i am what you think i am

On loan from the forger John Myatt, "Harlequin Disturbs Sleeping Fish,” is in the manner of Joan Miró. After almost a decade of forging paintings and a brief prison term, Myatt continues to produce and sell works in the style of other artists. The back of each work bears the inscription "Genuine Fake.” from: Antiques and the Arts Online

"In the first room there are some masterpieces by de Staël, Chagall and Giacometti – but they are really by John Myatt, one of the greatest forgers of the late 20th century. And as an example of changing fashions within the art market there is a ‘Balloon Girl’ stencil print in the style of Banksy, the contemporary graffiti artist.
    It raises so many questions. If John Myatt can paint as well as de Staël, Chagall and Giacometti, does that mean he is the greater artistic genius (because unlike them he is not trapped within a certain style)? Why should the price of a luminous painting crash just because the certificate of authenticity is shown to be worthless? (I know, because it’s a market, and we are paying for the connection with the artist and for the investment)." — Stephen Wang,  Bridges And Tangents
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Photo: Michael Hale

" [...] when [piano music connoisseur] Distler loaded [Joyce] Hatto’s CD of Liszt’s “Transcendental Studies” into his computer, he noticed something peculiar. The iTunes database recognised the disc as a recording by the Hungarian pianist, Laszlo Simon.
     Gramophone asked Andrew Rose, an audio expert, to investigate and by comparing the waveforms of the two recordings he could see instantly that ten out of 12 tracks were identical to Simon’s performances. Rose then discovered that Hatto’s version of the fifth Liszt study, “Feux Follets”, was indistinguishable from a recording by a Japanese pianist called Minoru Nojima. What is more, the performance had been speeded up, but digitally manipulated to remain at the same pitch. 'That rang alarm bells,' Rose told me. 'When you speed up recordings, you change the pitch--unless you have set out deliberately to mislead.' [...]

     "Do you experience King Lear, or Robert Stephens’or Paul Schofield’s Lear? It is a paradox that these masterpieces come mostly vividly to life bent through the prism of an almighty interpretative ego. And therein lies the trap. Although our knowledge of the performer enhances our aesthetic experience, it inevitably distorts our critical judgment. [...]"

     It turns out that some of the most widely acclaimed Hatto performances were lifted from several sources and spliced together by Mr Barrington-Coupe. An American collector and pianophile, Farhan Malik, has spent months deconstructing the forgeries. 'In some cases the speeding up really does improve a performance,” he tells me.' I will give you an example: the Chopin Godowsky "Fourth Etude." That’s Carlo Grante. It’s really much better than the original Carlo Grante. Carlo Grante has to slow down for the middle section because it’s more difficult. But Joyce Hatto doesn’t.' [...]
     The Hatto affair raises a number of intriguing aesthetic questions. If Hatto was considered 'one of the greatest pianists no-one has ever heard of' (as Richard Dyer said in the Boston Globe), does this mean that 66 largely-obscure pianists who provided her material deserve the same accolade? Or did the magic spell of these recordings vanish when Hatto was revealed as a fraud? And were Mr Barrington-Coupe’s doctored recordings actually an improvement on the original versions?"— Rod Williams, More Intelligent Life
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