It depends on who you ask. If you’re cosplaying as a Disney character at one of their theme parks, yes, it does. Probably $18 to $25 an hour. If you’re a popular influencer on TikTok getting paid to tout products you would never actually use in real life, the answer might also be yes. And if you’re an art forger, the answer is probably — not always — but often, yes. 

As it applies to art, making fakes and selling them as authentic is bad—morally and spiritually and legally. Forgers, however, have been copying art in plain sight for centuries. In the 1700’s, forgers were probably called “apprentices” and they weren’t even really forging. They were simply working for the artist and getting paid to help him (it was almost always a him) create his vision. The apprentice might even paint a large portion of the painting himself even though his name would be lost to history and the art would be attributed to his boss, the Old Master, who would get the big paycheck. 

Being fake or making fakes can be a very lucrative business, but the payment isn’t always money. Sometimes the payment is revenge, as it was with Eric Hebborn. 

After a troubled childhood, Eric Hebborn (1934-1996) started copying art to prove that a well-known painting wasn’t what it was claimed to be. He wanted to prove that a poorly executed drawing attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder (The Temples of Venus and Diana on the Bay of Baia) was a fake. To do so, he copied the copy by reverse engineering it back to how Brueghel would have drawn it. He layered his brushstrokes and chalk marks exactly how Brueghel would have drawn them in real time. With his improved version, Hebborn sealed it in an antique frame and sold it to a gallery in London as an authentic Brueghel. It was a thrill to fool the experts, most of whom had brushed Hebborn off as a mediocre painter. Hebborn got his revenge on the establishment. He also wrote two tremendous books about art and art crimes: The Art Forger’s Handbook and Drawn to Trouble, his autobiography.

If creating fake art isn’t for money or revenge, it might be for simple ego. German artist Wolfgang Beltracchi (b. 1951) not only created masterful fakes, but he also created the back stories, photographs, and provenances that went with them. With his wife, Helene, the two made upwards of $50 million and fooled even the most famous of dealers and authenticators. It was only in 2008 when the artist recreated Red Picture with Horses by Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957), that he was finally caught. In studying the painting, experts detected a pigment in it, Titanium White, that did not exist before 1914, when Campendonk would have painted it. (Comedian Steve Martin was a victim of the forgery). Even though Beltracchi was caught, he later became the subject of an award-winning documentary Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery which propelled him to celebrity status. He’s still selling his artwork today. 

In the end, being fake might pay, but does it keep you alive and/or out of jail? 

Not really. Hebborn fooled plenty of experts and made a good life for himself making fakes, but he collected a whole lot of enemies along the way. He was murdered by blunt force to the head on January 11, 1996, and his murderer was never found. Elmyr de Hory committed suicide in 1996 to avoid extradition to France after his art was discovered to be fake.  And finally, in 2011, Beltracchi and his wife, Helene, went to jail for a few years. 

And of course, we all know what happened to Milli Vanilli. (If you don’t, watch the documentary Milli Vanilli.) 

So, does it pay to be fake? You decide.