If you are looking for an engrossing read for the weekend, Errol Morris in his blog over at the New York Times just finished a long series about one of the most notorious art forgers of World War II, Han van Meegeren. A minor figure in the Dutch art world before the war, Van Meegeren became infamous after the war following his arrest for collaboration with the Nazis. Attempting to avoid the collaboration charge, Van Meegeren revealed to investigators that paintings he had sold to high-ranking Nazi officials like Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring were actually his own forgeries of works by Dutch masters.
Like Elmyr de Hory, another of the 20th century’s renowned art forgers, van Meegeren created paintings in the style of the masters, rather than replicas of existing paintings. Van Meegeren primarily imitated Vermeer, and he did so with such consummate skill that both the Dutch art establishment and the Nazi occupiers bought into his deception.
What makes Errol Morris’ series about Van Meegeren fabulous from start to finish is the way in which Morris exposes the overarching questions about human psychology and culture and history that this story of an ingenious, exceedingly talented criminal raises. Most interesting is the question Morris maintains in the background of the entire series: What differentiates Van Meegeren’s false Vermeers, some of them hailed as works of “genius” by Dutch art experts before they were exposed as fakes, from the paintings by Vermeer himself?
No comments:
Post a Comment