Sunday 17 June 2012

Vienna 4 - Sunday

As a rule I avoid museums - they're dead places full of artifacts ripped from any meaningful context & museum goers are basically train spotters wrapped up in a cultural blanket.

I enjoy art but bridle at the perposterous bogus sanctity of art galleries - but I was intrigued by Vienna's Museum of Art Fakes (Lowengasse 28). Fake art is nothing new, the earliest recorded example is apparently Michelangelo - as a student he was given an old master to practice his technique but he returned his copy instead of the original & no one noticed.

Artists like Tom Keating & Elmyr de Hory became disaffected with the profit driven motive of dealers & investment collectors & the lack of interest in their work so they set out to undermine the shallow, ignorant & phony art world by showing that they can paint just as well as dead painters whose works are valued in millions.

If 'experts' can't tell the difference between a fake & an original without recourse to X-Rays & scientific testing - then what is the difference?

A fascinating museum that is really thought provoking.

No comments:

Post a Comment