Buying power

Forgery in painting has enjoyed a long history of scandal and from time to time spills more ink than paint, in part because we all enjoy reading about an art expert or moneyed person getting taken in by a fake. Our pleasure derives from that cocky-smug common-sense feeling that no painting is worth the prices currently being fetched in the marketplace — Picasso’s ‘Boy with a Pipe’ sold for $104 million (£56.3 million) in 2004, and more recently Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1’ was snapped up for a reputed record $137 million — especially when the naked eye can’t tell the difference between the original and a well-executed copy.

Forgery in the visual arts raises several interesting questions. If the eye can’t tell and the price doesn’t reflect what the eye sees, what is the buyer buying, or what does the buyer value when he pays extraordinary sums for an original painting, the forged version of which can be purchased for next to nothing? If the purchase represents a lifelong dream come true, what does the dream symbolically reveal of the dreamer? Or, if it fills a void in the buyer’s life, what was hitherto missing?

To begin with, the buyer or collector is buying what he knows about the painting: who painted it, its provenance and the esteem in which the work is held. These unseen, non-painterly aspects of the work surround it like a halo, and may include the name of the latest owner when the price is headline-grabbing right. By spending tens of millions on a painting (and not on a fleet of yachts, or an island or a prestigious building), the buyer is making a statement about his values and about values in general: on the ladder of values, the metaphysical or spiritual occupies a higher rung than the material.