The Intrepid Art Collector by Lisa Hunter

Author:Lisa Hunter [Hunter, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49622-5
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

Spotting Deliberate Fakes

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you’ve seen African art in museums, you probably remember only its most pronounced characteristics: bulging eyes, flattened faces, upraised arms, and so forth. At a museum, you can’t take the masks or statues out of the case and feel how heavy they are. You can’t tell whether the backs and undersides are rough or smooth. You can only see how they look behind glass.

That’s why so many smart, educated people get fooled by fakes. A fake will always have the same major characteristics as the real thing. Experts can dismiss a deliberate fake if the artist used the wrong materials or combined elements of cultures that have nothing to do with each other, but the evidence is often in the subtle details, which the average museum-goer may not see. That’s why it’s important to go to galleries and auctions where you can examine authentic works close up.

“The more desirable a piece is, the more fakes there will be,” says dealer Joshua Dimondstein. “And the higher the price point, the better the fakes will be. At the $50,000 range, the fakes are great looking!” Some of the most common fakes right now are Chiware, Baule, and Fang pieces. Apparently it’s such big business that some fakes are even being made outside of Africa.

That’s why—let’s say it again—you need to buy from reputable sources. If you find a potential treasure in an out-of-the-way sale and need to evaluate the art yourself, the following guidelines should help you eliminate the most obvious fakes.

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