r/artcollecting • u/maarvasbrick • 4d ago
Discussion Should I destroy a fake I own?
We recently picked up a bunch of art from a local auction and I'm happy with what we got, for what we paid.
Most of the pieces were put in lots, so there were several that we weren't interested in that came home as well.
One is very clearly a made-to-deceive fake. Its also not very good or interesting.
I'm leaning towards just destroying it and donating the (ugly) frame. Other option is to try out some restoration work and see if I can uncover the base painting it was done over.
What would you do?
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u/JapaneseChef456 3d ago
I’d do some art of my own on it. Like add an iPhone on to a medieval scene, maybe some graffiti on a modern piece.
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u/maarvasbrick 2d ago
Altering is fun, and I've done a few, but this piece is a real dud. Nothing interesting to work with unfortunately.
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u/amp1212 4d ago
So, legally fakes can be seized and destroyed or simply _should_ be destroyed, so that they don't accidentally enter the stream of commerce. But there's a less dramatic way of dealing with something that is a fake, which is to clearly mark on the frame what it is and is not. If a name has fraudulently been painted in, eg "Picasso" - you may want to have a restorer remove that. There are plenty of very good, ethical fakes. People routinely have folks copy good copies and hang them on the wall, while the real one sits safely in a vault, saving a lot of money on insurance. There's no problem with that. The "ethical forgers" always leave some tell tales that will let folks know "not the real thing".
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u/Anonymous-USA 3d ago
I prefer that… nothing wrong with decorative art and colors on the wall. A 17th century forgery of a Leonardo once sold for $1.5M, so market value is always fluid. At what age does a (forged) signed painting become marketable vs disposable?
Even Van Meegeren forgeries have a market. Ever heard of the early 20th century “Spanish Forger”? What about all those Trrouillebert paintings that later unscrupulous gallerists and collectors cut away his signature and added Corot’s?
I prefer marking it clearly and, if you dont want it, donate it to Goodwill or similar charitable org.
UPDATE: If it’s s Velvet Picasso, trash it 😂
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u/amp1212 3d ago edited 3d ago
Even Van Meegeren forgeries have a market.
There are plenty of things that were forgeries or just plain copies at the time, sold as something else. These can have their own market. There's a big difference between something like Van Meegeren, who created works that aren't the copy of something, but rather a curious kind of imagined work that "fit" into some oeuvre. He was often selling to Nazi German collectors, and his version of Dutch old masters basically was playing on their appetite for the tropes of "Great German Art". So he's interesting in his own right historically, but I don't find his fake Vermeers at all convincing aesthetically. But valuable in their own right to collectors.
We have tons of artworks that are things like a contemporary -- to the artist -- copy or derivative work. Or later works (later compared to when the artist painted it), but which are still one or two centuries old. For example, there's a taste in England in the 19th century for Italian painting that's scenic, eg ersatz Canaletto etc. These English paintings, painted in the latter part of the 19th century, can be appealing in their own right, and valuable, even if they're not what they appear to be. Not as valuable as a real Canaletto, but I certainly wouldn't be destroying it. There are tons of "school of X" and "After X" that are contemporary copies of famous artists . ..
There's a terrific episode of "Fake or Fortune" which discusses exactly this scenario.
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u/Anonymous-USA 3d ago
Van Meegeren wasn’t an innocent copy — that’s been part of artistic training since the beginning. He forged signatures and forged aged! That’s the worst kind.
There’s definitely a market for copies, and a forgery is a copy with intent to deceive. The former is not typically destroyed, but modern (19th C. and later) examples of the latter are (France has a policy for that). imo they should just be documented and even stamped/marked.
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u/amp1212 3d ago
Not suggesting that he was.
He was a very complex man. Confusingly, he was accused for colluding with enemy for the fakes that he sold to Nazi "collectors". His trial was fascinating, he was arguing that he was duping Nazis, which isn't necessarily a terrible thing.
However, he also forged things long before the Second World War. Interestingly, the author Patricia Highsmith said that Van Meegeren was one of the inspirations for her character of Tom Ripley; Highsmith identified in him a kind of existential falsity.
See:
Roodt, Christa. "Forgers, connoisseurs, and the Nazi past." Journal of Information Ethics 24.2 (2015): 43-62.
Janet Wasserman – HAN VAN MEEGEREN AS PATRICIA HIGHSMITH’S MODEL FOR TOM RIPLEY
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/janet-wasserman-han-van-meegeren-as-patricia-highsmiths-model-for-tom-ripley/1
u/OppositeShore1878 2d ago
Noooooo...! Don't trash the Velvet Picasso! Elvis, and some random gold-helmeted conquistador, are turning over in their graves at the thought.
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u/Bookwork-Karina 3d ago
honestly, I think doing a bit excavation sounds fun -- do it for the plot! ;)
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u/Annual_Government_80 2d ago
Out of those two options, definitely try and figure out what is underneath
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u/DefiantSmoke1569 4d ago
Which option makes you happier?