Master art forger Eric Hebborn keeps 'playing a great trick from the grave' | Hacker News Reader

Master art forger Eric Hebborn keeps 'playing a great trick from the grave'

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43 pointspseudolus22 comments

> On one hand, the man lived a life "that he could not afford" as a starving artist and supplemented his income with the forgeries.

> The second reason is more nefarious: he was pranking the art world.

More nefarious?

> Hebborn would only sell his works to art dealers and historians who "just should have known better."

> If an expert couldn't tell the difference between an authentic and an imitation piece, in Hebborn's eyes it was their own fault.

It was more than pranking, it was selling forgeries.

Sure, but how was the intent to prank more nefarious than actually selling forgeries?

True, nefarious is a strong word.

Sounds like he thoroughly embarrassed the art world but I would reserve nefarious for a select group of serious crimes.

Embarrassing art connoisseurs is roughly equivalent with high treason in that world. The last thing they need is for an actual artist to show they're full of it.

Just like the clothiers didn't like the boy in the story of the Emperor.

True. The art world, or at least the modern art world, would prefer to be embarrassing us!

The primary purpose of art is as a store of value - i.e., in some ways it behaves like a currency. This store is extremely important to rich people, who can thereby store tens of millions of dollars worth of value in a single canvas. But there is no central regulator of this currency, and no treasury issuing notes - its value comes entirely from perception and some historical myth-making.

Forgery here has the same impact as forgery in any other currency - it debases the value of the currency. But imagine if you could debase an entire currency by issuing a single false note. Art forgery confuses the value of art - is it the object that is important? Apparently not - the only possibility, then, is the chain of authenticity demonstrating, e.g., "Picasso made this shitty painting". Forgery means the painting as object is less meaningful AND it means demonstrating the chain of authenticity is more important to maintaining its value. This is really bad for some rich people who own a lot of art.

Honestly, I think it's just a bit of light comedy with the "more nefarious". Quite confused by the responses you're getting, tbh.

I highly recommend "Beltracchi. The art of forgery" documentary at Netflix.

TY, watching it right now.

Amazing, isn't it? If he can paint so good that experts can't tell him from extremely famous artists...shouldn't his work be valued a lot? I get the novelty on having, say, of one the few DaVinci paintings, but art in itself is valued as well.

>>"On 8 January 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, having suffered massive head trauma possibly delivered by a blunt instrument. He died in hospital on 11 January 1996."

probably revenge...someone may have lost a fortune due to his antics.

The technique of the greatest painters is often not particularly difficult to copy. In my late teens I considered doing replica paintings to make money. I did a few, and I was somewhat surprised at how good they looked and how easy they were, and I’m only technically middling. (The dealer was only offering $200-$600 for them, and with material costs, it wasn’t worth it in the end.)

Some painters are technically amazing and difficult to copy, but they are rarely the greatest artists. John Singer Sargent is one; he had an amazing brush technique that can’t be overworked, yet captures forms and light very realistically - but you’d hardly call him a great artist.

I would call Sargent a great artist by any standard, and in multiple mediums. He may have made his money in portraiture, but even then he generated pieces like The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit that are outstanding art. But outside or portraits, his murals and bas reliefs are absolutely phenomenal and worth traveling for.

That is a very impressive painting. In spite of being fragile the vases are still around, the girls are long gone.

I like Sargent, and have seen a lot of his major works in person. I suppose I’m using a pretty high threshold for “great”, which I’d reserve for the top tier. My point was that the artistic worth of a painting is not tightly correlated to the technical skill of its painter. Good enough is usually all that’s needed.

There's some Dali quote out there where he says he is not that technically skilled as an artist, and if you look up close at some of his paintings in person, you can kinda see what he's getting at. He is no slouch by any means but he is definitely no Sargent or Vermeer. I think a lot of people who aren't really into art assume greatness=technical prowress, in particular those quick to poo poo modern art, but (speaking for myself at least) those who are in the art world are more concerned with the novelty and innovation of ideas (given some baseline level of craftsmanship, of course).

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who can paint hyperrealistically, because I know and understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into that level of mastery. But at the end of the day, I'm going to be far more impressed by an artist like Riusuke Fukahori who took that skill set and used it to create a new and novel sculptural technique. That's technical mastery combined with creative genius. That's great art.

Another interesting person who did forgery: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Beltracchi

There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren, who initially wasn’t trialed for forgery, but for aiding and abetting with the nazis, selling the Vermeer’s he ‘found’ to Hermann Göring.

His defense (facing, potentially, a death penalty) that the painting was a forgery was only believed after he had shown how to paint a ‘Vermeer’.

He forges art, nets 100m+ euros, goes to prison for 3 years. I spend 40 years at a job I'd rather not be at, lucky to retire with 1m+ euros. Leaves a sour taste.

You can still pick up a brush. 3 years in prison is nothing to sneeze at. It's a matter of ethics, after all, if all you want to look at is the eventual outcome we could all be bank robbers but most people prefer another life.

Was he murdered?

From Wikipedia - "On 8 January 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, having suffered massive head trauma possibly delivered by a blunt instrument. He died in hospital on 11 January 1996.[4]"

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