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the trial of Hans van Meegeren |
Hans van Meegeren was busted after World War II for selling a Dutch national treasure in the form of a Vermeer painting to the Nazi Hermann Goering. He defended himself by demonstrating that he had painted the "Vermeer" himself and had conned Goering. He managed to avoid a treason conviction, but ended up jailed for forgery -- Goering wasn't the only person who'd been duped by his fake Vermeers.
More akin to the faked authors in our Fake Folks section is the case of "disumbrationist" painter Pavel Jerdanovitch, who turned out to be a fellow named Paul Jordan Smith who had cooked up the whole thing to make fun of modern art.
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Exaltation by Pavel Jerdanovitch |
If you want to find out more about art forgery, check out The Museum of Forgery ("a nomadic institute dedicated to the aesthetics of forgery") or The Art of the Fake ("Egyptian Forgeries from the Kelsey Museum of Archeology").
You might also be interested in our pages on Scams & Frauds, Musical Spoofs, Literary Forgeries and Phony Archaeology.