Deceptively genuine? Strategies of art forgeries and their exposure
Henry Keazor, © private
“Forgeries can be time bombs that only detonate long after they are produced,” stated Prof. Dr. Henry Keazor. The art historian, a lecturer at Heidelberg University, is not only a specialist in French and Italian Baroque painting, but also conducts research into art forgeries. He became known to a large audience as the interviewer of the art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi in the 2014 documentary “Beltracchi – The Art of Forgery.”
In his lecture, Keazor discussed famous cases of art forgery and gave an overview of the methods used to expose them. In addition to provenance research, which sets out to clarify the origin and ownership of art works, these methods also include the chemical examination of paint samples along with stylistic analysis, which deals with the chronological classification of a work of art and its attribution to a particular artist. Artificial intelligence (AI), Keazor continued, is no doubt promising as a further approach for the future, but is currently still too prone to error.
How can a forgery be convincingly passed off as an original? If a work is manipulated in such a way as to appear old, for example, or if a signature is added that was not originally part of the work, then this is objective falsification. In subjective falsification, on the other hand, the object itself is not altered, but its frame of reception is manipulated: “An object is brought into connection with misleading, manipulated documents, for example regarding the history of its origin,” Keazor explained.
The art historian concluded his lecture by presenting a current research project that analyzes the strategies for exposure and prevention of art forgeries that were published in the journal “Mittheilungen des Museen-Verbandes” between 1899 and 1939 with the aim of using information to prevent the production and sale of forgeries. This research could ultimately also provide clues as to the whereabouts of forgeries today.