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14 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 49: Near-Vermeer” -
Gary Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:48 am
There are, in fact, no genuine Vermeers – anywhere.
They were all painted some eighty years before, by Sir Francis Bacon. Or possibly even earlier by Christopher Marlowe.
The jury of experts is still out.
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Larissa Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:42 am
Hmm…I’m going to have to think about this whole post for a bit. I can’t say I’m really on board with you on this one-granted, the guy is no Jan Vermeer but to say that our forger here had no talent is a bit rough. The whole business of selling to the Nazis-without actually doing my own research into the whole mess-sounds to me like doing what you have to do to get by…if we had a tyrant lording over us and I caught the mood of things to come, I can’t say I’d be above forgery to save my hide.
Also-if you look back at the Chinese culture-their entire artistic philosophy was based on nothing but copies and copying and recopying the great Master’s work. It was considered the only way to both preserve history, better oneself as an artist, and be able to create your own work with integrity.
It sounds like good ol’ Van Meegeren never got so far as creating his own work for his own merit so he loses some points there…
Regarding “World Experts”…most of them are retarded so it doesn’t surprise me that they would classify these works as genuine. Also, in the life of an Art Historian, a great find is the ultimate–it’s the Sangreal of finds–it’s the only way to get paid half the time–so really, I think it’s those guys who should be skewered.
Perhaps I’m missing some huge piece of this puzzle but I just can’t see Van Meegeren as this nefarious villain for copying paintings and duping a bunch of Nazis….desperate and clever and delusional, perhaps.
Also, most of the great renaissance painters started off copying, well, great painters. He just never evolved like the rest of them.
You should read “The Lost Painting” if stuff like this interests you.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Gary, actually, all the Vermeers in existence have been traced to a two-car garage in Surrey, owned by a match manufacturer who began with a fascination with the lamp/candle paintings of Georges de la Tour and gradually toned it down until he got to Vermeer, the most modest and least showy of masters. In his house, he bricked over all windows except the ones on the left.
Riss, I didn’t think that my dislike for Van Meegeren showed that much, although he was a deeply disagreeable man. For one thing, he was an unrepentant Nazi sympathizer. For another, he sold many of his “Vermeers” to patriots who were trying to spirit Dutch masterpieces out of the country. And it’s one thing to learn by copying (and even stalling at that stage) and another to sign your name to them and pass them off as antique masterpieces.
I completely buy your point about the experts; their “discoveries” briefly made them famous, and Bredius, the most prominent of them, was at the end of a long and illustrious career and desperately wanted a big final act. I also take your point about the Chinese artistic tradition, but I would suggest, without having thought about it much, that the West prizes originality and individual achievement more than the East does and that in the East, artists are more content to be what Ingmar Bergman described as “the anonymous craftsmen who contributed over the centuries to the cathedral.” I’ve read “The Lost Painting” and loved it, and I omitted to say that this post was inspired by “The Forger’s Spell,” a riveting book on Van Meegeren by Edward Dolnick.
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EverettK Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 11:26 am
While most forgers and thieves are scum of the earth, so, too, are… well… let’s just say they’re not lonely in their category.
As for those who are “taken in” by the forgers, I can’t say I have TOO much sympathy. You covered some of this ground in CRASHED. But basically, an item is only worth what someone will pay for it. $1,000,000 for a comic book? Sheesh. Not that I haven’t enjoyed plenty of comic books (excuse me, graphic novels) in my life, but that’s a definite sign of someone with more money than they deserve. There’s FAR better uses for a million dollars. And if you pay a lot of money for a painting and it’s not because you LIKE the painting that much, but rather because you think it’s rare… well, that’s just snobbery, conceit and narcissism.
One of my favorite tropes in literature and film is the thief or forger who’s smart, talented and yet has a moral compass that’s limits where and upon whom their damage is wreaked. For example, Cary Grant in “To Catch A Thief” (film) or Daniel Keys Moran’s “The Long Run” (book). Escapism, every one of them. People who steal don’t generally have much of a moral compass. But that’s probably one of the reason I enjoyed CRASHED so much!
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Larissa Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I’ll have to go read “The Forger’s Spell” because it sounds like it’s going to be right up my ally (c:
Ok, being a Nazi sympethizer does change the perspective. And, I will agree that pawning his knockoffs to the Dutch who were trying to save the actual masterpieces is cheap. So as a person, he fails.
As for the Chinese-I think that mind frame is true right now perhaps more than it was in, say, the Tang or Song Dynasty. Even if you follow the path farther down to the Ming and Qing Dynasties you can see these crazy, expressive and independent artistic examples. (just because everyone should look at it, go find “Poet on a Mountaintop” from the Ming Dynasty if you haven’t already seen it (c: )
I think the idea of “group over individual” has been strongly in the political realm for a long time and is obviously the case now-but artistically they’ve been tenacious about their individuality. (exit soapbox stage left).
So, even though Van Meegeren was a schmuck, I still have a small inkling of respect for the level he went to to dupe the public in his emulations…definitely not lacking in cunning and perserverence if in ethics.
Good post. (c: Must go finds me that book!
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Suzanna Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Whatever crimes and misdemeanors Van Meegeren committed in his career as a forger this makes for an interesting glimpse of history.
Van Meegeren was obviously talented enough to outwit the Nazis.
A pretty gutsy maneuver, if you ask me, even if he was a sympathizer to their cause.
By painting something in court as a demonstration of his passable skill as a forger he escaped the more serious charge against him, but it’s hard to imagine how such an action in his defense was tolerated in a court of law, unless he worked very quickly that is.
Your honor, if it pleases the court, let me demonstrate my forgery skills and paint a masterwork before your very eyes.
Did the court actually just stand by and watch while he worked?
A humiliating punishment in itself if you ask me, but maybe Van Meegeren didn’t really care what people thought of his fakery. He was only interested in escaping a stiffer sentence, which he nearly did.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Given the public interest in liars, crooks, and general all around “bad guys” (pick an arena), I find that this guy is reprehensible in many ways. Especially since he chose one of my favorites painters to copy. There are some interesting questions here-is crime forgiven because of the skill? Does being a gifted con artist admirable? Do we ignore our moral compasses in bad times? I like it when a post becomes a jumping off point for thinking. I’m also curious what made you read this book?. I may have to rethink my rules. I don’t like to read books about people I don’t like. Is that an Ostrich in the sand attitude? Or that I have limited time to read-nah, that sounds too practical. I don’t have an absolute answer, I afraid. Maybe I’m getting older and more rigid-heaven forbid.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
It’s interesting that so much of the commentary has hinged on morality. To me, Van Meegeren is a jerk, but if he’d ever demonstrated even the slightest amount of humor about what he did, I’d probably feel differently — although it’s hard to sympathize with someone who was a racist, an anti-Semite, and a wanna-be Nazi.
Everett, I think that all the businesses that grow up around the creative arts are especially rich in scoundrels, frauds, and poseurs. Artie, in the Halloween story, is based on half a dozen people — when the Stones went in to record at Chess Records in Chicago, one of the pioneer white-run labels specializing in blues, they found Muddy Waters painting the ceiling. (Forgive me if I’ve told this already.) If Waters had collected one-fifth of the money he was owed, he’s have had a guitar in his hand, not a paintbrush. True of writers, filmmakers, and (especially) painters. The gallery business is just a concatenation of sharks.
And thanks for all the subliminal allusions to CRASHED.
By the way, anyone read Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy mysteries? Really strips the veneer off the antiques trade. (Clever? No?) I should get a bunch of them for my (ahem) Kindle. Except that NONE OF THEM IS ON KINDLE. Where DO publishers keep their heads?
Riss, you’ll love “The Forger’s Spell.” Funny thing is that another book on Van Meegeren came out at the same time, but I heard of Dolnick’s book first so never read the other. I will stipulate that you’re better informed than I am about the Chinese creative ethos over the ages. And really, I should have known better — my favorite novel, THE DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, is all by itself — I mean, there are lots of precedents for the storytelling conventions and even the subject matter, but no one in Chinese lit before or since undertook this kind of story on so broad a scale as Cao Xueqin. It’s as original as “Ulysses” and a lot more readable. “Poet on a Mountaintop” is ravishing but I don’t see it as a departure — maybe it’s earlier than the variations I’ve seen; maybe it inspired them.
Hi, Suzanna — There’s always something very interesting to me about talent misused. Van Meegeren was competent and, if he’d had a passion or an original vision, he might have done better than competent work. (His most famous piece under his own name was a monochrome fawn that was so cloyingly sweet it could have been on a Northern Tissue package. But still, the psychology of a faker fascinates me, and it also fascinated Orson Welles, who made a film — not one of his major efforts — called “F for Fake,” about Elmyr de Hory, another forger. Probably the funniest thing about the film is that the person playing de Hory’s biographer is the American writer Clifford Irving, who was revealed partway through the shooting as the actual writer of Howard Hughes “autobiography.” So Welles turned the movie inside out, including comparing Irving’s bio of Hughes with his, Welles’ fictionalized biography of William Randolph Hearst in “Citizen Kane.” In a memorable shot, de Hory signs a forged picture for Welles with a forgery of Welles’ own signature. Hard not to think of the house-of-mirrors shootout in “The Lady from Shanghai.”
The court did indeed sit there for a week or two (or however long it took) and, what’s more, you couldn’t get a seat in the courtroom for love or money.
Hi, Lil I’m going to use your comment as part of the next blog, okay?
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EverettK Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Tim said: By the way, anyone read Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy mysteries? I should get a bunch of them for my (ahem) Kindle. Except that NONE OF THEM IS ON KINDLE. Where DO publishers keep their heads?
The RIAA and MPAA still haven’t figured out that the game has forever changed. You expect publishers, who are at least 10 years behind the other two on “the learning curve,” to be more willing to come to grips with reality? Things won’t change until some of the publishers start to go under, I suspect. It’s human nature, for FAR too many humans, to resist change at all costs… until the Borg take them over (“Resistance is futile.”)
Fortunately, while this change will undoubtedly cause pain for some authors, over-all I have NO doubt that, in the long run, it will be VERY beneficial to writers and readers both.
It truly IS too bad. There are many, many books that I’d give perfectly good money to buy in e-book editions, even though I already have paper editions. I’ve scanned in, proofread and made my own ebooks of the first 4 or 5 Travis McGee books, which also aren’t available as ebooks. I’ll probably do more of them as I get time, because it’s been many years since I’ve read them. They’re a little dated (and certainly NOT politically correct in some of the attitudes), but still great reads. But I’d rather just spend a few bucks than spend all that time scanning and proofreading!
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Bonnie Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Dream of the Red Chamber is actually available for Kindle at the Gutenberg Project. Simeon has inspired me to take a stab at it, though having ploughed through way too much of the Tale of Genji I’m leery of Asian epics.
Tim, it may be coincidence that Amazon have brought out almost all the old Nero Wolfes this year, after I inundated them with “I want to read this book on Kindle” requests, but it’s worth trying for Lovejoy, too. They claim to want to eventually bring everything.
I haven’t had much to contribute as I’m not that much into the visual arts, but I did enjoy the Diary of Franz Hals a couple years ago and like the art-centered Iain Pears novels set in Italy. Certainly it’s a ripe topic for whodunnits and thrillers.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Sure, Tim, You always make me think, and now I am curious.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 19th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Hi, Bonnie — The translation Junior (and I) read was by David Hawkes and was titled THE STORY OF THE STONE and is unfortunately published by Penguin, meaning that when they become available at the end of the year they’ll be about %13-$15 each — and there are FIVE of them. The one on Gutenberg is probably Arthur Waley and it’s very very much condensed. The actual book has about 100 characters, everyone from tramps to Buddhist and Taoist monks to servants to members of a once-powerful family in precipitous decline. It’s a masterpiece, but it will take you months to read it. I’d suggest you look for a used paperback of Volume One, “The Golden Days,” and see whether it holds you. It stopped my world, but I love really, really long books; my favorite novel in English is probably the six PALLISERS books by Anthony Trollope. And I’ve already talked about Anthony Powell’s twelve-volume DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME.
Everett, I think this may actually be the end of the traditional publishing business, and certainly of New York’s domination of the industry and stranglehold over what we read. The problem with e-books is that there’s no sifting mechanism. The publishers at least weeded out a lot of ineptitude, as well as turning away people whose voices should have been heard. In the end, I think this is not so much a business or financial revolution, but a creative revolution.
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Jaden Says:
November 20th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I can see I’m going to have to read THE FORGER’S SPELL. It sounds like a fascinating book, although Van Meegeren sounds like a pretty despicable character.
I don’t generally enjoy books about unpleasant people, but the subject in intriguing enough to make up for it.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 20th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
It’s fascinating Jaden — Dolnick is a fine writer and the story really moves.
And how’s the new book coming??
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