Art forgery is the act of faking art pieces, and passing them off as the original. Art forgery is yet another way for unscrupulous individuals to take a short cut to riches. This criminal activity has a long and storied history, and has always been a thorn in the side of the mega-million dollar industry. How can you tell a forgery? That is the focus of this article.
Art forgery has many forms. The most common form is to copy or reproduce an original work of art and then to pass it off as legitimate. Other forms of art forgery include altering an original piece of work with touch up work, artistic artifacts that are fake, and even passing off the original early copies that were never supposed to go public. Understanding this wide ranging group of forgery types is the key to avoiding being taken for a ride.
One key way to tell if a painting has been forged is to inspect the paint. The paints and pigments are the one thing that art historians know and can date. They know when a particular artist used a certain pigment, and can then tell if the painting is a fake. Another common problem with forged paintings is that the paint will overlap the cracks in the painting. This is an obvious sign that a painting has been redone or painted over.
Science is the key detection method for forged artwork. If you suspect a painting is fake, it can be tested through a large number of scientific tests. Some of these techniques include carbon 14-dating, tree ring dating, and investigation under X-ray or black light. These scientific methods are incredibly accurate when it comes to forged artwork.
Retouched works are usually very easy to spot, and can be seen clearly under X-ray inspection. Common areas are changed signatures, paint brightening, and even completely different colors being present from the original. Pottery too, is not immune to forgery. Old pieces are often redone and filled in with materials to repair them, and then passed off as untouched. This too, will often show up under X-ray.
Art historians and art conservators are the single best way to beat art forgery. While we commonly may not notice some of the little details of a forgery, an art historian or curator certainly would. For this reason, it is vitally important that any major art purchase be inspected closely by one or two of these well trained sets of eyes. Losing a ton of money on an artistic purchase is not something that you ever want to experience.
Detecting art forgery is not something that the average art collector can do with any degree of success. The science of catching the art forgerers is getting better, but the art of forgery is not far behind. Sometimes it seems they are usually ahead of the curve. For this reason, it is very important that you depend on those that are experts in the field.
