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Art Forgery! $80 million dollars worth. A nice man from China is responsible for the brilliant forgeries, but the heart of the story is the gallery manager and the people buying the fakes. The big question the documentary tries to answer but doesn't is whether the gallery manager knew she was selling fakes. Best of all, the gallery manager is there to give her side of the story. The biggest problem for her is despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, she believes the paintings are real. There are a lot of experts on hand as well to say it's not possible she didn't know the paintings were fake.
It's a good history of the case. Ultimately, I couldn't feel sorry for either side since it was just rich people cheating other rich people. Also, I'm not a big fan of Pollock or Rothko, the main artists for the forgeries.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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Saw this a few days ago and forgot to post, and now Greg beat me to it. I remember reading about this in the New York Times when it went to court, but had forgotten all about it. The main court case was just the lawyer and his extremely vindictive wife looking for revenge because they looked foolish. I think the gallerist probably thought the first paintings were real (mainly because she wanted to believe it), but as time went by, she sold so many that it was just not possible one seller had all those unknown paintings by extremely major artists. The gallery owner was just a douchebag who probably didn't care either way. I have no gallery experience, but if someone showed up with a supposed Rothko with no provenance, I think I'd be skeptical. But then I am habitually a bit suspicious of strangers.
This was also good on exposing the completely subjective nature of most expertise in the art world.
the hands that guide me are invisible
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not to hijack this thread (I won't mention robots), I've seen a couple of interesting movies around this topic.
"Art and Craft" (2014) which explores the forgers process (coffee grounds!) and how he duped the galleries over his long career.
"The Moderns" - a drama from the 80's which IIRC explored what is the value of art as a sub-theme.
There was also a film (might have just been a short documentary) that I can't find now about an artist named Boggs that made counterfeit money and then would try to purchase things with that money, and then would buy back the counterfeit bills and the receipt and turn the whole exchange into an art piece. It was a fascinating art concept.
--tg
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I'm trying to remember a couple of others that I saw recently. Orson Welles did one. There was also one with Clifford Irving called FAKE! The Story of Elmer De Hory.
With such a plethora, it makes you wonder if anything is real.
Robots are real.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
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You posted on those. They came up when I searched 'forgery'. I saw something too about art forgery recently...well, I think I saw it during the pandemic. I was searching to find it but failed. It's bugging me now because I don't remember.
Not to hijack this thread, but my mom just had an in-home medical check up. As part of the exam, the nurse asked her to remember three words: pencil, dog and tree. She didn't remember tree. I didn't remember pencil.
My memory is so bad now. I forget things I've written a month ago. But in my defense, I'm writing at an alarming rate lately.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
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Person Man Woman Camera TV
--tg
