of masterpieces!
Soon we’ll find out all of Hunter Biden’s art was done with an autopen.
What is it that Salvador Dali said about false memories? That they burned like the brightest jewel, must more brightly than real ones?
In the interest of accuracy (and careful reading): the litigant the article is primarily about (Stuart Pivar) is not the man who said who said, “Everyone who sees it only thinks of Van Gogh.” That was said by an art dealer, Markus Roubrocks, referring to a different contested painting. And in context “[e]veryone” doesn’t mean the man in the street, it means the 10 experts Roubrocks claims have authenticated “Still Life with Peonies.”
It will be 3D printers and AI that will be producing "masterpieces" complete with strokes of the brush and the palette knife, with each individual stroke consisting of artfully blended color, and the question becomes "what's the point?"
How do you do a Turing test for a painting? Soon AI will have absorbed what "makes us human" in the sense of what separates us from the rest of the animals, and we will start thinking of "what makes us human" as the things we have in common with the animals, that are beyond the ability of AI to recreate, or at least beyond our ability to program our computers to mimic.
In the interest of accuracy (and careful reading)
…must be new to NYT…
"I am sure that my painting is a real Van Gogh. The entire painting radiates van Gogh. Everyone who sees it only thinks of Van Gogh."
It doesn't scream Van Gogh to me. I look at it and I see a really bad, amateurish painting. And the artist was supposed to have painted this in the last year of his life? No way. If I was on the jury I would not only find for the defendant, I would want to assess costs to him for wasting our time. Hang it up if you like it.
"It's on the floor because I don't have any wall space for my Van Gogh."
PETERMAN: All right, brace yourself, Lubeck. You are about to be launched via pastry back to the wedding of one of the most dashing and romantic Nazi sympathizers of the entire British Royal family.
ELAINE: I guess I'll just--
PETERMAN: Oh, no Elaine, stay. Lubeck here is the world's foremost appraiser of vintage pastry.
[Lubeck inspects the cake.]
PETERMAN: All right, Lubeck. How much is she worth?
LUBECK: I'd say about 219.
PETERMAN: Ha ha ha ha ha!$219,000! Lubeck, you glorious titwillow. You just made me a profit of $190,000.
LUBECK: No, $2.19. It's an Entenmann's.
PETERMAN: Do they have a castle at Windsor?
LUBECK: No. They have a display case at the end of the aisle.
PETERMAN: Oh, good lord.
LUBECK: You all right, Peterman? You look ill.
ELAINE (singing): Get well, get well soon, we want you to get well. Get well, get well soon we want you to get well.
Still Life With Peonies is way more legit!
"It makes me want to craft a joke..."
I re-crafted it.
I'd written "a vincentical Van Gogh."
Now, to make the joke more understandable, it's " about a vincentretical Van Gogh."
Theo + retical
Vincent + retical
In choosing between flowing pronunciation and visible meaning, visible meaning was the better choice!
Speaking of "theoretical Van Gogh", one of the most interesting movies I've ever seen is "Loving Vincent". It's a 2017 animated film, created by scores of artists that painted almost every scene in the style of Van Gogh. A really fascinating and mesmerizing experience.
Modris Ecksteins had a book out a few years ago about a famous van Gogh forger in the 1920s/1930s. The fake paintings didn't look much like real van Goghs, but the concept of what a "van Gogh" is hadn't fully developed. It seems incredible to us now that the fakes were thought "good," but it still may not have been entirely clear to people just why actual van Gogh's are "good." VvG was a pioneer, an experimenter, and also a late starter as a painter, so conceivably there could have been a lot of botches and blotches in his early work.
"Van Gogh" or "van Gogh" is confusing. Stick with one. Capitalization may be unavoidable in headlines, but there ought to be a standard.
Is the value of a piece of art contained in the work itself or the artist?
Seinfeld episode here.
Interesting sidenote: There really is a J. Peterman catalog company. And the actor who played Peterman now owns half of it.
The Weimar-era faker got the van Gogh style down well enough to convince those who wanted to be convinced but couldn't draw very well.
Article here about how various phony van Goghs ended up on the covers of books about van Gogh.
Very telling that the frequently faked material requiring “ official authorization” ( Warhol and Basquiat) is the stuff that was made cheaply ( silk screen) or by someone with zero talent but great promotion ( looking at B). Both easy to fake because both artists ran off a lot of stuff, hot and fast. ( at least with Warhol he did have commissions).
But the point is that these artists sold their work when they were alive - unlike van Gogh whose output was pretty much his private collection when he died. Who knows which “escaped” when he was alive which adds thrill to the chase to discover a new one.
Oh. And Mr v G had real talent. Unlike most modern “ artists” - aka money laundering conduits for the wealthy.
At Arles in France there are no van Goghs, vincentretical or not ,to be seen, although one can visit the hospital courtyard where he stayed and painted.
The actual Dutch pronunciation of Van Gogh sounds like my grandfather clearing his throat in the morning.
The painting identifies as a van Gogh. Call it a Tran Gogh.
Art as a commodity. Art as a scam. Funny how people can't do anything without turning it into a chase for money. Even our local library books sales are filled with with dollar chasers hoping to buy a used book for $5 and sell it for $10. They dont read them, they just sell trade them.
It reminds me of sports radio, every time I turn it on, they're talking about how much some sports star is asking for $X, or getting $Y, or leaving because he didn't get enough. Or how owner Mr. Z is struggling with the pay cap or demanding a new stadium to make more $$, or worrying the TV network isn't paying him enough.
I find it boring as fuck, but it seems the average fan is fascinated by it. Seems to be the same in the art world.
From the title, I expected it to be about how hard it is for visionary artists these days to get recognized and supported for their visionary art.
"Theoretical" seems like a really weird choice of euphemism for "alleged".
OK, that joke was good.
campy: "Tran Gogh." Chef kiss.
"In the interest of accuracy (and careful reading): the litigant the article is primarily about (Stuart Pivar) is not the man who said who said, “Everyone who sees it only thinks of Van Gogh.” That was said by an art dealer, Markus Roubrocks, referring to a different contested painting. And in context “[e]veryone” doesn’t mean the man in the street, it means the 10 experts Roubrocks claims have authenticated “Still Life with Peonies.”
Thanks. But I won't change the wording of the post, which is "And here's this guy suing" — Roubrocks also sued. I chose to elaborate at that point, not with respect to the guy that, you're right, the article is mainly about.
In HS art class my daughter did a lovely copy of a Manet. It hangs, placed with pride, in our home's hallway. From 30 feet away it looks very Manet-ish. But I'd never attribute originality on that basis, especially when not wearing my glasses.
Vinceretical.
Better, no?
trans van gough - My preferred pronoun is "Original"
I stopped believing in art when I learned that the same painting is worth hundreds of times more if it's actually by the artist, even though the experts aren't quite sure. It's the same damn aesthetic experience.
Maybe they are all fakes. It is not too hard to imagine Theo’s young widow, Johanna Bonger, needing a source of income to make ends meet and conjuring up art work supposedly painted by her dead husband’s dead brother. Mark Twain wrote the 1893 short story Is He Living or Is He Dead? about an artist who fakes his own death to increase the value of his artwork. Faking the art of a dead “artist” is not so far removed.
Roger Sweeny said...
"I stopped believing in art when I learned that the same painting is worth hundreds of times more if it's actually by the artist"
I stopped believing in classic cars when i learned that the same Plymouth is worth MUCH MORE with the original 318 v8 than with a blueprinted 340 v8
Only one person needs to think the painting is authentic: the buyer.
@Althouse, I did not get the joke, but I quickly figured out that you were playing a word game when I googled “vincentical” and its first link was … this post.
Brings to mind one of my favorites:
Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?
Highly recommend!
Forgot to mention: the Jackson Pollak movie mentioned above features one art critic in particular that I believe is the personification of what many here think liberals are. He will be a man you love to hate! I'm not a right-winger myself, and I hate him.
Cueing up "How to Steal a Million" for my evening enjoyment. Thanks, Althouse!
"It's a great van Gogh."
"But who painted it?"
"You don't think I'd steal something that wasn't mine!"
"Excuse me, I don't know what I was thinking."
Vincent's bro was named Theo. I'm sure many of you know that, but still.
Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, famously said 40 percent of all masterpieces are fake. He makes his case is several wildly entertaining books including False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Master Pieces: The Curator's Game.
Earnest Prole: Thomas Hoving is the central-casting liberal type from the Pollock movie. Soon as I saw his name I remembered. Don't know anything else about him, but boy did he come off badly in that movie!
“ Soon AI will have absorbed what "makes us human" in the sense of what separates us from the rest of the animals”
The only thing that makes us human is whether we contain a certain variety of DNA. Nothing else disqualifies a thing as human. You can be dead and be human, or live in a sealed box all your life. So AI is excluded.
We must believe the “science” or the NYT will berate us.
“ False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Master Pieces: The Curator's Game.”
That has to be the greatest book title of all time. But I have seen much better titles on academic papers.
How do you do a Turing test for the real Van Gogh?
-- "If I'm talking to the real Van Gogh, prove it to me now."
-- "I'm sorry, could you say that into my other ear?"
Lazarus said...
”Van Gogh" or "van Gogh" is confusing. Stick with one. Capitalization may be unavoidable in headlines, but there ought to be a standard.
My baseline assumption is that a person named “Van Gogh” is a person whose personal name is “Van” and family name is “Gogh”; and a person named “van Gogh” is a person whose family name indicates an ancestor who came from a place named something like “Gogh”. In Vincent’s case, I assume it indicates someone who Dutchified the name from “von Goch” and came from a place of that name in the German region of Westphalia.
As an artist myself (unsuccessful, not starving), I've pondered authenticity bigly. What makes, say, a painting authentic? The artist that signed the work makes it authentic. Really? Thomas Kinkaid signed all of his paintings but had a stable of artists actually applying paint to canvas. There are several Mona Lisa's hanging on wall and none are signed. Pieter Bruegel, the Elder painted many country peasant scenes and there are copies all over the world. Even in his time, people came to his shop, looked through his catalogue, chose a painting and he, or his son, would paint a copy, almost like Tower of Posters. Heck, even Florence has two David's. Our Statue of Liberty that a French politician demands be returned is a copy. France has a dozen of them dotting the country.
What is a fake art piece? None of them. They all are art (created by man), all are as valuable as the buyer and seller agree they are. If you like it, buy it.
Starting now, artists should self-authenticate their paintings with a thumbprint in the lower right hand corner.
EconProf said...
“Starting now, artists should self-authenticate their paintings with a thumbprint in the lower right hand corner.”
In blood from a pinprick in said thumb.
Plus their true twitter/X account. There are a lot of fake accounts out there.
""Van Gogh" or "van Gogh" is confusing. Stick with one. Capitalization may be unavoidable in headlines, but there ought to be a standard."
The NYT was consistent. I started by following its approach: "van Gogh." But then I saw my tag was "Van Gogh" and I decided to write "Van Gogh" when it was my writing and leave "van Gogh" in the NYT quotes. So first I was consistent with the NYT, then I had a mixed approach based on me being consistent with my own posts elsewhere on the blog. Then I decided to use my convention throughout, and rewrote the NYT quotes as "Van Gogh." But I missed one, and that was probably when you weighed in about consistency. Now, I've put the last NYT "van Gogh" into my "Van Gogh." In short, both the NYT and I have cared about consistency, and the slip-up was mine.
This post made me think of a BBC show called “Fake or Fortune,” which examined painting that seemed as though they might be lost works by masters. I saw perhaps five episodes, probably on a local PBS channel that shows old BBC shows like “Midsomer Murders” and Agatha Christie mysteries starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. In one episode of “Fake or Fortune” three paintings donated to a museum were thought to be fakes but proved by the team to be genuine Constables. But the show that this post calls to mind was about a guy who was sure he had a genuine Chagall, though the evidence (especially chemical analysis of the pigments) suggested otherwise. The owner insisted on sending it to the Chagall Institute in Paris, which not only labeled it a fake but had it destroyed (which they were allowed to do under French law).
Is he living or is he dead? Did the widow have paintings made? Ah, Schrodinger Van Gogh.... the brother confined to the basement.
If you liked "Who the $&% Is Jackson Pollock?" from the above comments, you might also like "Tim's Vermeer," which is a documentary about an inventor who recreates the techniques by which the Dutch painter achieved such photorealistic artistry, and along the way recreates (forges is such an ugly word) his own version of a famous Vermeer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer
If at all possible go see an original in person. The difference in colors from the printed page to the original is breath taking.
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