Art Forgery and the Law

A few months ago I discussed this breaking story, of a man who appeared to be posing as a Jesuit priest and donating forged art to museums across the country. The forger has now been identified as Mark Augustus Landis, and it appears that earlier claims that he took no money for his dozens of forged artworks is true. His story has been discussed at length in the Financial Times and New York Times, and the FT article was even featured on one of my favorite arts news websites, Arts & Letters Daily. The elaborate masquerade involved with the donation of Landis's forged artworks seems a work of art in itself; Landis had to create not only the fake artworks, but also the benefactor priest persona.

Authorities are now attempting to find a way to prosecute Landis for something but are having trouble because the man doesn't seem to have stolen anything or acquired compensation for any of his forged gifts. It appears that the only harm he's caused is injury to the pride of museum curators who probably should have known better than to authenticate these works (and some did). What do you think about this enigmatic figure? Should he be punished in any way possible, or slapped on the wrist and told to stop giving away fakes? I'm still not sure what I think.

Authentication Euphoria?

Today Yahoo! featured this article about a document purported to be one of Lincoln's last actions before his death in 1865. As is fairly evident to us (especially once we know it's a fake), the "5" on the document does not quite match the other numbers and there appears to be an ugly smudge underneath it. The document was "discovered" by Thomas Lowry in 1998, so one wonders why it took so long to prove that it had been altered.

It seems to me that everyone wants to believe that others are truthful and well-meaning. We especially like the idea of "Honest Abe," and probably hate the suggestion that anything connected with him would be fraudulent (even if it's not his fault). Tests to gauge authenticity are also expensive and time-consuming, and question the expertise of the experts. It makes everyone feel better (I imagine) to authenticate a work than to expose a forgery. Lowry counted on this, and though the National Archives now "has banned Lowry from its facilities," he likely rode the wave of that discovery for a decade with publications and lectures, and is now nearing retirement age anyway. His rivals are gloating at their discovery of the alteration, but they get little else from it. No one's really proud of the guy who annoyingly points out an inconsistency in a document or work of art.

On the Double Life and Television Entertainment

I'm several months late on this post and I'm not quite sure why it occurred to me now (maybe the Golden Globe Awards stirred it up?), but I'd like to discuss the (extremely) short lived FOX television drama Lone Star. I was one of only 4.1 million people to watch the first episode of this program, which involved a con man in Texas who leads two separate lives and is partnered with two separate women, but starts turning his life around when he gets hired by Jon Voigt (at least I remember it to be him) and can start making money legally. But there is still the issue of his two women...

I'm fairly certain that the main problem with the program was that all of the things mentioned above happened in the very first episode. The character development was so rapid as to seem unimportant ("I'm not going to con people anymore, Dad!") and the protagonist's supposedly well-built life/lives of lies was already beginning to crumble by the end of the first episode. Despite my obvious love for con men and double lives, I didn't bother to watch the second episode, and neither did most of the rest of the country, apparently. FOX canned it after only two episodes (supposedly that may be some kind of record) and put another show about fakers, Lie to Me, into its Monday-after-House spot. I'm slightly surprised because like me, the American public seems increasingly interested in manipulation of truth and con men, but I'd prefer an episode of Lie to Me any day.

Layers of Fake

Orson Welles's last finished movie is the anomalous pseudo-documentary F for Fake that I need to see at least one more time in order to make a complete analysis. The film involves, among others, notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory, his biographer and fellow faker Clifford Irving (whose story involving the fabricated autobiography of Howard Hughes is told in the film The Hoax starring Richard Gere), and Orson Welles himself, who variously purports to tell the truth "strictly based on the available facts" and confesses to falsehoods while simultaneously creating others. The result is less illuminating than further confounding; rather than fully expose de Hory and Irving's lies, Welles appears in some sense to join forces with them or even attempt to beat them in some sort of faker competition.

The film gives an odd sense that fraud has a sort of viral quality, that either exposing fraud turns the exposer into a fraud himself, or that only fakers can see the falsehoods of others. I wonder to what extent the exposer of fraud feels he has power over the exposed, even that his exposé allows him to then commit his own frauds. It's difficult for me to discern truth from lies in a film that lies about telling the truth and lies about lying to its viewers, and perhaps this is the point. I'm comfortable with fiction because it does not say it is truth, but F for Fake, which seems to flip-flop the ideas of truth and fiction with varying amounts of success, makes me all sorts of uncomfortable.

When Forgery becomes Murder

I am twenty-five years behind on this story, but I can probably be forgiven since I was not even reading yet when it happened. In 1985 Mark Hoffman, on the verge of having his hundreds of forgeries discovered, sent bombs that killed two people before maiming himself with a third explosive. The story is reminiscent of several others I have discussed here, most notably those of Jean-Claude Romand and Brian Blackwell, in that it deals with a man who killed in order to protect his lies. Both Hoffman and Romand ended their deceptions with suicide attempts, but it is notable that neither attempt succeeded. Hoffman was obviously adept at making bombs, but only two of three he made killed their targets. I don't think that Hoffman ever intended to die.

I wonder whether these types of deception are forms of survival for some people, to such an extent that they somehow feel that they must ultimately kill or be killed (or discovered to be frauds, which is apparently just as bad). While I am extremely interested in forgery, I don't necessarily think that it is the worst possible crime, and find it almost unbelievable that a person would kill for the preservation of his forgeries. People like Mark Hoffman seem almost like another species, one that follows its own set of social/moral rules. I will probably continue to be baffled.

Motives for Imposture (and Believing the Impostor)

A year or two ago I was shown this intriguing story discussed in The New Yorker about a man named Frédéric Bourdin who had spent years pretending to be various adolescent boys in several countries and was known as the "king of imposters" and eventually "the chameleon." He mostly impersonated runaways and orphans, but his most famous feat of imposture was of missing American teenager Nicholas Barclay, whose family was supposedly convinced that Bourdin was Nicholas. Bourdin himself admits that he attempted this particular con to avoid the police, but unlike those of the imposter basketball player I discussed recently, Bourdin's usual motives are mostly unclear. Even his frank confession in the New Yorker article, though thirteen pages long, only partially illuminates The Chameleon's intentions and psychology.

I am excited to see the film that has been made about Bourdin (entitled The Chameleon), mostly because I am interested to see how it portrays both Bourdin and Nicholas Barclay's family. It's hard to believe that a mother would confuse an impostor for her own son, and many people (including Bourdin himself) think that members of Barclay's family know what happened to the boy. This situation makes me wonder what lies we accept in what situations. Will we allow ourselves to be lied to in order to conceal our own lies? Or are we just more likely to believe anything we really want to believe, for whatever reason (it makes us feel good, it hides our own secrets, it helps someone)?

Fake Pregnancy and Baby-Snatching

The woman pictured above is Michelle Marie Gopaul, an aspiring actress who told her friends she was pregnant and then held a fake movie casting call for infants in order to steal one and pass it off as her own. This article explains the story, which has broken in the last few days and is certain to become more detailed and bizarre in the near future. I envision testimonials from friends and the parents of the stolen baby, detailed inquiries into her upbringing, and tearful, overexaggerated apologies (likely on live TV) from Gopaul herself. It's probably just the kind of attention she wanted.

Of course, this type of story is hardly unique; fake pregnancies are all over the internet and translate well to television and film (especially crime dramas). The difference here is the much more rare kidnapping. Most other fakers manage to elicit extra sympathy by losing their nonexistent babies to fake miscarriages or some early infant malady, and then they can start over with a new fake pregnancy a few months later. Perhaps Gopaul actually wanted a baby. Perhaps she even believed herself pregnant for some time. Maybe she was just failing as a model/singer/actress and wanted people to notice her. I imagine the panic that must come with realizing that one's lie is about to be discovered, but I cannot imagine committing crimes to prevent that discovery. I'm interested to hear more about this person.

Celebrating a Year of The Fakery

I had forgotten that I began this blog on January 1 of last year, likely as one of many (mostly failed) attempts to start something new in the new year. Many of my initial postings consisted of books or people I'd been interested in before but had never discussed in writing, and I was excited to both condense the fakers in one place and provide my own personal commentary on them. My excitement has not yet waned, and my supply of "fakery" hasn't either, so I plan to continue this blog indefinitely. Hurray!

I would love for those of you who read The Fakery to give me comments, suggestions, or topics for discussion--I'm a one-woman show who loves to hear new relevant stories! Anyone can post comments, and I welcome them. Thanks for helping keep me interested in The Fakery for a whole year!

On the Creepy Film Double

I recently viewed the film Black Swan, a fairly uncomplicated tale of a ballerina's breakdown gussied up with mirrors, blood, and creepy special effects to create a relatively satisfying psychological thriller. Most interesting to me, though, was the only partially successful exploration of the double/impostor as a major theme of the movie. In the process of her transformation into the swan, Natalie Portman's character is tormented by both mirror images of herself and girls who seem to have her face, and of course everyone is a kind of double for her even from a sane perspective: the retiring swan queen who throws herself under a bus, the failed ballerina mother who has (creepily) transferred all of her energy to her daughter, the other indistinguishable ballerinas, and the mysterious new girl who becomes Portman's alternate/nemesis/double/lover/victim. The simultaneous splitting of self into two parts (black swan and white swan) and attaching the black swan self to other actual people made for interesting possibilities for special effects and even created suspense here and there, but ultimately lacked something. I will acknowledge the possibility that this was the point, that no one can possibly understand an unsound mind, but there is something of the cop-out in that idea.

However, I understand the sinister quality of the idea that one could be replaced by some sort of impostor. We all want to believe that we are unique, and that we are in particular careers or relationships because we are uniquely qualified to be in them. We are also afraid that this is not the case; we worry that some impostor could replace us, or even worse, that we are impostors and could be replaced by the legitimately unique and qualified versions of us. Black Swan used ballet to mostly successful effect (though I'm sure ballerinas are going to be livid!), and I'm going to be looking for my doppelgangers everywhere now.