A 'mediocre' artist 'of limited ability', despite pulling off a stroke that required both successfully imitating the style of a master artist and coming up with an advanced (for the time) innovation in the chemical medium (the substrate that holds the pigment).
The art world is not a meritocracy, excellent artists can languish because their ideas are out of fashion or too far ahead of the public's taste (van Gogh being the most famous example). The condescending tone of this article is an irritating distraction from the interesting-sounding book it promotes.
In the book ("The Forger's Spell") this article is based on, the author actually gives Van Meegeren quite a fair analysis. His personal artwork is criticized but he is given a tremendous amount of credit as a forger.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the specifics of the critique of his original paintings but it revolved around him being overly focused on classical technique and applying it to trite contemporary still lifes which were not considered of interest at the time.
I remember a lot more about what was said on his forgeries, which were described as genius on 2 counts:
1. He utilized cutting edge technology (bakelite plastic) to emulate the hardening process of centuries old oil paint. This defeated all the standard tests for aging oil paint.
2. He tapped into the desires of the art historical community. Vermeer's paintings fall into two distinct styles without a clear transition between the two. This was a hot topic at the time and art historians were hoping to find a painting (or paintings) which showed a clear transition between Vermeer's early and late work. Van Meegeren intentionally created paintings to fit this transition phase.
The book also reveals in great detail how the forgeries were not actually executed very well from a technical painting perspective. There are images in the book and they show really badly proportioned figures, broken use of perspective, etc. The quality of the earlier forgeries is definitely better then the later ones but they all have issues.
People wanted these paintings to be real so badly that he didn't need to work hard to trick them.
classical technique and applying it to trite contemporary still lifes which were not considered of interest at the time.
Doesn't that also describe half of the work of "great artists"? When they were painted they were just "some lady I know" or "some guys standing in a room".
It certainly shows the irrationality of art appreciation. It's not about the quality of the painting, it's about who made it. And that is what makes forgery attractive; it's worth more because people think it's make by a more famous painter. The value comes not from the art itself, but from the history.
It's the same with the talk about modern AI art. Does it devalue art because it's not made by people? The same image made by AI, a modern artist, or an old master, has a completely different value because of who made it.
So Van Meegeren's style not interesting when he painted it, because it's old fashioned, but it is interesting when people think it's painted by Vermeer. It wasn't old fashioned then; it was revolutionary. The historic context is really different. It's clearly not about the picture itself, it's about the history, the cultural significance, the context.
> It's not about the quality of the painting, it's about who made it.
I'm super pessimistic about the art world and I agree with you to some extent but I think what you are missing is that art/art history is a conversation amongst a bunch of stakeholders (artists, galleries, museums, critics, viewers, etc) and what is considered important art at any given moment changes as this conversation progresses.
Someone making a perfect classical oil painting today (without doing something to make it engage with the current conversation) is akin to coming up with the perfect come-back to an argument you had a week ago and then trying to bringing it up in an unrelated conversation today.
The key part of that sentence is "which were not considered of interest at the time". When Van Meegeren was working, the artistic zeitgeist was focused on exploring new concepts of abstraction and extended technique.
I’m convinced by the article which is so hell bent on casting a poor light on Han van Meegeren it’s hard to care enough to read but if you are interested in forgers and forgery - a fascinating subject - I heartily recommend Orson Welles F for Fake. It’s for most part a documentary about the famous forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving, himself somewhat a forger. I say for most part because to serve its point the documentary itself intentionally verges into the forgery territory in an amount which is hard to gauge. It’s an extraordinary brilliant and personal reflection on the place of authenticity in film and the art.
The movie notably includes this brilliant quote by Elmyr de Hory: “Guilty? Of what? Making masterpieces?”.
I know a Dutch painter whose main trade is that she can basically copy any style in a way that even trained people have a very hard time telling from the real thing. It's a good thing she's not into forgery.
> which is so hell bent on casting a poor light on Han van Meegeren
He forged art, made money by selling it to literal Nazis, and blew the money on hookers and palatial houses. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the guy?
I do have complicated thoughts on the same piece of art being valued completely differently depending on if it's signed by person X or person Y, but for better or worse this is very much a thing.
With him being paid in stolen Nazi art, he could even have framed it as getting stolen Nazi art back. Although obviously that wouldn't work if he'd sold those stolen paintings already.
> He forged art, made money by selling it to literal Nazis, and blew the money on hookers and palatial houses.
Could be re-written as “via deception/trickery, deprived Nazis of monetary resources and increased the wealth of working ladies and tradespersons he associated with.”
The article says the Nazis traded him 137 looted paintings in exchange for the Vermeer, so yes, at the very least he's profiting off the original owners, who likely died in concentration camps.
I don't really understand this ethical framework. What can be done with these paintings? Must they be destroyed, or anything else is "profiting off victims of Nazis"?
It's stolen property that should be returned to its owners, and we have a standard legal framework for that. Obviously it's complicated when entire generations were annihilated, and there is still litigation going on today about the provenance and fate of some works stolen in WW2.
Okay, so he and the people that bought them from him should return them.
That doesn't make taking them from Nazis bad. It would be better if he took cash from them, but again he only gave the guy a painting, he didn't help the Nazis. And better he have the paintings then a major Nazi, even as stolen property. The absolute worst option would be the Nazis selling the pile of art for cash.
He imitated a wide variety of painters and even got one of them (Karel Appel) to authenticate a forgery as real.
He later opened a gallery where he now sells paintings signed under his own name in the style of several famous painters with very different styles. He's made quite a nice career doing that since he got caught.
When he was still forging, he sold lots of paintings and drawings via auction houses all over Europe and it is suspected that there were quite a few that were never found out or where the owner decided to not press charges for financial reasons. So, there are likely to still be some of his forgeries in private collections.
What is it about Dutch painters that makes them so successful? Two recent very successful forgers, not to mention dozens of world class famous historical painters.
> Van Meegeren was tried, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in 1947. Nearly two months later, he died of a heart attack without serving even a day.
What the article doesn’t say is that he originally was charged with selling Dutch cultural property to the Nazis, for which he could have gotten the death penalty.
That made him confess that he sold a forgery. They didn’t believe it, so he “painted his last forgery between July and December 1945 in the presence of reporters and court-appointed witnesses: Jesus among the Doctors, also called Young Christ in the Temple in the style of Vermeer.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren#Trial_and_pri...)
That got him of the hook for the death penalty, but also, of course, 100% unmasked him as a forgerer.
It's certainly a testament to his skill as a forger if he needs to put effort into convincing people that his forgeries are forgeries.
Not to mention how selling undetectable forgeries to Nazis turns two wrongs into a right. Possibly an accidental one; he doesn't sound like the kind of guy who was in it to fight fascism; it's just that the people he defrauded happened to be the worst kind of bad guys, turning him into an accidental hero.
A "mediocre" thinker is able to conjure up "powerful truths" if he pretends they were said by somebody else.
A "mediocre" artist is able to make "masterpieces" if he pretends they were done by somebody else.
Somehow, one is acceptable, while the other is quite obviously nonsense, absurd fetishization due to bias.
What makes art so special? Especially when it is generally said that what makes a master is not simply technique, but their unique 'eye', perception of the world, way to express things in a certain harmony with technique and the zeitgeist. The profound feelings that people have in connection with art depend on what the opinion of others actually is, despite the apparent universality of the art language.
The crime of forgery, within the art world, is similar to forbid anyone to express wrong theorems or false mathematical statements because of course, you wouldn't be able to distinguish that from the real mathematics of Gauss.
The art world is not a meritocracy, excellent artists can languish because their ideas are out of fashion or too far ahead of the public's taste (van Gogh being the most famous example). The condescending tone of this article is an irritating distraction from the interesting-sounding book it promotes.