Hey look, yet another book about art theft. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo is much more personal and exciting than some of the omnibuses of art history that I had been grinding through, and a welcome relief. The scope of Provenance is the story of John Drewe and John Myatt, the first a con man, the second a forger. Together, they commit crime!
And what stunning crimes they committed! Their genius, mostly attributed to Drewe, was to forge provenance in addition to forging paintings. Drewe managed to get access to several important archives (usually by promising substantial donations), and he actually changed catelogues and records so that when he went to sell Myatt's forged artwork, a paper trail already existed that appeared to be an entirely reputable third-party source. It's very clever, and, as a bonus, nobody's sure just how many archives he tampered with.
Provenance is interested in the implications of this crime, but it's also concerned with making a good story out of it, and it mostly succeeds. It's very sympathetic to Myatt, who, at the time of the story was a single parent just trying to make ends meet by painting knock-offs. After a short stint in jail, Myatt actually leveraged his forger history into a fairly successful career as a legitimate faker; as I've noted before, to most people forgery seems to be a victimless crime.
Drewe, on the other hand, comes across as an unstable menace. Nobody likes to get conned, and there is that little thing about wrecking the historical record. He was also less available for interviews, so there's more speculation and less certainty as to his activities and motives, but it seems pretty clear he was a bully and vicious if cornered.
Eventually the two get brought down by a combination of alert law enforcement, rigorous archivists, and one very persistant art historian. Honestly, at this point I'm convinced that there need to be way more movies with awesome librarian heroines who spy on Nazis and take down forgers.
Provenance is well-written and entertaining, and even if you weren't already on an art history kick it would still be an enjoyable and interesting read.
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