I just read a review of a new book, Caveat Emptor by Ken Perenyi.
Perenyi was a talented fine art forger, who went legit, and thanks to
the statute of limitations, is telling all.
The book sounds like a wonderful read, and Mr. Perenyi sounds like a technical
genius, but I’d like to go off on a tangent (as I always do).
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal” –Pablo Picasso
(possibly)
“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of
Giants.” – Sir Isaac Newton
Forgery is wrong, because you are attributing your work to a
famous artist so as to cheat a buyer.
That the buyer wants the painting only for the name is silly, but that
is the way the game is played these days.
In fact people sometimes seem to want to be lied to. In the field of antique armor a good story
regarding the history of a suit of armor (read lie) normally makes the buyer
pay more and leave happier.
Copying on the other hand, is good, because it makes the
artist follow closely the master’s work, and thereby learn and assimilate the
master’s genius. That the copy could
conceivably be sold as the original is, shall we say “caveat emptor”
territory. Further, the mere act of
copying does not guarantee that you will become the master you are copying;
genius and mastery are two separate things, as are technique and artistry.
Cheating is wrong, but, in the arts is an acceptable
business. I don’t want to get into the
morality or legality of the “extreme” copying otherwise known as forgery. I do want to discuss and illustrate the
artistic cheating that starts via copying.
To learn from another is part of our human makeup. I have never met a masterful professional who
was unwilling to give a student advice. And
we all, no matter how old and experienced, can learn something new by just
looking around. The following images are
examples of my own “copy-learning”.
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| House El Even Odd by Peter Eisenman |
When I was in architecture school all of the students in my
class fell in love with isometric and axonometric drawings. They were the cheap and easy alternatives to creating
an aerial perspective or a model. Some
years after graduating, the isometric was being used to generate abstract art
that furnished little or no practical information. I took the elegant abstraction idea and produced
the following drawing of a project on the boards at the time.
Occasionally I play with oils, copying some painting I find
intriguing. Below is a portrait by
Anders Zorn which caught my eye. Zorn
(1860 to 1920) was a Swedish artist with an amazingly sure hand, and a
wonderful eye for color.
The copy is small and crude, but was a good lesson in color
and the difficulty in producing seemingly simple effects.
Below is another painting whose color combination was
amazing to me. It is a preliminary
painting of the White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Disney.
Again, I found reproducing the effect was harder than I
expected. Since I did not have access to
the original I could not be sure of the media used. Whatever it was, my copy was oil on canvas.
One of my favorite artists is John Stobart, who specializes
in marine subjects, ships and harbor scenes.
He is especially good at moon light views of 19th century
harbors such as the painting below.
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| Long Wharf by Moolight in 1865 |
I seem to have captured the subtle effects in this oil
sketch; at least it worked better than Zorn or the White Rabbit. Perhaps the success is due to my interest in
architecture and landscape subjects, as well as my love of artificial lighting
and unusual times of the day. At any
rate it was fun doing this one, and I learned a lot. Perhaps the take-away is to concentrate on
subjects that interest you.
Below is a watercolor featuring a dull red-orange spot in a
winter landscape. (There seems to be an
unintended pattern going on here; how to handle red perhaps?) The rule breaking decision to place the
horizon at midpoint peeked my interest .
 |
| Winter Valley by P. Austin |
I tried simplifying this painting on my computer
tablet. I found matching color was
easier, and the final art appears more exact due to the elimination of the
scanning process. Since my interest was
in the unusual composition I kept the copy fairly loose.
The following rendering by Jane Grealy is both an accurate
view and an abstract composition…
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| Business Facility Building by Peddle Thorpe |
…which I tried to reduce to its basic components.
This famous view of Rockefeller Center by John Wenrich has
always fascinated me. Wenrich was a
watercolorist from Rochester, New York, who did renderings of many Manhattan
high-rise towers in the 1930’s. He was a
contemporary of Hugh Ferriss, but had a completely different process to get
similarly dramatic results.
The following rendering of the Port Authority building in
New York City does not reproduce the light conditions of the Wenrich painting,
but does try to emulate the effect of rear lighting, and dark on light
composition.
Edward Redfield’s view of lower New York, circa 1910 has a
romantic palette that I loved at first sight.
The sense of mystery and energy are something I attempt to capture in my
own renderings.
This sketch of a proposed tower in Tampa by Cesar Pelli,
copies the Redfield palette and reinterprets it in a vertical composition. It is a good example of copying in the best
sense: learning by reapplying an idea in a new context, format or style.
So go ahead and copy. Just don't sell under the original artist's name... or wait 10 years before admitting it (per Mr. Perenyi's lead).
