Art Forgery: The History of a Modern Obsession

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This book charts the changing status of art forgery from the time of its appearance in the Renaissance, when it was hailed as a true artistic feat, to its condemnation as the art crime par excellence. With the advent in the twentieth century of more scientific attribution, of archaeology, graphology, medical science and, later, criminology, the detection of forgery became increasingly possible. The science of accurately deciphering the artist's characteristic traces has since reached a level of forensic sophistication only matched by the forger's skill and the art world's paranoia.

Reviews

a notably learned and wide-ranging text * New York Review of Books *
since authorship is a major financial issue you need specialist advice. Enter the first character of Art Forgery: the art connoisseur. His claim is that it is impossible to forge a work of art no forger, however skilled, can reproduce perfectly the Unique. The forgers aim is to prove him wrong. The epic struggle between the two constitutes the subject of Thierry Lenains remarkable book, whose dazzling erudition and lucid logic make it a pleasure to read. * Donald Sassoon, History Today *
Thierry Lenains fascinating work . . . is an attempt to understand what people have thought about fakes and how and why their attitudes towards them have changed through time . . . thought provoking * The Art Newspaper *
This book delves into the history of art forgery, beginning with its prevalence in the middle ages, through the Renaissance to the present day. This genealogy of faking also examines the output and skill of some of the master forgers alongside the art worlds thorny relationship with counterfeit work and the ever-more sophisticated technology for detecting fakes. * Apollo *
Lenains text presents in fascinating detail, not only historical accounts of forgery and its cousins from ancient Rome up to the dubiously celebrated twentieth-century forgers but also the history of religious relic veneration, which he argues forms the historical basis to todays obsession over art authenticity. * British Journal of Aesthetics *
Lenains study is neither a guide to the detection of forgeries nor a connoisseurs handbook on how to spot them. Instead, it is a complex narrative about the genealogy of fakes, substitutes, and related notions of authenticity delivered through both the work of art itself and ancillary textual sources that support claims about objects and their histories. Recommended * Choice *
Lenains fascinating book charts our changing attitudes to forgery, from the unbridled admiration of the skill of the well-rewarded copyist during the Renaissance to the hysterical over-reaction and condemnation of todays demonised so-called master forgers . . . full of historical detail and philosophical explication on the nature of truth and reality applied to the art world. * ARLIS News *
the overall strength of the volume Lenain has written is impressive: it is an important addition to our literature on the subject and, the test of a good book in this heavily contested arena, one which this reviewer will read more than once. * Journal of Art Crime *

Author Bio

Thierry Lenain is Professor of Art Theory at the Universit Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is also the author of Monkey Painting (Reaktion, 1997) and Art Forgery (Reaktion, 2011).