7 ms·

French museum discovers half of its collection are fakes

116 points by sverige 9y ago

groceryheist 9y ago
Wow! Art History all of a sudden seems employable. ^ Ironic business talk because Hacker News
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't do this here.
mrleiter 9y ago
There is a wonderful documentary about a quite famous and "successful" art forger on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80015279 https://www.netflix.com/title/80015279 (Beltracchi) There is also F for Fake, by Orson Welles, but I cannot seem to find it on Netflix...
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Something that always messes with my sense of the passage of time and how the world works are _old_ fakes. Often what seems to happen is that people get bamboozled by an 1840s fake of a painting done in 1790. It's old enough that many of the modern detection techniques don't exist, etc. In the article's case the fakes were only caught out because someone noticed that the buildings in the paintings only went up after the artists death.
js8 9y ago
I don't understand why people care. Either you like the painting or not. Why does it matter who painted it? I can understand why someone who bought it because it was made by someone famous would be angry. But a museum? The article quotes somebody: "It’s a catastrophe. I put myself in the place of all the people who came to visit the museum, who saw fake works of art, who paid an entrance fee. It’s intolerable and I hope we find those responsible." People came to museum to see art, and they saw art. What this guy wants is people visiting museum not because there is art in it, but because it was made by famous person. Is that really the reason why have the museum?
- c22 9y ago
  But as a museum they're not concerned with merely presenting an aesthetic experience (that would be a gallery), but also with preserving and displaying an accurate slice of history. I tend to agree with you that there should be no problem with "fake" works of art being displayed in a museum, but it would be rather disconcerting to find out that 50% of any museum's exhibits were grossly historically inaccurate or misattributed.
  - 8note 9y ago
    to be an accurate slice of history, fakes are important! how else are you going to know who was making fakes of the artist and when?
  - jhbadger 9y ago
    Both the UK and US (and probably other countries) have museums in their capitals called the "National Gallery". Are they galleries or museums? Does the distinction even make sense?
    - masklinn 9y ago
      In this case very much so, the museum is dedicated to a painter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Terrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Terrus) not an aesthetic. For other cases it can depend on the purpose of the building and the collection. If it's about the art itself it's a gallery, if it's about the artistic movement and its historicity it's a museum.
      - jhbadger 9y ago
        I totally understand that this museum is interested only in works by a particular artist, and so fakes are unwanted even if they are good art. My point is you seemed to be making a distinction between the idea of a "gallery" and "museum", implying that galleries are interested as art-as-art and museums with art-as-historical artifact.
bshepard 9y ago
"The Morellian method is based on clues offered by trifling details rather than identities of composition and subject matter or other broad treatments that are more likely to be seized upon by students, copyists and imitators. Instead, as Carlo Ginzburg analysed the Morellian method, the art historian operates in the manner of a detective, "each discovering, from clues unnoticed by others, the author in one case of a crime, in the other of a painting". These unconscious traces— in the shorthand for rendering the folds of an ear in secondary figures of a composition, for example— are unlikely to be imitated and, once deciphered, serve as fingerprints do at the scene of the crime. The identity of the artist is expressed most reliably in the details that are least attended to. The Morellian method has its nearest roots in Morelli's own discipline of medicine, with its identification of disease through numerous symptoms, each of which may be apparently trivial in itself" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Morelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Morelli)
andrewclunn 9y ago
And people claim that painting is a dead profession. Not for the enterprising forger it seems.
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jccalhoun 9y ago
"An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922." I literally laughed out loud at that. I guess that is pretty solid proof!
akditer 9y ago
poor france museum
deleted 9y ago
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116 points by sverige 9y ago

groceryheist 9y ago

Wow! Art History all of a sudden seems employable. ^ Ironic business talk because Hacker News

dang 9y ago
Please don't do this here.

mrleiter 9y ago

There is a wonderful documentary about a quite famous and "successful" art forger on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80015279 https://www.netflix.com/title/80015279 (Beltracchi) There is also F for Fake, by Orson Welles, but I cannot seem to find it on Netflix...

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

Something that always messes with my sense of the passage of time and how the world works are _old_ fakes. Often what seems to happen is that people get bamboozled by an 1840s fake of a painting done in 1790. It's old enough that many of the modern detection techniques don't exist, etc. In the article's case the fakes were only caught out because someone noticed that the buildings in the paintings only went up after the artists death.

js8 9y ago

I don't understand why people care. Either you like the painting or not. Why does it matter who painted it? I can understand why someone who bought it because it was made by someone famous would be angry. But a museum? The article quotes somebody: "It’s a catastrophe. I put myself in the place of all the people who came to visit the museum, who saw fake works of art, who paid an entrance fee. It’s intolerable and I hope we find those responsible." People came to museum to see art, and they saw art. What this guy wants is people visiting museum not because there is art in it, but because it was made by famous person. Is that really the reason why have the museum?

c22 9y ago
But as a museum they're not concerned with merely presenting an aesthetic experience (that would be a gallery), but also with preserving and displaying an accurate slice of history. I tend to agree with you that there should be no problem with "fake" works of art being displayed in a museum, but it would be rather disconcerting to find out that 50% of any museum's exhibits were grossly historically inaccurate or misattributed.
- 8note 9y ago
  to be an accurate slice of history, fakes are important! how else are you going to know who was making fakes of the artist and when?
- jhbadger 9y ago
  Both the UK and US (and probably other countries) have museums in their capitals called the "National Gallery". Are they galleries or museums? Does the distinction even make sense?
  - masklinn 9y ago
    In this case very much so, the museum is dedicated to a painter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Terrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Terrus) not an aesthetic. For other cases it can depend on the purpose of the building and the collection. If it's about the art itself it's a gallery, if it's about the artistic movement and its historicity it's a museum.
    - jhbadger 9y ago
      I totally understand that this museum is interested only in works by a particular artist, and so fakes are unwanted even if they are good art. My point is you seemed to be making a distinction between the idea of a "gallery" and "museum", implying that galleries are interested as art-as-art and museums with art-as-historical artifact.

bshepard 9y ago

"The Morellian method is based on clues offered by trifling details rather than identities of composition and subject matter or other broad treatments that are more likely to be seized upon by students, copyists and imitators. Instead, as Carlo Ginzburg analysed the Morellian method, the art historian operates in the manner of a detective, "each discovering, from clues unnoticed by others, the author in one case of a crime, in the other of a painting". These unconscious traces— in the shorthand for rendering the folds of an ear in secondary figures of a composition, for example— are unlikely to be imitated and, once deciphered, serve as fingerprints do at the scene of the crime. The identity of the artist is expressed most reliably in the details that are least attended to. The Morellian method has its nearest roots in Morelli's own discipline of medicine, with its identification of disease through numerous symptoms, each of which may be apparently trivial in itself" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Morelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Morelli)

andrewclunn 9y ago

And people claim that painting is a dead profession. Not for the enterprising forger it seems.

deleted 9y ago

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jccalhoun 9y ago

"An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922." I literally laughed out loud at that. I guess that is pretty solid proof!

akditer 9y ago

poor france museum

deleted 9y ago

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