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Cargando... Provenance: how a con man and a forger rewrote the history of modern art (2009)por Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A fun and fascinating read. ( ) I don't read very much non-fiction in book format; though I do read a bunch of magazines. I read something about this book (an excerpt?) in one of said magazines, and it intrigued me enough to get the book. Having worked in a museum archive, I was fascinated by this true story of how this art-forgery-fraud duo used falsification of archives in order to pass off their fakes as the genuine article - complete with historical documentation, to be found in multiple, respected repositories. The truly amazing part was how truly crappy some of their work was, and how long no one noticed it for. It really makes you wonder - if someone bothered to do a less shoddy job; would they ever be caught? Have people done so? The estimates some interviewees give on what percentage of the art market is false or misattributed merchandise is shocking. So - interesting book, mainly because of the content. Like so much non-fiction, though, the prose is unexceptional. It simply gets the job done. Very quick read, an engaging narrative that's more about the forgery of archives than of art itself. A skilled con man dupes a struggling artist into becoming a forger. In an interesting aftermath, the con man has just gone back to jail for defrauding the elderly, while the struggling artist, after a year's sentence reduced to four months, is now widely sought after for his skilled copies.
If you've ever been had by a con man, as I once was at a cash machine in Salem, Mass., you know the odd aftermath of emotion. First, you're befuddled, then enraged and finally consumed by visions of revenge. But there's another sentiment that can sneak up on you. I was reminded of it while reading Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo's well-crafted tale of British con artist John Drewe. I'd expected to despise the psychopath at the center of what Scotland Yard called the biggest art fraud of the 20th century. But somehow, from the first page, he got me to drop my guard. Drewe, for all his odious ambitions, is ingenious, persuasive, even brilliant. As I was pulled deeper into his deceptions, I couldn't help admiring this creep. Likewise, I understood how I came away from that cash machine years ago envious of a guy who could put together a wildly complicated fiction that was credible enough to squeeze $20 out of me. In "Provenance," Salisbury and Sujo untangle Drewe's elaborate scheme that put more than 200 counterfeit works on the market between 1986 and 1995. What's fascinating about his story is his inventiveness in faking the paintings' provenances. Drewe ginned up receipts for prior purchases; he created catalogs for exhibitions that never took place; he even fabricated records for restoration work that the supposedly decades-old paintings had required over the years. In a master stroke, he smooth-talked his way into the archives of the Tate Gallery, where he inserted some of his phony documents into the files. Experts rummaging about in the archives to certify a work's authenticity would find much to lead them astray. . . . PremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
Recounts the activities of John Drewe, who manipulated struggling artist John Myatt and other unwitting accomplices to become prolific art forgers whose works Drewe successfully passed off as legitimate pieces. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)364.163Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Criminology Crimes and Offenses Crimes of property FraudClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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