Fake news, artificial intelligence, copies of copies, various forges, fashion is fake. In 2006, Michel Braudeau published a delightful little book entitled “Eminent Counterfeiters”, which can be rediscovered at letter B in the library, wedged between Henri Béraud and Brillat-Savarin, which isn’t too bad of a neighborhood. It’s the repertoire of tricksters, art tricksters, decal geniuses – often more interesting than the originals. Take Ceslaw Bojarski, who had his hands on banknotes in the Paris region in the 1950s. A former student of Polytechnique, he sold 300 million old francs, after having carefully engraved printing plates, like Vidocq before him . Alas, Bojarski took twenty years of ball, while Vidocq, him, became a cop and was recycled as a model at Balzac. Life is unfair.
Hans Van Meegeren took example during the war on anonymous predecessors who sold to the Germans, during the war of 14, fake Corot by the shovel. He perfected the sleight of hand, and specialized in the 1930s in the authentic Vermeer, the guaranteed little piece of yellow wall, the proven Dutchman. Period pigments, aged support (and sometimes baked, like a chicken), our man, a restorer by trade, invented non-existent canvases that have become existing. “The Pilgrims of Emmaus”, “The Last Supper”, “Jacob blessing Isaac”, “The Washing of the Feet”, so many paintings that Vermeer would have painted at night, under his bed, without saying anything to anyone, hush. What a secretive Vermeer! Tightened by the cops, Van Meegeren had to prove his know-how by giving a demonstration in front of the incredulous judge. It would have represented, under the eye of the court, a steam locomotive arriving at the station, in the style of the Master of Delft. Of course, we believed him. It could have sold for millions. He picked up ten years of gnouf.
The sequel after the ad
Michel Braudeau does not forget to pay homage to Fernand Legros, a picturesque socialite who, around 1960, had his photograph taken with Ursula Andress and the Beatles. Hidden behind big sunglasses, wearing an adventurer’s Stetson, dressed in a terrycloth coat, he boasted of having been the lover of James Dean and the benefactor of Claude François, whose new nose. Incidentally, with his toy-boy Real Lessard, he sold Toulouse-Lautrecs, Dufys, Van Dongens, while recommending Michelangelo or Dürer who, it seems, copied old colleagues – only better. The nice detail, mentioned in Elie Robert-Nicoud’s “Irreplaceables”, is that Legros and Lessard published books, “False Stories of a False Art Dealer” and “L’Amour du faux”, both written in loucedé by Clarisse Nicoïdski. This is the false power of 2.
The most beautiful scams of the past, told with enthusiasm
The coolest: Vrain Lucas
The most brilliant fanatic listed by Braudeau is Vrain Lucas. This one, unquestionably, flies very high. Gifted with calligraphy, a lawyer’s clerk, he decided to earn a little money and, in 1861, began to sell true-false manuscripts to a mathematician, Michel Chasles, who paid. He pays for Shakespeare’s manuscripts (we only have one word written by him: his signature, but why stop on the right track?), he pays for Charlemagne’s correspondence to Jeanne d’ Arc, for the letters from Marc-Antoine to Julius Caesar, from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius. Let us quote the missive of Alexander the Great to Aristotle: “My darling, am not satisfied with what any of your books have made public, which should be kept under the seal of mystery…” Explanation of the use of old French: it is Rabelais who would have copied everything (and translated). Explanation of the explanation: Michel Chasles, any member of the Institute that he was, was a hell of a pigeon.
In “The Eminent Counterfeiters, the Return”, Michel Braudeau would have new examples to offer. Boris Eldagsen, German photographer, has just won the Sony World Award for a “creation” entirely generated by artificial intelligence; workshops imitating paintings by masters are proliferating in Asia; Etruscan sculptures from the 7th century BC, acquired by the Metropolitan, were machined by rap enthusiasts; and the tiara of Saïtapharnès at the Louvre Museum (evoked by Arsène Lupin in “L’Aiguille Creuse”) is as valuable as a Carambar. But Vrain Kucas remains our master to all. He eliminated the counterfeit cedilla. F.F.
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prominent counterfeiters, Michel Braudeau, Gallimard, 80 p., €4.57 on Amazon.
