As a kind of parallel to ARCA's article on why people steal paintings, I've been thinking about Han van Meegeren, who I blogged about a few posts back. Why did van Meegeren become a master forger? You may think the answer is clear-cut- to make money, improve social standing, get a new car, house etc. Well, there is that prime economic motivation, but I've been reading an essay on him by Mark Roskill, in his What is Art History? According to this source, Van Meegeren was not only motivated by the need to make money, but also had other reasons for setting out on the path of art crime. Below are a number of reasons why van Meegeren may have turned to a life of art crime.
- Van Meegeren had an inferiority complex caused by his frail constitution; he suffered with a weak heart as a child, and was delicate and stunted.
- He wanted to wreak revenge on the art world that had slighted his abilities as a painter of biblical subjects. When he divorced in 1923, he took the wife of an art critic as his mistress- he subsequently married her.
- His fabrication of old masters was a rebuke against modern art and its critics.
- His first forgeries were "experiments in the artificial ageing of old master paintings."
- He needed money to support his first wife and child, and also funds to help maintain his ambitious life style.
- Van Meegeren became a forger of Vermeer's art because he shared the same signature as the artist HVM.
- Van Meegeren identified himself with Vermeer, even to the extent of keeping Vermeer- like props in his studio.
- He regarded forgery as a duel with the experts; he believed that his powers as a forger would render him undetectable.
Of course, none of these reasons excuses van Meegeren's criminal activities. Forgery distorts and although romanticism accrues to it, it is wrong. There's the other reason that forgeries, though having novelty and aesthetic value, do not culturally age well; anyone looking at van Meegeren's "experiments" like his "Jesus among the Doctors"- above- would wonder why these badly drawn men and women with their death-mask faces were regarded as products of Vermeer's hand back in the 1930s. Today, nobody would be fooled. Art forgeries are time-locked, interesting but curious remnants of their own era.
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