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By K.P.R.
Left: "A Woman Weighing Gold," by Jan Vermeer Van Delft (1632-1675). Right: "Christ at Emmaus," a psuedo-van Delft forged by van Meergeren and sold to the Royman Museum Rotterdam. Help
Left: "A Woman Weighing Gold," by Jan Vermeer Van Delft (1632-1675). Right: "Christ at Emmaus," a psuedo-van Delft forged by van Meergeren and sold to the Royman Museum Rotterdam. Help
Left: "A Woman Weighing Gold," by Jan Vermeer Van Delft (1632-1675). Right: "Christ at Emmaus," a psuedo-van Delft forged by van Meergeren and sold to the Royman Museum Rotterdam. Help
Left: "A Woman Weighing Gold," by Jan Vermeer Van Delft (1632-1675). Right: "Christ
at Emmaus," a psuedo-van Delft forged by van Meergeren and sold to the Royman Museum
Rotterdam.
"VTOT so long ago, a Dutch
man, Jan van Mee
geren, was indicted on a
charge of collaborating with
the enemy. The facts were
that among the art treasures
looted by Goering, a painting,
a "Vermeer," was found which
could be traced as having
been sold to Goering by van
Meegeren.
rJTHE accused's defence was unique,
and staggered the art world.
Van Meegeren, himself a painter,
did not deny the sale to Goering,
but, he said, far from collaborating
with the enemy he deceived him.
The painting was a forgery. He,
van Meegeren, had painted the pic-
ture himself. Once suspicion was
aroused by that confession, it was
found that the accused had forged
and sold a number of "Vermeers."
Among them was the painting
"Christ at Emmaus" which had
become one of the most cherished
and admired possessions of the
Rotterdam Royman Museum.
Indeed, in all those cases van
Meegeren had succeeded in forging
paintings of the famous 17th cen-
tury Dutch master, Vermeer van
Delft, so well that expert art dealers
and gallery directors fell victims to
his fraud. That is by no means
easy to achieve. Such men never
take anything for granted and put
every old master piece offered to a
severe test to prove its genuineness
with the aid of microscope, X-ray,
and infra red light.
The forger did not merely copy
genuine Vermeers. He painted his
own picture, only in Vermeer's style,
thus making it appear a true Ver-
meer.
* * * *
J HAVE heard people ask:
"Why all the fuss about
forgery? If those pictures, not being
copies, but in fact new and orig-
inal compositions,' were so well done
that experts considered them worthy
of a great master, that should prove
their intrinsic value. After all the
old master's name was used only
because a stupid public cannot re-
cognise a good thing when it sees
one, unless there is a well known
label attached to it. (Van Meegeren
maintained having forged and sold
the Christ at Emmaus to the Rotter-
dam Museum with the sole object of
showing the fallibility of art critics
and experts.')
"Forgetting for the moment that
there ever was such a fraud, would
not the picture be yet a great work
of art,, equal in value to the master-
piece it was considered to be until
the swindle was exposed?"
* * * *
jyjY answer to the question
is this. What the forger
managed to acquire was the tech-
nique of the old master. What he,
a man of the 20th century, lacks and
what he could never possess, is the
old master's 17th century spirit.
Art is an expression of human
civilisation. With his most deceiv-
ing technique, the forger holds an
empty shell in his hands. Missing
from it is what forms the contents
of all great art-the spirit of truth,
which alone will produce beau tv.
The work of arl exists in its own
right. It carries in itself its own
values, irrespective of what ex-
perts may assess them to be, ex-
pressed in terms of dollars and
pounds.
Man is easily deceived. Defraud-
ing an expert may be somewhat
more difficult but not impossible.
The inner, the aesthetic value of a
work% of art-that beauty which is
truth-is not affected by human
valuations the one way or the other.
* * ? * *
r£HE work of a forger can
never be a work of art,
because it lacks that one essential
quality-truth. That the forger may
have succeeded in betraying the
public, including the experts, proves
nothing but his own cleverness and
their stupidity. It is not when the
fraud is discovered that the forged
masterpiece ceases to be a work of
art-how could it-as in fact it
never was a work of arti
Its intrinsic value is not chang-
ed by the discovery, only peoples'
erroneous ideas about that value.
After all, there is nothing extra-
ordinary about that. A forged £5
note does not become genuine by the
fact that it is being accepted as
legal tender as long as the fraud re-
mains undetected. And it is easy
to see that the forged note must be-
come worthless on discovery.
The reason that many people will
not readily , agree that the case of a
forged masterpiece is exactly the
same is that they apply a yardstick
of .everyday utility values, which ii
quite inappropriate.
The value of a work of art if
asthetic - that is, spiritual - ant
must be so assessed.
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