IIRC, a film we saw in junior high (1960s) about van Meegeren said that many people who'd bought his fakes still treasured them, even after exposure. I suppose that could be mere face-saving, but it seemed sincere, and his painting were beautiful. Sorry to learn he was such a Nazi-ite.

There's a good Perry Mason episode about art forgery, "The Case of the Purple Woman."

The forgers are artists in their own right. They aren't contributing to art in the traditional sense, but they advance the game pieces in their own way. Andy Warhol put his name on just about anyting and claimed credit for it, whether it was his work or not. Consider the movie, "Andy Warhol's Bad." It was the work of his partner at the time, Jed Johnson. He also had numerous people working for him over the years at the Factory and he just signed the stuff.

I cut the forgers you brilliantly described a generous bit of slack for having personal problems, which obviously got in the way of their life, not to mention their artist production. Had they been more in the clear, mentally, I have no doubt they could have produced some good quality, unique work. Possibly great work.

In the end, it's really quite funny.

Great art is a lie that tells the truth.

Which leaves out the fakers, and most other art too.

Great article, but I have only one minor correction. You use "begs the question" incorrectly. It does not mean 'forces a question to be asked. It really just refers to an argument where the premise is as questionable as the conclusion.

as a someone who likes to paint but has had very little formal training, I am a very good copier. Franz Marc is a favorite, Deer In Snow, Two Cats Blue and Yellow, and Dreaming Horse are 3 of many copies I've done well (just gave them to friends, signed my own name). However, when I try to do my own work it's flat and uninspired. So I can understand picking someone else's brain for inspiration, and getting paid for it, even better, I guess.

because these people weren't copying, they were just using the famous names to their advantage, so yes, great art can spring from a lie.

"Can great art spring from a lie?" Unless that question is a rhetorical one, it implies a profound ignorance of what art is. The artistic value of, well, anything has nothing whatsoever to do with its truth value. It may have something to do with how true the work feels, but in art "authenticity" is as much of an effect or a technique as hyperbole or impressionism.

I always get riled at people who believe that the artistic quality of anything (primarily of prose or films) lies in its adherence to the truth and to authenticity. None of these are accessible by any individual, and the jury's still out on whether they exist at all. All we have are points of view. And in the end, it's the work of art that matters. Does it stir something in us? Does it challenge us in some way? Does it make us think and feel? If the answer to those questions is yes, then what does it matter if the work adheres to some questionable concept of truth? If the answer is no, then no amount of "This really happened!" ("Based on a true story" is one of the vilest concepts in storytelling) or "I'm being totally truthful here!" will make the work artistic or worthwhile.

Or do people still argue, "So, which story in 'Rashomon' is true?"

Good artists borrow.

Great artists steal.

Forging is all about money. Or more precisely the willingness of rich collectors to pay for a name. The aristic and esthetic value is secondary.

The Romans made numerous copies of Greek scuptures and no one today calls them forgeries.

If an artist makes copies of his own works (there are 5 copies of "The Scream" and Rennaissance workshops routinely made more than one copy of a painting) each is considered an original and worth a lot of money. A reproduction made today would be worthless.

There is much scolarly debate about which of the known Rembrandts are were actually painted by him and which were made by his students or contemporaries. Such judgements can make differences of tens of millions of dollars yet the painting hasn't changed.

At the heart of this debate is a human desire to place great value on an object that has a connection with someone famous. The object is then imbued with some undefined and irrational magical quality. A baseball that was used in setting a home run record is worth a fortune. Yet if that same baseball were to put in a box with 99 other balls and the box closed and shaken, the ball would instantly lose all of its value. The ball hasn't changed, only our perception of it. Or in this example, our inability to distinguish it from the other 99 fakes.

...at least to billions of people who do not ascribe to the religious system symbolized in that period's most admired art. Sistine Chapel? Great art. But to many people it's born of & conveys an outright lie.

It is impossible to correlate two subjectives, art & truth, in the way you'd like. Others have tried & failed. If you want your head to pop, read Heidegger's thoughts on the subject(s).

Great art forgers are often great artists, although usually not so great that were able to conceive of the original. But then, that's not their intention.

Art forgery as a crime, like counterfeiting currency, is foremost about money & economics. Fighting it as a crime is primarily about protecting the value of the investment of the owner. Forgers, even great ones, are employing deceit for profit. Even geniuses can lie.

Some of his early fake Vermeers are pretty enough, but his late ones are really junk. "Christ and the Adulteress" is so ugly that it's hard to believe it fooled anyone; the only reason it did is that by then Van Meegeren had created a false genealogy for it. "Well, the face of Christ looks like the Christ in the Supper at Emmaeus, so it must be by Vermeer." (It also looks rather like the face of Greta Garbo, something that's quite easy to see now, but wasn't so obvious then). But the figures of "Christ and the Adulteress" don't look human at all, they look like wooden statues in a very shallow diorama. There's no spatial depth, no sophistication in the composition. It does, as you note, look a lot like Nazi art at its most banal.

The questions of where "influence" leaves off and forgery begins, and of what constitutes "authenticity," are great for stimulating lively discussions in art history classes, but I think there is one fairly bright line. A work created with the intention to deceive is a forgery. And yes, that includes the "Greek" statue of Eros that Michaelangelo faked as a young man, even if I'm sure it was also a very fine sculpture in its own right.