Product Description

In a century that has alternately venerated and ridiculed the notion of the original, what better revenge for the mediocre artist than to turn to forgery? The century that spawned Duchamp's urinal-turned-fountain, an art world in which American artist Mark Kostabi can pay students $8 an hour and sell the resulting 'paintings' for $30,000, can hardly carp at the chutzpah of a second-rate artist wedded to seventeenth-century ideals who palmed off his work on the most discerning connoisseurs of his time as priceless Vermeers. "I Was Vermeer" is the story of a paranoid, drug-addicted, alcoholic, hypochondriac painter whose journey from zero to hero earned him $50 million dollars, the acclamation of the world's press and the satisfaction of swindling the Nazis. His canvases would almost certainly be prized among the catalogue of Vermeers if he had not confessed. Half a century after his death, his handiwork is still suspected in at least four Vermeers in major galleries, and the ugly daub sold last year at Sotheby's for $30 million (and denounced by Brian Sewell as a fake) had long been attributed to him. "I Was Vermeer" takes a wry, sometimes scathing, amoral and irreverent look at forgery, the expert, and the career of a second-rate painter who became the world's greatest forger.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #295371 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

The Observer (Edward Marriott)
Gripping and psychologically fascinating

The Guardian, 26 August 2006
…a sensational story, full of melodramatic twists and conspiracies…

Dail Mail, August 11 2006
A cracking tale… Genuinely thrilling… Heaven sent.

Customer Reviews

Quite simply, brilliant...
The life of the scheming fraudster is by its very nature more interesting than that of the natural genius. Everyone loves an underdog, and Han van Meegeren was that most unusual of underdogs: a winner.

Wynne's book, described last weekend by The Observer as 'gripping and psychologically fascinating', seeks to do more than simply recount this most interesting of stories. It gets inside van Meegeren's head, and in doing so sheds new light on one of the most intriguing characters the art world has ever seen.

This is just a fascinating story, brilliantly told. Very highly recommended.

Hugely enjoyable
The fascinating story of an obsessive man's effort to gain recognition for his own paintings by passing them off as Vermeer's to the art word, thus proving his own genius was comparable with the master's

A great rollicking read
Utterly fascinating and beautifully-written.

As compelling as the story itself are the details on the long, careful process involved in the forger's deception.

And perhaps most interesting of all is the debate it forces on what constitutes a masterpiece: how our perception of a work of art is influenced by the surrounding acclaim, or lack thereof - how easily our tastes are cowed into mainstream definitions of greatness by purported experts, perhaps concerned more with covering their asses than furthering the cause of artistry.