
In north Michigan woods, feds raid an alleged upscale art forgery factory - rmason
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/08/art-forgery-ring-targeted-fbi-raids-near-traverse-city/5398152002/
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brobdingnagians
> “These were very beautiful – fake or not," Feld added. "Whoever did this is
> quite an accomplished artist — just not the artist he or she purported to
> be.”

I always find it interesting that some of these works are high value when
everyone thinks that they are by a certain person, and worthless when they
find out it is by someone else. This guy would probably never be known for
anything, except that he sold some expensive paintings he made fraudulently.
But he has talent in that particular area; but that sort of talent doesn't get
you far.

You'd think paintings have an intrinsic value by themselves, but in art
dealing, context & association is everything.

~~~
mywittyname
Replicas do have intrinsic value. I have several replica paintings and none of
them were cheap. I prefer hand painted artwork & craftsmanship over prints.
The difference is, nobody is fooled into thinking these are authentic
Picassos.

As someone else said, the original paintings are worth more because they are
one touched by the master. That history is valuable to certain people. I am
not one of those people, and many others share the same opinion, they
appreciate the art only for its aesthetics.

Interestingly, replicas of famous works are often much more expensive than
original works by the same no-name artist. I have lots of originals from art
students that I picked up for <$20 or so.

You see the same behavior in other fields. An original Mustang GT350 is worth
a hell of a lot more than a replica, even if the replica is better in many
metrics, because a small group of wealthy people value the heritage and
history much more than the tangible good.

~~~
js2
The comment to which you're replying isn't referring to replicas though, but
rather original paintings fraudulently attributed to a famous artist:

> FBI agents have identified eight probable forged paintings, five of which
> were billed as previously unknown works of Ault, an American artist active
> through the 1940s. Two other paintings were purportedly created by Crawford,
> an artist active through the 1970s whose precisionist style was similar to
> that of Ault, according to the search warrant affidavit. The last painting
> was purportedly created by Abercrombie, a surrealist American artist active
> through the 1970s.

To use your analogy, it would be as if someone created a car using Ford
Mustang styling cues, but that wasn't a replica of any Mustang that Ford ever
made, and claimed that it was a Ford Mustang prototype found hidden in a
garage.

~~~
mywittyname
I was merely pointing out that the artwork _itself_ does has intrinsic value,
irrespective of who made it and when. As the parent said,

>You'd think paintings have an intrinsic value by themselves,

If paintings didn't have intrinsic value, then there wouldn't be a market for
replicas and prints of famous of pieces. Yet, there is a market for such.

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mensetmanusman
These type of ‘save the rich’ operations leave a bad taste in my mouth.

With the amount of corruption being seen in police/teacher unions, wouldn’t
that be an effective place to use limited federal resources?

~~~
Shivetya
Hell with saving the rich, the number of carve outs that benefit only the
wealthy under the guise of protecting the environment should catch your ire
instead.

instead of funding EVs and solar panels for those well off enough to pay for
them we should be directing the same money to covering schools in solar panels
and replacing petrol school buses.

just saying, there is outrage when it comes to government expenditures in
every direction but people tend to only focus on what upsets them now.

(but to your point, public employee unions are just political slush funds in
disguise and you will be bailing them all out soon)

~~~
chrisjarvis
I like this sentiment but just wanted to add that school buses are one of if
not the most efficient vehicles on the road (obviously when you divide
emissions by a full bus of people) so this is arguably not a good place for an
environmental crusade.

~~~
pedrocr
CO2 per passenger or cargo mile is not what we're optimizing. We want CO2
reduction per dollar spent. Converting high usage vehicles is better for that.

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smileypete
Another well known UK conman/forgery 'mastermind', was John Drewe, who met and
manipulated a struggling artist, John Myatt:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drewe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drewe)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3S2kkGQow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3S2kkGQow)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/18/magazine/a-20th-
century-m...](https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/18/magazine/a-20th-century-
master-scam.html)

>'His unorthodox formula of emulsion and K-Y Jelly was fast-drying, allowing
him to paint quickly, if obsessively. "I took no trouble technically," he
says. "There was a negligence to everything I did."

Even so, his pictures were passing as genuine and selling for tens and
hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was enjoying a financial success he could
never have approached by painting Myatts. Perhaps no other forger of his or
any other time has worked so prodigiously and in so many styles...'

~~~
kriro
Thanks just watched the provided youtube video. Interesting case. Less greedy
and it would have worked perfectly. As someone with 0 idea about the art world
it was really interesting to see how well an approach of "fake the history by
altering the archives" \+ medium skill level painting worked. The lady that
flew in from France basically already told them "these are pretty bad
forgeries" and got the reply "yeah but the documents are legit" and had to go
through all kinds of trouble to prove the documents are fake.

In my worldview these scams only worked with perfect and amazing forgeries
that require some sort of high tech color-analysis and canvas analysis to
uncover...alas just faking the chain of trust worked quite well.

~~~
smileypete
Yeah, that lady from France was an expert who truly studied the art itself.

The opening words of Eric Hebborn in the follow on video are illuminating:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jKbbajb5pE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jKbbajb5pE)

Some (most?) of his works are probably hanging in museums and collections,
indistinguishable from the genuine thing.

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QuinnWilton
If this is interesting to you, Orson Welles has an utterly fascinating kind-
of-documentary (it's a bit genre defying) about art forgery, named "F for
Fake".

It's a very strange movie, but it's worth a watch:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_for_Fake](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_for_Fake)

~~~
alexmingoia
I recommend also watching “Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery” documentary about
Wolfgang Beltracchi, the infamous art forger. He tricked the international art
world for almost 40 years, made millions selling forgeries, and went to prison
for it. He even created paintings by famous artists that didn’t exist and
convinced historians that they were newly discovered paintings. Fascinating
stuff.

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apetersonBFI
Wow, something from Traverse City on Hacker News.

Had no idea there was that kind of thing happening around here.

~~~
apetersonBFI
We have a 4 bedroom house just south of TC for 157k, so 300 would get you a
small lakefront home or a very nice house.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I'm jealous that you get to live up there! I summered up there as a kid (on
Long Lake) and my uncle and aunt raised my cousins there in the 80's and 90's.
We try to go up for a week or so every summer. COVID is putting a damper on
this one.

My wife and I would move in a heartbeat, but for the kind of IT work I do the
prospects seemed very limited (outside of Munson). I'm not ready to try to
bootstrap independent contracting all over again. The property taxes seen
nightmarish, though. The house on Long Lake is easily 3X what a similarly-
valued house in my part of Ohio would be.

My aunt and uncle lived on Cherry Bend, not too far from where this went down!

~~~
apetersonBFI
Definitely beautiful here.

I work in a hybrid IT - Programming role at a Food company here. I know a few
people in the IT community locally but outside of Munson and Hagerty there's
not many positions open.

I'm in Grawn, outside of the city limits, so the property tax isn't too bad.

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pgt
Part of me is fine with convincing art forgeries. It's like calling a PDF copy
of a book a "forgery". Well, you got the same information out of it, didn't
you? If the forgery imparted the same emotion and it's gonna last _longer_
than the original, isn't that a bonus? :)

~~~
bserge
Wouldn't this technically fall under copyright infringement? If there were any
copyright holders (I assume Da Vinci and Van Gogh's expired a long time
ago)... Since they copy someone else's stuff and claim it as the real thing,
making money from their sale.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Nope.

Reproductions are fine, so long as they are out of copyright or if you have
permission of the copyright holder. (I don't usually give permission for folks
to copy my paintings, but almost always give permission to copy my photos, for
example).

Copyright itself is different, though: It often means you can't make money off
of copyrighted work, but it can just as easily mean that you can't post a
reproduction or fan art on social media - but lots of things are out of
copyright.

Selling a reproduction and passing it off as the original is fraud, and since
there is fraud involved, it makes a reproduction a forgery. In general, you
use different materials to make a reproduction than you do a forgery as well:
A good reproduction might use some materials that folks used in the past, but
often mixes it with modern materials. A forger might use things that were
never used to trick the tests the experts used and use techniques to make the
painting age faster.

You could argue that the forger actually is the better craftsman with these
distinctions: It is too bad that there is so much deceit involved. I'd buy an
honest "forgery" that tricks the experts, but would be angry if someone passes
it off as an original.

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josefresco
Related: I just watched "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" starring Melissa McCarthy
which was entertaining and informative:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4595882/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4595882/)

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JoeAltmaier
Interesting career, forgery. But more interesting is the people that buy them.

In particularly the work of Ralston Crawford, which looks uncannily like
computer generated drawings. A novelty at the time (1970's?) I suppose, but
very ordinary today. Why would anyone value that now? You can make it with
Paint or something in minutes.

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vmh1928
Probably paying off student debt from an MFA.

