The Art Forger Read Online Free PDF

selling his forgeries as forgeries at between one thousand and ten thousand dollars a pop. In 2005, he had a one-man show at the Air Gallery in London, appropriately called Genuine Fakes, which had people lined up for blocks.
    Probably the most brilliant of the bunch was Han van Meegeren, a frustrated Dutch painter who spent six years in the 1930s formulating the chemical and technical processes needed to create a forgery that would hoodwink the dealers and critics who refused to recognize his genius. He used toaster parts to create an oven to bake his canvases and was a stunning success. He made a fortune until one of his “Vermeers” was found among postwar Nazi loot, and he had to prove he’d forged it to avoid charges of treason for selling a Dutch national treasure to the enemy.
    My favorite, though, is the story of Ely Sakhai, a minor New York gallery owner who made over $3 million buying up middle-market paintings—minor works by major artists that sell in the five-figure range—and hiring artists to forge them. He then turned around and sold both paintings as the original to double his profit. The fakes, along with the actual certificates of authenticity, went to Japanese collectors; the real ones were sold through New York auction houses. He got away with this for years until, in May 2000, the unsuspecting owner of a phony Gauguin decided to sell his version through Sotheby’s at the same time Ely consigned the original to Christie’s. Poor, clever Ely Sakhai. Caught with nowhere to hide. And he had such a good thing going.
    But the most important thing I learn is something I already knew but had somehow overlooked. There’s no crime in copying a painting—obviously, as this is how I make the money I dutifully report to the IRS every April—the criminal part doesn’t come until a copy is put up for sale as the original. Ergo, the seller, not the painter, is the crook.
    O N ITS MAPS and brochures, Boston’s MBTA calls the Silver Line a “line” so that riders will equate it with the city’s Red, Green, Blue, and Orange Lines, all of which are subways. While the name is obviously just a marketing ploy, it’s incredibly annoying to anyone who takes the Silver Line. That’s because the Silver Line is a bus. A bus primarily serving poor, minority areas.
    Rik’s ex-boyfriend Dan is an urban planner, and he says in the transportation field it’s officially called BRT: bus rapid transit. As I sit on this BRT, headed for Beverly Arms, stopped in traffic and sweating as the hot summer sun burns through my window, I’m not fooled either. It’s a bus and rapid it ain’t.
    Beverly Arms, like the Silver Line, is a misnomer at best, a spiteful cruelty at worst. The name makes me think of my great-aunt Beverly, whose huge bosom I loved to snuggle in when I was a little girl. Unfortunately, this Beverly is a juvenile detention facility for boys who have committed a crime for which, had they been adults, they’d be in a state prison. Someday, most of them will be.
    I’ve been teaching art classes there on and off, usually once a week, for almost five years. It started in grad school as part of a community service requirement, and after graduation I stayed on. The kids like the class—and me—because it gets them out of afternoon chores. I’m a sucker for being liked.
    Beverly Arms has all the style and warmth of a Soviet-era gulag: blocks of colorless concrete interrupted by identical rows of tiny, sealed windows. The good news is that the windows don’t have bars. The bad is that the wire mesh shrouding them is so thick that barely any light seeps inside. Bars would be better.
    When I finally get there, I’m run through my paces, akin to an airport security check on a Middle Eastern man with a suspicious visa. When that part’s over, I have to answer a series of questions that the guard already knows the answers to, as he’s grilled me at least a hundred times before and is holding my driver’s license