Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The other side of the coin is that the customer for this sort of
work doesn’t know what he should be looking for. I am reminded
of a social gathering at the home of a socially prominent woman
in Minneapolis, honoring two retirees of the faculty of the
university’s art department. The hostess over-flowing with self-
importance and a heightened estimate of her social behavior
was showing a group of faculty around the large house and
pointing out items in her collection. She beamed when she came
to a work by one of the retiring professors and proudly
announced that is was going to be sent to the Sao Paulo
Biennale and discounted the importance of a George Braque
she’d “got rid of”, which had, consequently, lost all its artistic
importance. One of the guests a teaching assistant, apparently
fed up with her posturing asked if she were familiar with the “so
and so” collection in New Port. She wasn’t, of course, familiar
with it and dismissed the question with a gesture of her wrist, at
which point feigning submission the questioner admitted that it
would have been unlikely since it was a really private collection.
The hostess got the point immediately and turned a deep purple.
If customers behave the way Hebborn describes they deserve to
get fakes, although I consider it thoroughly regrettable that a
clever pastiche maker should have prostituted his talents to that
end.
I am still amazed at how clever some forgers can really be. The
following story involved myself, a painting I own, which had
been attributed to Albert Bierstadt, and Forrest Fenn, a very
prominent art dealer in Santa Fe. I had come into the possession
of this painting while still an undergraduate art student having
bought it with the frame of the size I needed. I told the
shopkeeper that I didn’t want the painting so would he be able to
lower the price. He lowered the price 40%.
PAUL HENRICKSON
POJOAQUE, NEW MEXICO
GOZO, (MEDITERRANEAN)