User:Nasnake/Art forgery

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Art forgery is the creating and selling of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.

This type of fraud is meant to mislead by creating a false provenance, or origin, of the object in order to enhance its value or prestige at the expense of the buyer. As a legal offense, it is not just the act of imitating a famous artists key characteristics in a piece of art, but the deliberate financial intent by the forger. When caught, some of these forgers attempt to pass off the fakes as jokes or hoaxes on the art experts and dealers they were selling to, or on the art world as a whole.

To excel in this type of forgery, the forger must pass themselves off as incredibly trustworthy and charismatic in order to recruit the necessary middlemen such as art dealers, sellers, experts, etc. as the forger will rarely deal in person. Forgers are often proficient in the current methods of art forgery authentication in order to reverse-engineer their work to cover up any potential mistakes that could get them caught.

Since the 1950's and 1960's there has been a growing demand for indigenous art. Many people began creating and selling faked busts, ceremonial masks, carvings, and sculptures to prestigious institutions such as the British Museum. Some artists even went as far as to create artifacts from cultures of which very little information is known, like Moabite, a Semitic culture that was alluded to in the Old Testament. In the 19th century, an icon painter from Jerusalem began to create clay figures with mysterious inscriptions and sold them to the Altes Museum in Berlin after giving them this false origin.

History
Art forgery dates back more than two thousand years. Roman sculptors produced copies of Greek sculptures. The contemporary buyers likely knew that they were not genuine. During the classical period art was generally created for historical reference, religious inspiration, or simply aesthetic enjoyment. The identity of the artist was often of little importance to the buyer. The first recorded art forgery was in the Italian Renaissance and has since modernized alongside society.

During the Renaissance, many painters took on apprentices who studied painting techniques by copying the works and style of the master. As a payment for the training, the master would then sell these works. This practice was generally considered a tribute, not forgery, although some of these copies have later erroneously been attributed to the master.

Following the Renaissance, the increasing prosperity of the bourgeoisie created a fierce demand for art. Near the end of the 14th century, Roman statues were unearthed in Italy, intensifying the populace's interest in antiquities, and leading to a sharp increase in the value of these objects. This upsurge soon extended to contemporary and recently deceased artists. Art had become a commercial commodity, and the monetary value of the artwork came to depend on the identity of the artist. To identify their works, painters began to mark them. These marks later evolved into signatures. As the demand for certain artwork began to exceed the supply, fraudulent marks and signatures began to appear on the open market.

During the 16th century, imitators of Albrecht Dürer's style of printmaking added signatures to them to increase the value of their prints. In his engraving of the Virgin, Dürer added the inscription "Be cursed, plunderers and imitators of the work and talent of others". Even extremely famous artists created forgeries. In 1496, Michelangelo created a sleeping Cupid figure and treated it with acidic earth to cause it to appear ancient. He then sold it to a dealer, Baldassare del Milanese, who in turn sold it to Cardinal Riario of San Giorgio who later learned of the fraud and demanded his money back. However, Michelangelo was permitted to keep his share of the money.

Art forgery was documented as occurring in Imperial China and in contrast with the Western world, forgeries were seen in a much more positive light as the originals and faked works were seen as having the same level of prestige.

The 20th-century art market has favored artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Klee and Matisse and works by these artists have commonly been targets of forgery. These forgeries are typically sold to art galleries and auction houses who cater to the tastes of art and antiquities collectors; at time of the occupation of France by German forces during World War II, the painting which fetched the highest price at Drouot, the main French auction house, was a fake Cézanne.

Africa
The earliest and best known case of forgery in Africa is the 'Olukun ' one of the bronze heads made in the town of Ife in Southwestern Nigeria. German ethnologist Leo Frobenius collected the artifact in 1910 and was forced by British authorities to return it to the Ife palace for safekeeping in 1934. Eventually the head made its way back to the British Museum and while being cleaned in 1940 was found to be made by sand-casting instead of lost-wax casting, alerting the museum that between 1910 and 1934 a fake had replaced the original bronze head.

With many visitors to Africa in this time period, the art that was being created began to have more European aspects and inspiration behind them, such as crucifixion sculptures and Afro-Portuguese ivory carvings, and were often made with the intention of selling to tourists. These items went full circle in the case of authenticity, some suggest that it wasn't until these pieces became fetishized that they were authentic, while others say that even if they were made with traditional materials for a traditional purpose, they did not conform to traditional forms, therefore, these were not authentic.

Australian Aboriginal
Historically, Aboriginal artists were thought to be simply replicating the designs that existed since from the beginning of history and communicated to them by supernatural beings, ancestors, and/or ghosts. Because of this, individual creativity was not critically acknowledged and there was no reason why several people shouldn't participate in the creation of a single work. Today, if an artist is offered a prize or they sell a work under their name, there are presumed to be the sole creator of that work. If they have not been the sole creator but have credited themselves as such, they open themselves to the threat of misrepresentation and fraud.

Forgery and related notable Aboriginal Artists
Emily Kngwarreye, one of the most famous Aboriginal artists from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory of Australia, has some of the most widely forged works circulating. In the early stages of her painting career, she had inspired a school of learners under her who began to put out their own work under her name, and around half of the "Emily" paintings in the art market were fakes. Later on, the elders in her community were worried about the loss of income from her work and appointed a member who was a talented painter to continue on selling paintings as Emily.

Clifford Possum was another highly forged painter who had helped initiate the 'Dot Style" paintings common in Aboriginal artwork. After gaining notoriety in the art market, Clifford began to sign other artwork by Aboriginal artists with his own name in exchange for gifts of cash. Ginger Riley was another artist who began to sign his name on other artists work in exchange for money, and even took photographs with the art, some of which he posed with a paintbrush as if he was in the midst of working on them for further credibility.

Meso-America and Pre-Columbia
The earliest recorded artifact forgery from the Meso-American/Pre-Columbian area was in the 16th century when the Spanish administration began to create false works in order to meet consumer demands back home in Spain. When Mexico opened their borders after their War of Independence, they became a tourist attraction and a popular destination for North Americans and Europeans. These tourists bought enough artifacts for their curio cabinets that it created a market for forgeries.

In 1820 forgery workshops began to pop up, starting with the workshop on Tlatelolco Street in Mexico City. Later, the Barrios Brothers began their own forgery workshop near an archeology site in San Juan Teotihuacan. Favorite forged artifacts for these workshops were masks; specifically polished jade, greenstone, and stone masks. The stone masks that were created were meant to resemble the British Museum Xipe Totec masks. These stone masks and the Olmec-style masks have continued to appear in the art market since the 1930's.

Artists
An ancient artifact forger of note, Brigido Lara, created the Monumental Veracruz style and produced an entire culture's worth of artifacts that ended up in museums around the world. After his early work was bought and sold on the black market, looters asked him to fix artifacts that they had stolen, Lara joined a forgery artelier that produced forged artifacts. In July of 1974, Mexican authorities arrested and sentenced Lara to ten years in prison, claiming that he had been looting ancient ceramic artifacts in Veracruz, which he had denied and was able to prove that he had created them himself by making more replicas in the seven months he spent in prison before being released. Upon his release from prison, the Museo de Antropologia offered him a job preserving artifacts and creating more replicas for their gift shop.