Art Forgery Quotes

“They saw Schilling take it all in. But he had more to say and exploded. “Listen, to the money talk! I just want you to know that I wasn’t in it to prove I could paint. Sure I wanted the cash. But you know what it was really all about. I was sticking it to the collectors who are so puffed up they would die to get a masterpiece on the cheap. They’re begging to be deceived. They deserve what they get because they’re the biggest fakes of all. I may not be a culture hero. But they’re nothing more than pretentious snobs with terrible taste just begging to be cheated. I loved putting it to them.”
― T.L. Ashton, The Madonna Model

“But the most intriguing part of the van Meegeren story is how his success as a forger got him arrested as a war criminal. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, Han-he was also an art dealer-sold one of his Vermeer forgeries, Christ with the Adulteress, to a German banker, who then sold it to Hermann Goering, number two in Hitler's command. When the painting was discovered hidden in an Austrian salt mine after the war, it was traced back to Han. On the assumption that he had sold a Dutch national treasure to the enemy during wartime, van Meegeren charged as a Nazi collaborator and thrown into jail.

Han was then faced with a choice: Confess to forging the painting or spend the rest of his life in prison. After a week in solitary confinement, he told his jailers that the painting was not a master- piece by Vermeer, just a forgery by van Meegeren. But, to both his dismay and gratification, no one believed him. So, under the vigilant eyes s of reporters and court-appointed witnesses, he repainted the forgery while a prisoner at the Headquarters of Military Command. Both of his works were "authenticated" as forgeries, and the war crime charges were dropped.”
― Barbara A. Shapiro, The Art Forger

“AI art is just fancy knockoff.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood