Art forgery

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 artist's key characteristics in a piece of art, but the deliberate financial intent by the forger.

[1] 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.

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.

Many people began creating and selling faked busts, ceremonial masks, carvings, and sculptures to prestigious institutions such as the British Museum.

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.

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.

[9] 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.

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.

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.

[12] The earliest recorded artifact forgery from the Meso-American 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.

A peculiar case was that of the artist Han van Meegeren who became famous by creating "the finest Vermeer ever"[16] and exposing that feat eight years later in 1945.

American art forger Ken Perenyi published a memoir in 2012 in which he detailed decades of his activities creating thousands of authentic-looking replicas of masters such as James Buttersworth, Martin Johnson Heade, and Charles Bird King, and selling the forgeries to famous auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's and wealthy private collectors.

[19] Certain art dealers and auction houses have been alleged to be overly eager to accept forgeries as genuine and sell them quickly to turn a profit.

[21] Claimed to be by the likes of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, the paintings were all in fact forgeries by Pei-Shen Qian, an unknown Chinese artist and mathematician living in Queens.

[28] In 2016, Eric Spoutz plead guilty to one count of wire fraud related to the sale of hundreds of falsely-attributed artworks to American masters, accompanied by forged provenance documents.

[30] The Canadian art forger, David Voss created thousands of forgeries of Indigenous artworks, in particular the work of the Anishmaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, of the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation who had been deceased since 1987.

His Genuine Fakes copy artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci and Gustav Klimt, which can be bought as originals or limited edition prints.

British businessman James Stunt has allegedly commissioned a number of "genuine fakes" by Los Angeles artist and convicted forger Tony Tetro.

However, some of these works were loaned by Stunt to the Princes' Foundation, which is one of King Charles III's many charities, and displayed at historic Dumfries House, with the understanding that they were genuine.

Omission from an artist's catalogue raisonné indeed can prove fatal to any potential resale of a work, notwithstanding any proof the owner may offer to support authenticity.

For the next 12 years art historians, conservators, and archaeologists studied the Kouros, scientific tests were performed and showed that the surface could not have been created artificially.

The conference failed to solve the problem; while most art historians and archeologists denounced it, the scientists present believed the statue to be authentic.

IFAR offers impartial and authoritative information on authenticity, ownership, theft, and other artistic, legal, and ethical issues concerning art objects.

A not-for-profit organization that gathers professionals of different fields, providing equipment and preparing procedure manuals aligned with international techniques, in the search of further knowledge on the production of Brazilian artists.

In the case of photographer Man Ray[49] print production was often poorly managed during his lifetime, and many of his negatives were stolen by people who had access to his studio.

However, federal criminal prosecutions against art forgers are seldom brought due in part to high evidentiary burdens and competing law enforcement priorities.

Traces are readily available to see the full extent of the frauds from a forensic standpoint or even basic due diligence of professionals who may research matters including sources of PACER / enforcing authority records and on the internet.

Some legal experts have recommended strengthening existing intellectual property laws to address the growing problem of art forgeries proliferating in the mass market.