by Travis Nygard | 12 May 2010 | Books, Modern, Renaissance, Theory
I am fascinated by the systems through which art is deemed legitimate, and I taught a course on fakes and frauds this past January. The premise was that we can learn about how art is produced, controlled, and valued by focusing on taboo objects. Sometimes such scrutiny will result in a reattribution, such as the one announced last week in the Telegraph:
A portrait of a young woman, which had been dismissed as a fake Raphael and lay forgotten in the basement of an Italian palace for 40 years, has been confirmed as genuine by art experts and could be worth up to £25 million.
But I am more excited by “genuine” fakes. Perhaps the best book to date on this subject is Christopher Wood’s Forgery, Replica, Fiction. It argues that many of the questions of authenticity that we deem important today are modern inventions. If you have thoughts on great illegitimate art, please leave a comment.
Apparently there is a new exhibition of Vermeer fakes, and The Telegraph reports that “A major Paris exhibition featuring forgeries and copies of works by Picasso, Matisse and other 20th century masters has been condemned by the artists’ heirs as “vampire” plagiarism that will encourage counterfeiting.”
A lengthier commentary on the Raphael painting is contained in the Three Pipe Problem. http://threepipeproblem.blogspot.com/2010/05/modena-madonna-raphael-resurfaces-in.html