Maybe there are female forgers, and male forgers took the credit when the work passed.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:55 AM on August 17, 2019 [47 favorites]

My number one takeaway from reading a whole bunch of books on forgery and art crimes is that you won't get caught as long as you keep your mouth shut. For example, Art & Antiquities is small and low priority, so as long as you don't tell anyone, you could make a pretty good career with fake paintings in London.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:35 AM on August 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Perhaps female forgers are more of the literary bent.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:10 AM on August 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

One of my favorite novels concerns a family of forgers who, for generations, have been playing the long game: each forger makes forgeries of contemporary art of the era, using all the usual contemporary supplies—the paints, the canvas, the wood for the frame, etc.—then puts away the art to be stored for decades or even centuries, so later family members can "find" them and sell them as originals. And everything checks out because it's all authentic, except the actual artist.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:37 AM on August 17, 2019 [19 favorites]

Faking It by Jennifer Crusie, right? ;)
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:07 AM on August 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

> My number one takeaway from reading a whole bunch of books on forgery and art crimes is that you won't get caught as long as you keep your mouth shut.

I have to imagine that art forgery is unique among scams in that the person being scammed also has a vested interest in keeping knowledge that it's a fake suppressed, else their investment won't appreciate.
posted by ardgedee at 1:23 PM on August 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

"F for Fake" - Orson Welles documentary
posted by Mesaverdian at 2:15 PM on August 17, 2019

One of my favorite novels concerns a family of forgers who, for generations, have been playing the long game ... How come I never found out about this investment opportunity until I reached my 60's? I could have started a family and taken art classes.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 3:49 PM on August 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh man ..who is my favorite art forger?

Van Meegeren had all the drama with NAZIS and COURTROOM EXPOSES and Keating has that angry socialist stuff in trying to actively destroy the art establishment ...but I think I like Polyani the MOST cause he's so unrepentant and totally got away with it - he's a skilled classical painter! But people don;t want a painting that looks like it's from 1789 unless it's actually from then. He was right, everyone he sold to got a very high quality painting.

he just smudged the details (and used discarded Victorian dressers on the streets of NYC in the 70s to make accurate wood backings!)

Anyway I love the whole discipline. It's like jewel heists, it hits my true crime itch but no one really gets hurt.
posted by The Whelk at 9:00 PM on August 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

BlahLaLa: "One of my favorite novels concerns a family of forgers who"

wait what book is this?
posted by chavenet at 2:36 AM on August 19, 2019

It’s fun to look at an original and a fake side-by-side.

I once visited a very wealthy art collector's home that featured an original Rubens and a forgery of the same work side-by-side. It was very cool.
posted by carmicha at 7:49 PM on August 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

Seconding the question about the novel about the family of forgers: details please! Also, The Whelk: who is this Polyani person? I can't find any information about them online. (Perhaps their very name is a forgery.)
posted by louigi at 9:55 AM on August 21, 2019

My apologies its Ken Perenyi

Who i see now markets himself as a foreger
posted by The Whelk at 10:06 AM on August 21, 2019

The book has been revealed as Faking It by Jennifer Crusie.
posted by Mitheral at 1:55 PM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]