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The Movie Art and Craft: AConservators Perspective

Conservators have an uneasy relationship with forgery. Often knee-jerk reactions arise: outrage,indignation, feelings of being duped, and sometimes a closet admiration of a particular craft skill. Whilecertainly valid, and generally true, they can be somewhat of a conversation stopper. Deep down, I findmyself a bit envious that forgers get so much media attention, and that this attention is generallyoverwhelmingly sympathetic. Conservation is just as interesting, right?

Some examinations of philosophic aspects forgery within the field of conservation include AICs 2007Annual Meeting, Fakes, Forgeries and Fabrications and tangential papers like conservation rock starSalvador Munoz Vinass 2011 The Frankenstein Syndrome in Ethics and Critical Thinking in Conservation.Once, I discovered a forged portion of a Gutenberg Bible I was working on, thankfully it belonged to aninstitutional client, rather than a private one. Since we spend a lot of time looking at very small things,maybe it is difficult to change perspective, take the optivisor off, and look at this issue a bit more broadly.

The movie Art and Craft tells the story of Mark Landis, a contemporary forger. It is an entirely enjoyablefilm, the directors allow Landis to show and tell his story with little interference. The film clearly articulateshis reasons and motivations for forgery while not becoming overly romantic. Landis, a diagnosedschizophrenic, is shown visiting his therapists and at home, generally watching tv and copying picturesfrom art books at the same time. He is quite likely more a victim of the system more than someone takingadvantage of it. A couple of times he is shown engaging in quotidian activities; eating a dinner of melbatoast dipped into a container of margarine, for example.

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Posted in: Conservation in the News, Ethics and Standards, Outreach and Advocacy | October 14, 2014

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Mark Landis. Source:

Early on, the film reveals his primary motivation for creating forgeries: he wants to be a philanthropist. Buthe realizes quite quickly it is hard to be a philanthropist without money or art to give away; he had tocreate the art in order to distribute it. Also, he liked being treated like a philanthropist, and headmits becoming addicted to it. Who wouldnt? So he keeps making more forgeries. The film delves into hispersonality, much of which seems to be strongly influenced by a tv that always seemed to be on. He is self-aware of these influences, and tells others of their source. For example, he started smoking because he sawcharacters in 1940s movies smoking to calm down, so he thought it would help calm his nerves, and curbhis compulsion to pace.

The film emphasizes the naturalness, almost an innocence, of his desire to copy works of art. Themotivations behind many forgers (which are generally not pecuniary by the way) are often egotisticallymotivated: proving oneself equal to the great artists or getting even with the art experts by exposing theirignorance. In addition to his philanthropic desires, Landis also simply likes to copy things, again because itcalms him down. Repetitive hand motions and using hand-eye coordination is comforting to him. Soundfamiliar?

The antagonist in this film is a Matthew Leininger, a museum registrar, who originally noticed a number ofidentical paintings in numerous museums, and over the years slowly closed in on Landis. When seeingsome of the paintings, the audience wonders how they could have fooled anyone. Many are not of EricHebborn or Elmyr de Hory caliber, though Landis is certainly capable of finely crafted work. Many of hisforgeries are a color photocopy of a work with acrylic medium smeared on the surface, to resemblebrushstrokes. The materials he uses are all standard off the shelf art supplies from Michaels, and theframes from Home Depot, though he slightly antiques them. He often photocopies a certificate of sale froma major auction house or defunct gallery to aid in establishing provenance and adheres this to the back.

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The Mona Lisa, Mark Landis, 2014. On view at Think Coffee, NYC. Photo by Jeff Peachey.

In Think Coffee, a coffee shop near the Angelica Film Center in NYC where I saw the film, an original MarkLandis painting hangs. In this case, he has signed his own name, and the price tag is $25,000. When I sawit, there was no red dot on the label. The painting is hanging in an ordinary wall space above a seat. Ihesitate to call it a forgery, since it would be impossible, I think, for anyone to confuse this with the realthing. It looks like a color photocopy with acrylic medium and some painted additions, though the light ispretty low. Is it a forgery of a forgery? Or a copy of a copy? Or just a photocopy with some paint on it?

Landis is quite cavalier concerning his lack of interest in technical details. In an online reddit interview hedismissively leaves it to others. And as far as artists that use brushstrokes, its something I never reallygave much thought to. Experts supposedly can tell things like that, an expert is just someone who knows agreat deal about something and sometimes hes right. And what does it say about our culture that manymuseum professionals dont bother to look closely enough to tell a photocopy from a painting? Is it theresult of looking at most things reproduced through a computer screen? To be fair, the film does showother examples of his work, drawing and paintings, that are very skillfully executed.

Typical of Landis, he spins a variety conflicting press reports about his work, even the copy of Mona Lisa ondisplay. Was it was painted in 90 minutes as is generally reported or did it take an entire weekend? If sold,will the proceeds benefit the museum in his hometown, the Lauren Rogers Museum? The museumsmarketing director denies this is true. Again, according to the reddit interview, the most one of hispaintings has sold for is $800.

Here we enter an interesting terrain: Landis, who by copying so earnestly, and seemingly created by hismedia environment, may convolute some of the Benjaminian notions of the aura of authenticity and thecopy. He compulsively recreates copies of copies, over and over, quite likely unable to stop despiteprotests and essentially being caught. Landis himself admits he has not seen most of the works he copies,only reproductions. There seems to be no authentic work to be copied in his world. He becomes aWarholian performance artist, quite possibly the value of his work in is the transactions, and the changes inperception of the value of his work: genuine, forgery, doesnt matter?

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Landis does not confine himself to assume the persona of a wealthy philanthropist, there are references toat least three other characters he portrays. In one hilarious scene (shown in the trailer below), he isdressed as a catholic priest, and shown blessing a unknowing recipient.

A question that comes up in the movie that is often asked of forgersin fact, sometimes restorers andconservators is why dont you create your own work? Landis is charasticly straightforward when hereplies that he doesnt have anything he wants to paint, he just likes copying others work. It is hard for theviewer to resent him. Indeed, he wants come clean, and earn a living based on his skills, as his websiteselling copies of photographs indicates. A charcoal or pencil drawing starts at $250, and a painting inacrylic or oil is $650. There is an interesting caveat you must click: I certify that the photos provided areowned by me and do not represent an attempt to commit a forgery of copyrighted work. Good idea, aninvitation for more forgery, or a bit of bravado?

I left the movie feeling his forgeries were not only harmless, but in fact a positive thing: he really wasmaking people happy by giving them gifts, and he seemed to get pleasure from it. What more could we askfrom a transaction? Leininger, the registrar, is presented as the killjoy. And even though Landis hastentatively agreed not to gift forgeries to institutions, the movie ends with him headed in a new direction,with similar ethical questions and even less accountability.

Forgers and magicians are experts at misdirection. Landis even compares himself to a magician at onepoint, when someone asked how he painted his Mona Lisa. Well, its like a magic trick you know. If I toldpeople, it wouldnt be worth anything anymore. Has Landis manipulating the director to miss the essentialelements of his ethical, if not legal crimes? Could this entire film be considered a meta-forgery, where theviewer is the one duped? The thought even crossed my mind that he might produce obvious forgeries inorder to continue producing more sophisticated ones.

Art and Craft provides an entertaining and engaging conversation starter for a number of issuessurrounding forgery.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations, New York:Schocken Books, 2007. This extremely important essay comes up in virtually every discussion of forgery.

F is for Fake Movie. Dir. Orson Wells. 1974. A tangled web involving Elymr de Hory and Clifford Irving.

Hebborn, Eric. Confessions of a Master Forger: The Updated Autobiography. London: Cassell, 1997.Regardless how you feel about him, he is a skilled and entertaining writer with a fascinating history.

Hebborn, Eric. The Art Forgers Handbook. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1997. This is a how-tobook.

Irving, Clifford. Fake!: The Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Irvings interest in forgery became more than academic; he later faked an autobiography ofHoward Hughes. Is forgery a contagious disease?

Meyers, Robin and Michael Harris, eds. Fakes & Frauds: Varieties of Deception in Print and Manuscript. NewCastle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1996. A collection of essays dealing with forged books and documents.

Schwartz, Hillel. The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. New York: ZoneBooks, 1996. A lengthy examination of twins, doppelgngers, self-portraits, seeing double, ditto,reenactment, replication and more in 565 pages.

Radnoti, Sandor. Fake: Forgery and Its Place in Art, trans. Ervin Dunai. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. An important philosophical take on forgery.

Any other favorites?

About the author

3 Responses to The Movie Art and Craft: AConservators Perspective

JeffPeacheyJeffrey S. Peachey is the owner of a New York City-based studio for the conservationof books. Currently he is preoccupied with making tools out of Delrin.

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October 20, 2014Registrar Trek: The Next Generation FAUX Real: News from Art andCraft[] also wanted to share this blog from the American Institute for Conservation(http://www.conservators-converse.org/2014/10/the-movie-art-and-craft-a-conservators-perspective/). A very well thought out piece from the []

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October 20, 2014Registrar Trek: Die Nchste Generation Richtig geflscht:Neuigkeiten von Art and Craft[] mchte Sie auch auf diesen Blog des American Institute for Conservation aufmerksam machen(http://www.conservators-converse.org/2014/10/the-movie-art-and-craft-a-conservators-perspective/). Der Blogger hat da einen wohlberlegten Beitrag []

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October 30, 2014Registrador Trek: La Nueva Generacin Falso Real: Noticias de Artand Craft[] quera compartir este blog del Instituto Americano para la Conservacin (http://www.conservators-converse.org/2014/10/the-movie-art-and-craft-a-conservators-perspective/). Un post muy bienpensado por parte del []

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