The Forger's Place in Art History

I can't think of any topic that could tell us more about aesthetics and the nature of what's good versus what's not than art forgery. For example, that the value of a painting could go from almost $12 million to zero in a single year is astounding, and filmmaker/essayist Errol Morris tells that whole story in seven installments, complete with fantastic graphics, on his blog. The article's springboard is the fact that two authors both published books on Vermeer forger Han van Meegeren earlier this year, with no relation to or awareness of each other. Comparing and contrasting their two distinct approaches by interviewing each author, while supplying relevant information from the books and even supplementing it all with his own research, the article is far more interesting than either book, both of which I found boring and decided not to finish. Morris' article traces the various strands that allowed van Meegeren's fake Vermeers to find a virtually unquestioned place in art history. These include a respected, aging art critic in need of a last big find, a Nazi-busting cop with a debt to settle, the cultural self-image of the Dutch people, and the artistic zeitgeist during the Third Reich.

The most fascinating aspect of the story is the fact that to almost everyone today van Meegeren's fakes appear both bad and without the slightest resemblance to Vermeer, while at the time the collective perception was exactly the opposite. How were they fooled when it seems so obvious to us? van Meegeren was using the zeitgeist; he was making Vermeer a Nazi. More significantly, how do we know we can't be taken in the same way; that we aren't?

The whole article is long but very worth it for anyone concerned with aesthetic ideals/standards and how/why they change.