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altheaann

altheaann

Currently reading

A Creature of Moonlight
Rebecca Hahn
Saffron And Brimstone: Strange Stories
Elizabeth Hand
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Lois McMaster Bujold
Snow in May: Stories
Kseniya Melnik
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo I don't read very much non-fiction in book format; though I do read a bunch of magazines. I read something about this book (an excerpt?) in one of said magazines, and it intrigued me enough to get the book.
Having worked in a museum archive, I was fascinated by this true story of how this art-forgery-fraud duo used falsification of archives in order to pass off their fakes as the genuine article - complete with historical documentation, to be found in multiple, respected repositories. The truly amazing part was how truly crappy some of their work was, and how long no one noticed it for. It really makes you wonder - if someone bothered to do a less shoddy job; would they ever be caught? Have people done so? The estimates some interviewees give on what percentage of the art market is false or misattributed merchandise is shocking.
So - interesting book, mainly because of the content. Like so much non-fiction, though, the prose is unexceptional. It simply gets the job done.