Errol Morris is tackling the subject of forgery and fraud in his New York Times blog, Zoom, by looking at the story of Han van Meegeren:
Shortly after the liberation of Holland, Han van Meegeren, a painter and art dealer living in Amsterdam was arrested for collaboration with the Third Reich. He was accused among other things of having sold a Vermeer to Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring — essentially of having plundered the patrimony of his homeland for his own benefit and the benefit of the Nazis. To save his skin — the penalty for collaborating was imprisonment or hanging — Van Meegeren revealed that the painting sold to Göring and many other paintings that he had sold as works of the Dutch masters were forgeries. He had painted all of them.
The post is the first of seven installments starting today:
Bamboozling Ourselves (Zoom/New York Times)
