One imagines that there is much more to this story than is explained in the news article, but even this small amount of information is fascinating. The story seems worthy of fiction or film: an elderly art dealer who (supposedly) convinces an artist to fake a Picasso "to help catch a thief" and later sells a forgery for two million dollars and pleads guilty to lying to the FBI. The film would likely include more guns, but gunplay wouldn't be too great a stretch, since the FBI is already involved. This is a story about the crook dealer, but what is the forger's story, I wonder?
This story also leads one to further question art's monetary value. The painting, pictured above, is not itself extraordinary, and would not be worth very much as a work by Maria Apelo Cruz. As a forgery, the work of art loses its value as itself: if people believe that the work is a genuine Picasso, it becomes that work, by Picasso, and once the fraud is discovered, all of its value, monetary or cultural, evaporates. Why is this not art? What is it now?
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