Customer Reviews

The Expert versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts

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The purpose of this book is not to entertain the general public; it is shop-talk for a certain portion of the art world--the art trade and museums. The essays are uniformly competent and written in a lively, digestible fashion. Some essays are digressive, others terse, all are useful if you're trying to think through an authentication.

Mr. Spencer is clearly quite expert in this area, and he treats the material with enough examples, anecdotes and case studies that you just know he's been "around the block" on the variety of issues he covers. This is not a book for the casual reader. If you are interestsed in reading and learning a little about art fakes, I suggest Thomas Hoving's work. Spencer's work targets curators, lawyers and museum directors - or, like myself, someone immersed in the fine art business. I found it well written, sometimes a little inaccessible, but overall an excellent treatment of the subject.

Despite the repitition, this is an excellent book. It gets "under the skin" of the subject and provides a broad context. Unfortunately at times this context is nebulous and one can never quite pin it down - but one does get a good feel for this nebulosity in this book. The last few sections deal with legal issues and are fascinating. With multiple contributors some repitition is inevitable and perhaps could have been editied out, but so what? There's a lot of meat nicely cooked and presented.