Newly Discovered Van Gogh Painting

Madison Marrott

September 24, 2013

Period 4

Art Article

Newly Discovered Van Gogh Painting

Recently a Van Gogh painting was rediscovered in a Norwegian attic. It had been seen before by authenticators, but was denied as a fake. Van Gogh had referenced this painting before but art experts did not know what painting it was. Now it is clear to experts that he was talking about "Sunset at Montmajour". I thought it was interesting that the painting could be called a fake or forgery when it is the real thing. So I decided to look up more about forged paintings and I found an article about a man from New York. In 1980 he was on the streets selling paintings when a man approached and recruited him to "copy the works of prominent abstract expressionists." The man (Pei-Shen Qian) copied hundreds of modern art pieces from many artists like Jackson Polluck. Qian has made over 80 million dollars in forgeries. It takes a lot of talent to be able to copy a Jackson Polluck, but he did. He and his wife may have left for China since this was discovered to hide from news and interviews on the situation. It is interesting that people can forge something and get tons of money for it, but a real painting can be denied and labeled as a fake. I also wanted to know how they determine if a painting is real or not. So I decided to look it up but I could not find any reliable sources. What I think would determine if I painting is a forgery or real is if, the brushstrokes are similar or identical to other works of art by the same artist, if the layout or set up of the painting is similar to others and one of the most important things is if the signature is the same as it normally is in other paintings.  I think this job would be stressful because you don’t want to cheat someone of their money by giving them a fake or not buying a real painting.

WORK CITED: http://gawker.com/artist-in-queens-allegedly-forged-hundreds-of-modernist-1159918973