by Jon Lackman | 6 May 2009 | Uncategorized
Art is perenially awash in stories of fakes, fakers, and fakery. According to the AFP,
The bust of Queen Nefertiti housed in a Berlin museum and believed to be 3,400 years old in fact is a copy dating from 1912 that was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians, according to Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin. Stierlin, author of a dozen works on Egypt, the Middle East and ancient Islam, says in a just-released book that the bust currently in Berlin’s Altes Museum was made at the order of German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt by an artist named Gerardt Marks … on December 6, 1912, the copy was admired as an original work by a German prince and the archaeologist “couldn’t sum up the courage to ridicule” his guest, Stierlin said.
According to Time,
… rumors have swirled for years that many treasured originals by Vietnamese artists like [Nguyen Trong] Niet have been either lost or sold off, and reproductions have taken their place. The copies aren’t exactly forgeries. During the Vietnam War, the museum’s own restoration department was a virtual copy factory — a fact that museum officials past and present freely admit … Ironically, Vietnam’s practice of reproducing noteworthy works was originally carried out to rescue the country’s artistic heritage during wartime … “It was a national imperative to keep the museum open.” So the staff — and in some cases, the artists themselves — started to make copies. The reproductions stayed in Hanoi while the originals were spirited away and hidden in caves. The artworks were supposed to return home after the war. Not all did. Records, if they ever existed, were lost.
A new book by Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans conjectures that Gauguin and Van Gogh may concocted the story of the latter slicing off his own ear, in order to conceal Gauguin’s culpability:
Kaufmann told the Guardian: “Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this ‘madman’. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear.” Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit. While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : “Luckily Gauguin … is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons.”
The notion attracted a swift rebuttal from Martin Gayford:
This is not the first time it has been suggested that Gauguin might have been the aggressor in this odd art couple. The psychological motive for the suspicion is, I suspect, that many people don’t like Gauguin, and identify with the suffering Van Gogh … A local newspaper reported that at 11:30 on Dec. 23, 1888, Van Gogh handed in his severed ear at a local brothel; the recipient of the grisly parcel, a certain Rachel, was understandably upset. This story was substantiated by the policeman who investigated the incident. Otherwise, all the first-hand information comes from Gauguin who wasn’t, admittedly, an ideal witness … The evidence, such as it is, points to Vincent. Presenting a severed ear to a local prostitute then scampering off into the night is erratic behavior, to say the least.
The authenticity of the Nefertiti bust has been questioned for a long time, although some have thought it to date from the Hitler era (not 1912). Recently, some CT scans were performed on the bust. Some have argued that these scans prove that the bust is “not a fake.” See here for one such article:
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/266036,nefertitis-hidden-face-proves-berlin-bust-is-not-hitlers-fake.html