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Title: I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger
ISBN: 1582345937
Author:
Frank Wynne
Publicate Date: 2006-10-03
Publish: 2006-10-03
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.80
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.25
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.47
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| Customer Review: |
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1: You can't help but admire this forger
I found this book delightful and fascinating. Van Meegeren was not only a great artist in his own right but he could do it like Vermeer. And he was so meticulous. This was not someone who slapped paint on a canvas or forged a signature. Van Meegeren was a researcher, a scientist, who did everything right. I enjoyed reading the details of how he replicated the materials and techniques of Vermeer.
The greedy motivation of agents and curators came as a revelation to me. Yes, they are all wanting desperately to believe. The book has become my motivation for more reading about forgeries and art fraud. I've read False Impressions, Fakes and Forgeries: The True Crime Stories of History's Greatest Deceptions: The Criminals, the Scams, and the Victims, and several more. If you enjoy this, try Orson Wells old documentary F is for Fake.
I'm including some of this skullduggery in my own writing.
Fairlee Winfield
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2: Educational and Entertaining
An artist friend suggested this title to me. Not being an artist, nor well-educated in art history, I began to read it only on the strength of his recommendation.
I was pleasantly surprised to find I Was Vermeer both interesting and educational. I was fascinated by Van Meegeren's methods and the politics of the art world. I'm intrigued by the fact that his forgeries still hang in prominent museums attributed to him. How ironic that his talent should be acknowledged after the fact (and fiction).
I've recommended I Was Vermeer to several of my friends.
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3: Fascinating and gripping
I found this fascinating and not dry at all! I kept telling anyone who would listen the story. Highly recommended to Art History lovers.
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4: Great Material Wasted
This book does have some gems in it--such as the process of creating the forged works--but in general this is just a boring book that never gets off the ground. You never like the main character and his life seems to not make sense--as if it were a forced narrative.
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5: A Fascinating Account
This is a very interesting and well-written account of the "great" (if that word can be applied to a crook!) art forger Han van Meegeren, who during and before WWII made himself about $100,000,000 (in today's money) by painting and selling fake paintings by Vermeer and other Dutch Masters. The story is well-known in art history circles, but author Frank Wynne has made it accessible and entertaining to the general reader, and has brought it up to date as of 2004, with the famous (or infamous) Sotheby's sale, for $30,000,000, of a questionable Vermeer.
Even people who don't know a Vermeer from a Picasso are likely to be captivated by this story of high finance and low cunning. Hans van Meegeren was such an audacious rogue (artist, forger, con man, ladies' man, alcoholic) that he seems almost larger than life, especially in Wynne's witty and pointed retelling.
The book's appendices include a useful bibliography, list of websites, and summary of the present locations and status of Vermeer paintings and forgeries.
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