Intent to Deceive: Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World

“The exhibition looks at five of the most notorious forgers or fakers of the last 100 years, their methods, their personalities and their downfalls.”

– Elaine Warner, Edmondsun.com

 

“The arrangement encourages visitors to try their eyes at determining which is the verified original and which the top-notch phony, as well as introducing them to a fascinating underworld of names that—had everything gone as planned—no one would have known.”

– Steve Gill, Slice

This groundbreaking exhibition spotlighted some of the world’s most notorious con-artists, illuminating their dubious legacies and examining how—by way of talent, charm, and audacity—they managed to beguile and assault the art world for much of the 20th century, right up to the present day.

Several ingenious forgers were profiled in this exhibition of over 60 works of art, representing some of the most infamous art scandals of the last century. Han van Meegeren, Elmyr de Hory, and Eric Hebborn all shook the art world with their exploits, garnering them worldwide notoriety but also—for each—untimely death. More recently, John Myatt and Mark Landis have been in the news for their prolific and stylistically diverse art frauds, landing one in jail. Intent to Deceive provides a fascinating look into the psyche of those geniuses who did not choose, or were incapable of choosing, to pursue a legitimate artistic career.

Included with each forger’s profile was a sampling of their original works, along with personal effects, ephemera, photographs, film clips, and representations of the materials and techniques they used to create these convincing artworks. Of particular interest were the accounts of how art experts were able to use new technologies to unveil their fraudulence.

Original works by renowned artists such as Charles Courtney Curran, Honoré Daumier, Raoul Dufy, Philip de Lászlό, Henri Matisse, Joan Mirό, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac, Maurice de Vlaminck and others were juxtaposed with the art of the world’s most accomplished art forgers to test perceptions of authenticity.

The ultimate question posed by Intent to Deceive is whether the revelation of a painting’s unsavory history actually makes it any less of a work of art. Does the discovery of a fake change our relationship with a painting? Admirers and collectors of the work of several contemporary forgers maintain that they possess great art, no matter that they are forgeries. The fakery of these works is often brilliant in itself, and indeed, their murky histories make them all the more interesting, since they add stories and drama that are as fascinating as the images on their canvases.

This exhibition was organized by International Arts & Artists and curated by Colette Loll. For more information on this project, please go to http://www.intenttodeceive.org/

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