Elmyr
Elmyr de Hory was by most accounts a generous, charming, and charismatic personality. And he was (it must be noted) one of the most prolific art forgers of all time, benefiting perhaps from a lack of forensic testing during the time he operated and selling over a thousand forgeries of modern masters like Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani.
He trained in a traditional style, only to see that style made obsolete by modern art movements like impressionism, cubism, and surrealism. After a patron mistook one of his drawings for a Picasso and asked how much he wanted for it, he did not try to disabuse her of her belief, afraid of insulting her and encouraged by the prospect of making rent. And so began a long career in fakery.
Orson Welles made an exuberant hagiographical documentary titled F for Fake about Elmyr, about his biographer Clifford Irving (a great faker himself who, during the filming of interviews for F for Fake, was concocting a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, possibly enlisting Elmyr’s help to forge the reclusive billionaire’s signature), and about himself, recounting his experience with War of the Worlds.
Clifford Irving provides an eloquent apologia near the beginning of the film, invoking our strange natural sympathy for fakers:
Elmyr, as the great faker of the 20th century… becomes a modern folk hero for the rest of us… who have a bit of larceny in ourselves… but simply don’t have the courage or the opportunity to express it. I would run up to the art galleries with a catalog of a great many paintings that had been sold over the years. In this catalog was this Modigliani, which was a Modigliani by Elmyr. I would say, “This is a fake.” And the art gallery owner would say, “Well yes, of course, you can see it’s a fake because Modigliani would never have…” In the next gallery, I’d say it was genuine, and the art dealer would reply, “Well yes, it’s one of his finest works. I know it very well.”
Welles’ film emphasizes repeatedly how many art dealers bought Elmyr’s forgeries despite knowing or suspecting that they were fakes. The film, through its main protagonists Elmyr and Clifford Irving, suggests that the very idea of an art market is fraudulent, relying heavily on public trust in experts who might have dubious expertise, or perhaps expertise in the wrong thing: provenance rather than quality. As Irving posits:
“The important distinction to make when you’re talking about the genuine quality of a painting is not so much whether it’s a real painting or a fake. It’s whether it’s a good fake or a bad fake…
Welles recounts a story about Picasso which supports Irving’s assertion about the quality of a painting:
A friend…once showed a Picasso to Picasso, who said, no it was a fake. The same friend brought in from yet another source another would-be Picasso and Picasso said that too was a fake. Then yet another from yet another source.
“Also fake”, said Picasso.
“But Pablo,” said his friend, “I watched you paint that with my own eyes.”
“Aha,” said Picasso, “I can paint false Picassos as well as anybody.”
Welles himself, on the other hand, seems to have some sympathy for the maligned experts as well. Throughout the film, he refers to himself as a charlatan. He refers to everyone in his documentary as actors. He acknowledges and truly celebrates in this film that none of us really know what the hell we are doing.
But ultimately, he asserts that all art has elements of trickery or deceit, and it is what the work stirs in the viewer that matters. He makes the point very early on that the complicity of the listener is indeed necessary for any good story to work. “Almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie,” Welles says.
He then adds rakishly, “but not this time.”
