
Arrests in a String of High-Profile Old Master Forgeries - newest
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/arrests-old-master-forgery-scandal-1649779
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ausbah
From the millions of dollars pumped into money laundering, tax avoidance, and
forgery that seems to perpetuate high price art sales - it find it hard to see
any benefit to the industry and practice of private ownership of such pieces.

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Nasrudith
The preseevation is the benefit really. Although money laundering goes into
whatever the hell will launder money period.

Forgery is also the reverse of perperuating high prices at the cost of
authenticity - to the market usually and if indistinguishable from the
original.

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travisoneill1
How is the painter breaking the law? He painted the forgeries, but didn't pass
them off as real. Isn't that legal?

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mikekchar
I have been told that you have to make the copy obvious. Usually this is done
by changing the size of the canvas. To be honest, though, as all of the works
will be out of copyright, I'm not entirely sure what law is broken simply by
painting a copy.

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fatbird
I don't believe it's illegal to make a copy, even a perfect copy (see my
comment below about the Nova episode paying an artist to repeat the process on
camera of creating a duplicate). What's illegal is fraud in selling it as an
original.

The point of making it obviously a copy is to have a clear defense of
"obviously I wasn't trying to make a perfect copy" should it later be sold as
authentic--as happened to the 'forger' in the Nova episode. He genuinely sold
it as a copy; it was only after several more sales (to which he had no
connection) that it was fraudulently sold as authentic.

