best/favorite painters

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by cronus » Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:27 am

DRSB wrote:
cronus wrote:
DRSB wrote:Reproductions are fine. Conning people is not. Some of the fakes are not even reproductions, just close enough to what might have been.
I'm not saying anything should be criminal but legitimate and highly accurate reproductions of art should abound - to spread culture and reduce superstition. This happens with books. And I'm not against first editions holding inflated values for historic reasons but the art market in first edition paintings is widely inflated compared with the written word, when for reasons of raising culture, they should hold parity or be the other way around.
The question is whether they do it for love or for money, you know. There is a great deal of money around the Russian Avantgard. Criminality is only a natural consequence.
A lot of oil and gas and natural resources in Russia. Money/corruption is a consequence. They call it the resource curse. Art a blank slate to pass the dodgy Лавэ́ around.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:05 pm

Selling fake artworks is no different to selling fake houses or meds, and producing fake artworks for profit is no different than producing fake shoes or carrots. Then again Crumpy is right, someone's unknowing emotional or intellectual reaction to a fake is more authentic than the artwork itself.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:33 pm

It takes artistry to produce fakes, I agree with Crumple.

The painting that was pointed out to me to be fake at the exhibition I referred to was exhibited as a Filonov-piece. Whoever can fake Filonov is a no lesser artist, probably a student of his. Filonov himself never sold anything and died of hunger during the blockade of Petrograd/St. Petersbourg. That's why a painting surfacing in Switzerland is highly suspicious to begin with. The gallerist's justification, presented to me by a delegate of the gallery in person, was that Filonov gave it to his sister and somehow she auctioned it. The person who identified is as fake owns a collection from the time when her grandfather was buying things for pennies from the penniless artists, she has seen enough genuine works to know what's what.

Talking about Filonov, let me post something!


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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Hermit » Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:16 pm

DRSB wrote:Reproductions are fine. Conning people is not. Some of the fakes are not even reproductions, just close enough to what might have been.
Forgers are not the only con-artists. Art dealers and gallery owners usually participate in the trade, knowing exactly what they are dealing with.

And what of it? I agree with Crumple here, though I'd express his sentiment differently. Sometimes a painting is displayed for years, discussed in publications by art historians, critics and other experts, before it is discovered that it is not, say, "a Kandinsky". All of a sudden most of its previously believed in intrinsic value evaporates, as well as almost all of its market value. Nothing illustrates the con involved in genuine masterpieces than the fakes.

By the time Elmyr de Hory died in 1976 he had painted about 1000 works "in the style of" - and sold them to dealers and art galleries as the real things. Over the next decades some of them have been recognised as having been painted by him even though the signatures claimed they were painted by Modigliani, Degas, Picasso, Matisse and others. There is no way of knowing how many de Horys remain in circulation that are thought to be the works of more famous painters, but it is unreasonable to think none remain to this day. Next time you gaze in awe at a real Rothko that may have changed ownership for the consideration of $112 million, please do not dismiss the possibility out of hand that you just might be looking at the creation of an obscure Hungarian painter who had discovered that the solution to his financial woes was more easily solved by creating fakes than marketing his own style of paintings.

The last film Orson Welles completed is called F for Fake. It is about de Hory, another faker, Clifford Irving and the issue of fakery in general. You can watch it here.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:20 am

I am not saying the market price determines the merits of artworks. It fuels the forgery industry. Galleries are often complicit too. Even the one I mentioned, which is a market leader in many respects, has been implicated in numerous instances of stealth, smuggling and even traces of blood. This is an altogether different discussion: what people would and would not do for money. Ideally, art is art for art's sake.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Scot Dutchy » Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:03 am

While producing art masters this country also produced one of the best forgers:

Han van Meegeren

He fooled everyone including the Nazi's. Nowadays his forgeries are forged.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Svartalf » Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:12 am

Funny, I did not know his name, but I was thinking of him this very morning, the guy who could make Vermeers as good as the true ones.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Scot Dutchy » Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:17 am

He did that alright. Some are still hanging in art galleries.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:23 am

I think reproducing takes artistry but producing something new that can pass for the real thing or even surpass it, takes genius.
There was a book I recall, "The great man" where a guy had a bet with his sister who painted abstract stuff, that she would not be able to paint in his more realistic style. She produced 3 pictures and the bet required that they be exhibited to see if someone would notice, nobody did and they became the masterpieces the guy was best known for.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by cronus » Fri Mar 23, 2018 6:49 am

DRSB wrote:I think reproducing takes artistry but producing something new that can pass for the real thing or even surpass it, takes genius.
There was a book I recall, "The great man" where a guy had a bet with his sister who painted abstract stuff, that she would not be able to paint in his more realistic style. She produced 3 pictures and the bet required that they be exhibited to see if someone would notice, nobody did and they became the masterpieces the guy was best known for.
Isn't that when a artist creates a new movement?
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Rum » Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:35 pm

DRSB wrote:I think reproducing takes artistry but producing something new that can pass for the real thing or even surpass it, takes genius.
There was a book I recall, "The great man" where a guy had a bet with his sister who painted abstract stuff, that she would not be able to paint in his more realistic style. She produced 3 pictures and the bet required that they be exhibited to see if someone would notice, nobody did and they became the masterpieces the guy was best known for.
Not 'artistry' in my book but craft. An original artist is exactly that - their imagination, skill and ability result in the creation of something new and striking. Forgers and copyists may - usually do probably - have some innate artistic ability but they develop the specific skills to mimic exactly the people they are trying to fake - even down to knowledge of the canvas and source of paint that was used by the original artist.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:33 pm

Producing a copy an an artwork, or something in-the-style-of, is a great way of gaining an understanding of an artist's methods and sensibilities.
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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:38 am

Brian Peacock wrote:Producing a copy an an artwork, or something in-the-style-of, is a great way of gaining an understanding of an artist's methods and sensibilities.
Yes, this is modelling. You can augment any skill by modelling masters and this goes beyond the imitation, it takes precisely understanding and adopting of beliefs, sensibilities, a whole identity. This is what I write about in my book "Modelling".
Last edited by DRSB on Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:42 am

Rum wrote:
DRSB wrote:I think reproducing takes artistry but producing something new that can pass for the real thing or even surpass it, takes genius.
There was a book I recall, "The great man" where a guy had a bet with his sister who painted abstract stuff, that she would not be able to paint in his more realistic style. She produced 3 pictures and the bet required that they be exhibited to see if someone would notice, nobody did and they became the masterpieces the guy was best known for.
Not 'artistry' in my book but craft. An original artist is exactly that - their imagination, skill and ability result in the creation of something new and striking. Forgers and copyists may - usually do probably - have some innate artistic ability but they develop the specific skills to mimic exactly the people they are trying to fake - even down to knowledge of the canvas and source of paint that was used by the original artist.
New and striking, can be done by a 2-year old. I think originality is overrated, to quote somebody, forgot who said it. Besides, everything is contextual, o tempora o mores. But where there is money to be made, there are people that would stoop to anything too.

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Re: best/favorite painters

Post by DRSB » Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:47 am

cronus wrote:
DRSB wrote:I think reproducing takes artistry but producing something new that can pass for the real thing or even surpass it, takes genius.
There was a book I recall, "The great man" where a guy had a bet with his sister who painted abstract stuff, that she would not be able to paint in his more realistic style. She produced 3 pictures and the bet required that they be exhibited to see if someone would notice, nobody did and they became the masterpieces the guy was best known for.
Isn't that when a artist creates a new movement?
Not sure I understand the question.

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