For a forger, it all depends on how well-known the original artwork is, and who you have to fool.
Attempting to forge and sell a Matisse to Sotheby’s and having to pass through their forensic experts is an entirely different matter than forging some relatively unknown (or even made up) Russian realist from the late 1800s and fooling your garden variety gallery owner and unsuspecting buyer. The latter would probably be within the realm of possibility to most decent painters who wished to devote the time and effort.
If that sounds startling, try this one on for size: Art World and Forgery experts estimate that a startling 40% of the art on the market are either “half-forgeries,” genuinely old works that have been doctored to fit a more valuable style or artist–or are outright fakes. There are even how-to books on forging paintings available on Amazon.
One can only imagine the temptation for a talented but broke artist who grasps at the possibility of making 100s of times what he could get for his original by producing a fake. And in fact, that’s exactly what you hear in the interviews with captured forgers, who go from being unable to pay their rent to selling paintings in the mid-five figure range.
Of course, what stops even the most talented forgers from going for the multi-million dollar jackpot and trying to pass off, say, a fake Mona Lisa is the fact that everyone knows where to find the real painting.
And that’s what was so intriguing to me about the situation I managed to put my hero in during the latter half of my novel, The Last Train from Paris. First, it was interesting to me to see the forger become the good guy – not to mention having the forger already becoming successful in his own right. And second, it was even more interesting to have a forger in a position where he no longer had to worry about what I’ll call “the Mona Lisa problem.” So here’s the situation:
Jean-Luc, my novel’s hero, is attempting to thwart the Nazis in their attempt to loot the Louvre (and indeed all of Europe as well) of many of its most important works of art. So he’s able to forge these masterpieces, make the swap, and allow the Nazi’s to grab the fake while he and his accomplices keep the real artwork safe.
In this situation, the museum patrons are easily fooled, because the very context of the painting being in the museum means the viewers would never think to critically evaluate the painting for authenticity. And the Nazi thieves would be even easier to fool. Indeed, it turns out that the Nazi Herman Göering himself was conned into buying a forged Vermeer.
Indeed, this museum/gallery/context principle seems to be behind most other forgeries as well: if you can get into a high-end gallery, most of the collectors will just believe the painting belongs there. Don’t believe me? Turns out the strategy and the power of context has worked to sell paintings from kids as young as two – in high-end galleries no less.
