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Fake Art

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Clarissa

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A Russian oligarch lent his “collection of unknown works of Russian avant-garde art” to the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent, Belgium. Formerly unknown works of Malevich, Kandinsky, Popova, Rodchenko, and many others! It sounded too good to be true. And, of course, it was. When the exhibition opened, it turned out that all of the paintings were completely fake.

In the 1990s, unemployed artists created hundreds of these fakes on the orders of the nouveau riche. What’s sad is that an important European museum should be so trusting in its dealings with clearly dishonest and shady characters.

2 responses to “Fake Art”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    In places with high levels of social trust (northwestern europe, American midwest, a lot of Canada) most people just don’t understand why people would want to lie and cheat and most people from areas with low social trust think they’re stupid and gullible and feel no remorse or shame for taking advantage of them.

    Another example is Germany and Sweden and ‘refugees’.

    What astounds me is how durable the social trust is and the lengths people go through to avoid letting go of it (I’ve just started watching Okkupert with the peaceable and painfully honest Norwegians repeatedly getting their asses handed to them by the aggressive and duplitious Russians)

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      On this scale, though? Dozens of completely unknown works by ultra expensive artists like Rodchenko and Kandinsky? A Russian state official in disgrace? It’s out of this world.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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