Marketing Scoops: Is That Painting a Lost Masterpiece or a Fraud? Let’s Ask AI

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Artificial intelligence has to date been enlisted as a bogeyman in cultural circles: Software will take the jobs of writers and translators, and AI-generated images ring the death toll for illustrators and graphic designers. Yet there’s a corner of high culture where AI is taking on a starring role as hero, not displacing the traditional protagonists art experts and conservators but adding a powerful, compelling weapon to their arsenal when it comes to fighting forgeries and misattributions……..Continue reading…..

By: Noah Charney

Source: WIRED

Critics:

An essential legal issue are art forgeries, plagiarism, replicas and works that are strongly based on other works of art. Intellectual property law plays a significant role in the art world. Copyright protection is granted to artists for their original works, providing them with exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and display their creations. This safeguard empowers artists to govern the usage of their work and safeguard against unauthorized copying or infringement.

The trade in works of art or the export from a country may be subject to legal regulations. Internationally there are also extensive efforts to protect the works of art created. The UN, UNESCO and Blue Shield International try to ensure effective protection at the national level and to intervene directly in the event of armed conflicts or disasters. This can particularly affect museums, archives, art collections and excavation sites.

This should also secure the economic basis of a country, especially because works of art are often of tourist importance. The founding president of Blue Shield International, Karl von Habsburg, explained an additional connection between the destruction of cultural property and the cause of flight during a mission in Lebanon in April 2019: “Cultural goods are part of the identity of the people who live in a certain place.

If you destroy their culture, you also destroy their identity. Many people are uprooted, often no longer have any prospects and as a result flee from their homeland.” In order to preserve the diversity of cultural identity, UNESCO protects the living human treasure through the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. There are essentially three varieties of art forger.

The person who actually creates the fraudulent piece, the person who discovers a piece and attempts to pass it off as something it is not, typically in order to increase the piece’s value, and the third who discovers that a work is a fake, but sells it as an original anyway. Copies, replicas, reproductions and pastiches are often legitimate works, and the distinction between a legitimate reproduction and deliberate forgery is blurred.

For example, Guy Hain used original molds to reproduce several of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures. However, when Hain then signed the reproductions with the name of Rodin’s original foundry, the works became deliberate forgeries. An art forger must be at least somewhat proficient in the type of art he is trying to imitate. Many forgers were once fledgling artists who tried, unsuccessfully, to break into the market, eventually resorting to forgery.

Sometimes, an original item is borrowed or stolen from the owner in order to create a copy. The forger will then return the copy to the owner, keeping the original for himself. In 1799, a self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer which had hung in the Nuremberg Town Hall since the 16th century, was loaned to Abraham Wolfgang Küfner [de]. The painter made a copy of the original and returned the copy in place of the original. The forgery was discovered in 1805, when the original came up for auction and was purchased for the royal collection.

Although many art forgers reproduce works solely for money, some have claimed that they have created forgeries to expose the credulity and snobbishness of the art world. Essentially the artists claim, usually after they have been caught, that they have performed only “hoaxes of exposure”. Some exposed forgers have later sold their reproductions honestly, by attributing them as copies, and some have actually gained enough notoriety to become famous in their own right.

Forgeries painted by the late Elmyr de Hory, featured in the film F for Fake directed by Orson Welles, have become so valuable that forged de Horys have appeared on the market. 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. His own work became valuable as well, which in turn attracted other forgers.

One of these forgers was his son Jacques van Meegeren who was in the unique position to write certificates stating that a particular piece of art that he was offering “was created by his father, Han van Meegeren”.^[17] A forger of note specializing in ancient artifacts, Brigido Lara, created the Monumental Veracruz style and produced an entire culture’s worth of artifacts that ended up in museums around the world.

After his early work was bought and sold on the black market, looters asked him to fix artifacts that they had stolen, Lara joined a forgery atelier that produced forged artifacts. In July 1974, Mexican authorities arrested and sentenced Lara to ten years in prison, claiming that he had been looting ancient ceramic artifacts in Veracruz, which he had denied and was able to prove that he had created them himself by making more replicas in the seven months he spent in prison before being released.

Upon his release from prison, the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology offered him a job preserving artifacts and creating more replicas for their gift shop. Forgers usually copy works by deceased artists, but a small number imitate living artists. In May 2004, Norwegian painter Kjell Nupen noticed that the Kristianstad gallery was selling unauthorized, signed copies of his work.

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.

While attempting to authenticate artwork, experts will also determine the piece’s provenance. If the item has no paper trail, it is more likely to be a forgery. Other techniques forgers use which might indicate that a painting is not authentic include:

Frames, either new or old, that have been altered in order to make forged paintings look more genuine.
To hide inconsistencies or manipulations, forgers will sometimes glue paper, either new or old, to a painting’s back, or cut a forged painting from its original size.
Recently added labels or artist listings on unsigned works of art, unless these labels are as old as the art itself, should cause suspicion.
While art restorers legitimately use new stretcher bars when the old bars have worn, new stretcher bars on old canvases might be an indication that a forger is attempting to alter the painting’s identity.
Old nail holes or mounting marks on the back of a piece might indicate that a painting has been removed from its frame, doctored and then replaced into either its original frame or different frame.
Signatures on paintings or graphics that look inconsistent with the art itself (either fresher, bolder, etc.).
Unsigned work that a dealer has “heard” is by a particular artist.

More recently, magnetic signatures, such as those used in the ink of bank notes, are becoming popular for authentication of artworks. Many forgeries still escape detection; Han van Meegeren, possibly the most famous forger of the 20th century, used historical canvasses for his Vermeer forgeries and created his own pigments to ensure that they were authentic. He confessed to creating the forgeries only after he was charged with treason, an offense which carried the death penalty.

So masterful were his forgeries that van Meegeren was forced to create another “Vermeer” while under police guard, to prove himself innocent of the treason charges. A recent instance of potential art forgery involves the Getty kouros, the authenticity of which has not been resolved. The Getty Kouros was offered, along with seven other pieces, to The J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, in the spring of 1983.

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. However, when several of the other pieces offered with the Kouros were shown to be forgeries, its authenticity was again questioned. In May 1992, the Kouros was displayed in Athens, Greece, at an international conference, called to determine its authenticity.

The conference failed to solve the problem; while most art historians and archeologists denounced it, the scientists present believed the statue to be authentic. To this day, the Getty Kouros’ authenticity remains a mystery and the statue is displayed with the date: “Greek, 530 B.C. or modern forgery”.

Forgeries, a Long History

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Michelangelo’s Cupid”

List of Unmasked forgers on the Authentication in Art Foundation Website”.

A New Vermeer”.

Brigido Lara, the Artist Whose Pre-Columbian Fakes Fooled Museums Around the World”.

Who Wins and Who Loses When Art is Stolen or Forged?”

The Big Fake: Behind the Scenes of Knoedler Gallery’s Downfall”.

Duped You: The Story Of Knoedler’s $80m Art Fraud – Netflix”.

From Afar, a Fugitive in the Knoedler Art Fraud Gives His Defense”.

Glafira Rosales Ordered to Pay $81 Million to Victims of the Knoedler Art-Fraud Scheme”

The Final Knoedler Forgery Lawsuit, over a $5.5 Million Fake Rothko, Has Been Settled, Closing the Book on a Sordid Drama”.