Hoving, the notorious former director of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of Making the Mummies Dance (1993), etc., has found his calling in exposing art forgeries. As a roving fakebuster (the term is the author's) Hoving draws on his connoisseurship and position as an art world insider to investigate and pursue his hunches about inauthentic works of art. He provides us first with a history of the practice of art forgeries from the Phoenicians to the present. Hoving then offers case histories, including some he investigated. It's startling to learn how many preeminent art professionals (including the author himself) have been duped by forgers. Motivated by "need, speed and greed," art scholars, collectors, and curators alike have been seduced by the most obvious of fakes. Among the most startling cases Hoving cites are the three statues of Etruscan Warriors at the Metropolitan Museum (actually created in Italy some 70 years ago) and the "Curious Spurious Kouros" at the Getty, as well as the dubious model for Michelangelo's David. Hoving also discusses the confusion caused by the "Grand Master" of forged Renaissance drawings, Eric Hebborn, and the remarkable forgeries of Han van Meegeren, the "Vermeer Man." So what does it take to be a fakebuster? "The mental makeup of a detective; the sensitivity of a seasoned connoisseur; the determination of a fierce, often acidulously antiestablishment independent; a scholar with years of saturation in every field of art; plus some experience as a successful forger."
False Impressions, needless to say, is filled with a certain amount of self-praise and one-upmanship, as well as a zestful airing of the art world's dirty laundry. And though Hoving is certainly is no prose stylist, all the same he produces a most absorbing book.
| Introduction | 15 | |
| 1 | Fakebusters, Fakers, and How to Tell a Fake | 19 |
| 2 | The Giddy Ancient World | 24 |
| 3 | The Shrouded Middle Ages | 37 |
| 4 | Tricks of the Renaissance and Shams of the Baroque | 51 |
| 5 | Victorian Shenanigans | 67 |
| 6 | The Golden Age of Fakes - Now! | 81 |
| 7 | My Early Experiences | 101 |
| 8 | Young at the Game | 115 |
| 9 | A Real Pro | 128 |
| 10 | Busting Wolfgang | 140 |
| 11 | Fakes by the Ton | 150 |
| 12 | If a Fake Is So Good That It Fools All the Experts, Then... | 163 |
| 13 | Has Any Faker Fooled Them All? | 180 |
| 14 | Deep Suspicions | 198 |
| 15 | The Pseudo-Fakebusters | 209 |
| 16 | "Guardi Is Still Alive" | 235 |
| 17 | The "Fhaker" with Chutzpah | 256 |
| 18 | The Curious Spurious Kouros | 279 |
| 19 | Con Brio | 311 |
| Epilogue | 328 | |
| Notes | 335 | |
| Index | 349 |
Anonymous
Posted January 14, 2000
Mr. Hoving gleefully tells tales of duped cuartors and black market smuggling in one of the stuffiest institutions on earth, the Met. Read this & you'll never look at art the same way again.
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