Customer Reviews

Fake? The Art of Deception

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In the interest of what accounts for a 'fake' this book offers some good insights and essays. It explores the issues of artist copies, deliberate forgeries, wartime counterfeiting, and historic fakes vs. contemporary. The book gets muddled in its handling of layout and captioning: images are often on separate pages than their captions - and the captions often reference objects that aren't in the pictures. This is maddening when you are trying to visualize the description between the fake and the real object, for most often the real object is not shown for comparison.

1990 large-format paperback, published by the British Museum. I bought a copy when it was sold off as a remainder; the prices quoted here seem very high. Lavishly illustrated in b/w and colour. Over 330 numbered entries, some multiple. Most of the things discussed are illustrated in this book. They seem clearly happiest with the 19th century, many of their exhibits being from their own collections; very few 20 century forgers are represented (for example Eric Hebburn wasn't known of, then, though his work is here). About 100 people contributed.

It's written in direct British English and clearly aimed at the public. The contents page doesn't include all the detail; on leafing through, the top right corner has handy running titles on monkish forgeries, political forgeries, science, and the more predictable artworks - faked etchings, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, jewellery, coins, watches, furniture, carpets, antiquities from the remote past.

We soon find Beringer's fossils baked by his students, Dawson and Piltdown, the Zinoviev letter, replicas, passports, stamps, African masks, fairies at the bottom of a garden. John Logie Baird's televisual apparatus was a reconstruction and in any case not important. We have literary forgeries including of course Ossian.

Here's a bare listing; introductory essays -- WHY FAKES? Mark Jones / FORGING THE PAST David Lowenthal / TEXTUAL FORGERY Nicolas Barker
Then the catalogue...
1 WHAT IS A FAKE?
2 REWRITING HISTORY
3 THE LIMITS OF BELIEF: RELIGION, MAGIC, MYTH AND SCIENCE
4 FAKING IN THE EAST
5 FAKING IN EUROPE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 18TH CENTURY
6 THE 19TH CENTURY: THE GREAT AGE OF FAKING
7 FAKING IN THE 20TH CENTURY
8 THE ART AND CRAFT OF FAKING: COPYING, EMBELLISHING AND TRANSFORMING
9 THE SCIENTIFIC DETECTION OF FAKES AND FORGERIES
10 THE LIMITS OF EXPERTISE

Much material on the motives of forgers - to make money (often, or perhaps usually, to feed a demand - modern Chinese fossil fakes illustrate this), to gain fame, to push some obsession or aim. The authors estimate 5% of the current art/ artefact sales to be faked. They don't generally consider the deeper issues - forgeries at the basis of Christianity, forgeries in effect of the word of Allah, forgeries of medical notes to avoid legal action, forged TV information, faked information to start wars.