Art Forgery: The History of a Modern Obsession - Hardcover

'since authorship is a major financial issue you need specialist advice. Enter the first character of Art Forgery: the art connoisseur. His claim is that it is impossible to forge a work of art; no forger, however skilled, can reproduce perfectly the Unique. The forger's aim is to prove him wrong. The epic struggle between the two constitutes the subject of Thierry Lenain's remarkable book, whose dazzling erudition and lucid logic make it a pleasure to read.'- -- Donald Sassoon History Today 'This book delves into the history of art forgery, beginning with its prevalence in the middle ages, through the Renaissance to the present day. This genealogy of faking also examines the output and skill of some of the master forgers alongside the art world's thorny relationship with counterfeit work and the ever-more sophisticated technology for detecting fakes.' - Apollo 'Lenain's fascinating book charts our changing attitudes to forgery, from the unbridled admiration of the skill of the well-rewarded copyist during the Renaissance to the hysterical over-reaction and condemnation of today's demonised so-called "master forgers" ... full of historical detail and philosophical explication on the nature of truth and reality applied to the art world.' - ARLIS News

The obsession with art forgery appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon. In Art Forgery, the author's aim is not to suggest new methods of detection, but rather to look at the genealogy of faking and to interrogate the anxious, sometimes neurotic, reactions triggered in the modern world of art by these clever frauds. Thierry Lenain considers the idea of authenticity in the Middle Ages, when the issue of false relics and miracles often arose: if a relic gave rise to a cult, it would be considered as genuine even if it had evidently been 'forged'. Similarly, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were comparatively untroubled by the idea of forgery. The book charts the changing status of art forgery from the time of its appearance in the Renaissance, when it was initially hailed as a true artistic feat, to its condemnation as the art crime par excellence. The Renaissance admired the masterly art of simulating stylistic expression and signs of age in artworks. Michelangelo, the most revered artist of the time, used to make deceitful copies of drawings by other masters, which he managed to have lent to himself by unsuspecting collectors, only to keep the originals and return the copies in their place. With the advent in the twentieth century of more scientific attribution, of archaeology, graphology, medical science and, later, criminology, the detection of forgery became increasingly possible. The science of accurately deciphering the artist's characteristic traces has since reached a level of forensic sophistication only matched by the forger's skill and the art world's paranoia. Thierry Lenain examines the work of master forgers including Eric Hebborn, Thomas Keating and Han van Meegeren whose productions baffled the art world.