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Crooks who ply an old trade with new tricks
Rachel Campbell Johnston, Art Critic 

The art of forgery is as old as the art trade itself. From an ancient letter
purportedly written by Jesus Christ to a friend that first turned up for
sale in 300AD to a contemporary piece of pottery by the Turner Prize-winning
Grayson Perry, imitations pervade the markets. 

They are everywhere from e-Bay to the most reputable auction house. Even
some of our most famous pictures - take the National Gallery's sumptuous
Samson and Delilah by Rubens, for example - are constantly under question.
As much as 40 per cent of what turns up for sale may be composed of some
type of fake, Thomas Hoving, an art historian and former director of New
York's Metropolitan Museum, once suggested. 

The search for authenticity starts to feel a bit like some modern equivalent
of the quest for the Holy Grail. 

New technologies have not helped. Where once a crook would have had to
plaster the back of a canvas with scraps of Victorian newspapers and old
auction house stickers, now the up-to-date computer-literate trickster can
fake pretty much anything down to the documentation - false catalogue entry
included - that dealers depend upon to authenticate a work. 

And, as collectors in a competitive market start to seek alternatives in
ever more specialised areas, there are plenty to capitalise on scant
knowledge, a paucity of published references and too much wishful thinking
to produce lucrative imitations. 

Still, perhaps Grayson Perry should remember Picasso, the most frequently
copied of modern artists. He was asked what he did when confronted by a work
that was purportedly by him. "If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't, I
say it's a fake," he said. 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/