MOMA director, Art forgeries

Let's bid 2.5. There are really two parts to this book. The first section is all about various museum pieces that are fakes: how they were gotten, who uncovered the fakery, etc. It's about the process of uncovering fakes, told from the point of view of the curator or purchaser, naturally. The problem with this section is that it is decidedly encyclopedic and when there are pictures of the item in question, the photos are halfway through the back of the book. Definitely inconvenient and made more frustrating because Hoving mentions tons of artwork and there are only pictures of a few of them. So between reading, looking for photos, and looking up the piece of art on the Internet, I did get exasperated. The second part of the book really follows Hoving and his nemesis Frel, very shady character who bought for the Getty. This begin in an interesting manner and then becomes so full of detail and proofs that the reader begins to lose the impetus and gets mired in detail, similar to the flaws of the first part of the book. Read only if you are passionately interested and can handle Hoving's monumental ego. ( )

There is something about the world of crime as it intersects with art that is just fascinating. The cleverness – sometimes brilliance – applied to creating forgeries, cheek by jowl with sometimes massive stupidities that either reveal them or blind suckers who believe in them; the pervasiveness of copies through time and space; the age-old question of why a forgery is worth less than an original when experts can't tell which is which (Mr. Hoving makes his opinion on this topic very clear). In his long career in and around the art world, Hoving collected more stories than, it seems, any other six people combined, and happily among his many gifts was a gossipy, intelligent, conversational writing style which sets those stories down in some terrific pot-boilers of books.

My only regret about False Impressions is the sparseness of illustrations. There are quite a few black-and-white photos inserted, of a few of the works of art discussed as well as people and events along the way, but there are so very many works examined which aren't included, for some of which Goodsearch and Google come up lemons. Ideally, of course, I would have loved to have seen all of the forgeries – and, where applicable, their originals. There is one example of both side by side, challenging the reader to pick which was which, and yes, I did pick correctly, therefore finding it to be a great idea. For the rest, I spent quite a bit of time combing the internet, with decidedly mixed results; some of the forgeries that were discovered have been relegated to storage deep in the bowels of the Met, and will never be seen again by the ordinary public.

Hoving talks here, as in Making the Mummies Dance, about handling the old and beautiful and unique, and that inevitably rouses deep jealousy in me. But he was well aware of the privilege and responsibility and honor of being able to do so, which keeps me from feeling full-blown hate-you envy; he never lost his admiration and adoration of art, never became jaded about the Monets and Vermeers and medieval altarpieces, was as excited by the last wonderful piece he handled as he was by the first - which all is one of the reasons I love to read his books. ( )

False Impressions is a book about art forgery, mostly the adventures and misadventures of Thomas Hoving as he has detected forgeries, and, to his chagrin, learned that he has been fooled. It is interesting, but not terribly gripping. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but for those with an interest, it's an amiable read.

One disappointment is that the book is not better illustrated. Some of the items that he mentions before getting to his own personal experiences are illustrated in Fake? The Art of Deception the heavily illustrated (mostly in color) catalog of an exhibit at the British Museum. It is a worthy read for anyone interested in the history of art forgeries.

Hoving says "I tend to look upon works of art as partly spiritual and mysterious and partly human and fragile. [...] Because of the complex mixture of humanity and divinity in works of art, it's vital to me that they are what they are supposed to be. It's a matter of human trust." Later: "As the great art critic Walter Pach said of fakes back in 1927, 'A work of art is a thing of life. The imitation is dead. " I am not fully convinced of this.

Consider a prize of the Cloisters' collection, a finger reliquary described as "the epitome of the soaring Gothic style in one small object." In the time that it took Erich Steingräber to explain why he thought it was a forgery, it became "insubstantial. It possessed no weight or heft, or indeed, character. It was only a thin shade, and image of something grand and deeply religious." A mystery, indeed.

Or consider a small sculpture of Virgin and Child supported by angels "made by an artisan who had managed to combine religious piety with the tenderness of motherhood, dogma, and reality. It was an image of such elegant sinuosity that I fell in love at once." But then he realizes that it is a nasty forgery, that it was "elegant and sweet, human and polite" when it should have been "a little awkward, steely, quirky, shadowed with a bit of angst." O.K., it may not be 15th century, but does it not still have all the qualities that it had before? It seems to me that the chief glory of art is not the ability to be slipped into a given pigeonhole of history.

It seems to me that forgery is indeed a breach of human trust, as Hoving says, even when it is not technically a fraud; the forger hoped to fool someone. It is also an offense against history, and, most poignantly, an offense against art and beauty. Not because it is a forgery, but because so often the forger creates an object of beauty and then damages it to make it look old.

But of course, if the forgers were open, and produced works freely admitting that they are modern, they wouldn't be considered as art. The pigeonholes of art history would condemn them. This seems very wrong-headed to me. If the Virgin and Child moves us when it was thought to be 15th century, why shouldn't it move us if it is openly 20th century? It seems to me that art has taken second place to art history and art criticism. ( )

at the risk of sounding like a simpleton, this book would have been far better as a picture book. So much time is spent in trying to DESCRIBE the fakes against the originals, a photo or illustration would have been infinitely more beneficial (because we're not talking about fakes of the Mona Lisa, we're talking Etruscan warrior statues - not the everyday photo calendar fair)

I absolutely loved his Making the Mummies Dance, so I had high expectations of this book. Although I will openly admit I couldn't finish it (so maybe it gets better at the end), but his writing seemed far more pompous this time around. No one wants to spotlight their own failures in missing fakes, but he seems to take far too much glee in pointing out the failures in others, sometimes in an incredulous manner, keeping himself blameless. Also, although technically fakes, since I am not an art expert, the fact that a sculpture was made in the 7th century and not in the 1st doesn't seem to matter very much. They are both old and impressive.

This book is truly for high end art afficianados - maybe with their own sets of reference books to get an idea of what he is describing. There are still moments of wit and insight which kept me going, but by the middle of the book, it just wasn't worth it (to me) anymore. ( )