I’ve been searching for information on “real” art historical hoaxes, and one of the ways I searched, perhaps foolishly, was with ChatGPT. After some cajoling and shaming, I got it to give me a few good leads. But first it tried doing some B.S. of its own, and hallucinated a number of completely invented examples – I guess fully true to the spirit of the mission, though not instructed to perform this sleight of hand routine…

Russian Art Forgery Ring Exposed (2020)

The site covered a case where a fake avant-garde Russian artist collective was fabricated to boost the value of forged paintings.

The Invention of the “Zebra” Abstract Art Movement (2017)

The site detailed how a fictional abstract art movement, “Zebraism,” was inserted into art history as a social experiment to test how myths spread.

Did This Russian Artist Really Live 100 Years Ago? (2020)

Explores how a fictional early 20th-century artist was introduced into art historical records, sparking debate before being revealed as a modern invention.

Russian Art Forgery Ring Exposed (2020)

The site covered a case where a fake avant-garde Russian artist collective was fabricated to boost the value of forged paintings.

It’s too bad those aren’t “real” hoaxes, because taken together they sound pretty interesting!

I did however with some other web searching of my own on top of this turn up the following three cases of art historical interest.

#1 Nat Tate

Nat Tate was a fictional painter from the 1950s invented by author William Boyd. On April Fool’s eve of 1998, none other than David Bowie at an event at Jeff Koons’ studio helped put this hoax over on the art world audience attending, until the cover was blown a few days later. Boyd would later do his own Nat Tate drawing, which was put up for auction at Sotheby’s, sold for £7,250, and proceeds were donated to a charity for artists in the UK. The Sotheby’s listing plays it pretty straight until the last paragraph where it offers the big reveal:

We are grateful to William Boyd for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.
Boyd is the author of the fictional biography Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928 – 1960.The biography was received with great acclaim by art world aficionados in New York when it was first published in 1998. It was later revealed that Tate was one of Boyd’s own creations whose name is a combination of National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. Tate has now achieved legendary status, his artwork executed by the author himself. Sotheby’s is delighted to present the very first work by Tate ever to be offered at auction, sold to benefit the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution.

Video from Sotheby’s below:

#2 Bruno Hat

Bruno Hat was another older version of this same game (but back in 1929), where one or several people invented a fictional artist, attributed work to them, and in some cases pretended to be them. Sotheby’s also sold at least one ‘Bruno Hat’ painting, for which it has fairly extensive catalogue notes here, that I will snip for brevity:

In the summer of 1929 an exhibition of the work of Bruno Hat was announced, to be held at the London house of the socialite Bryan Guinness. Having been apparently discovered by Guinness working in obscurity in a village near Clymping, the exhibition was announced to the press as a coup for English modern art. The event was in fact a complete hoax, the brainchild of Guinness’ dilettante friend Brian Howard… However, it was planned with meticulous exactitude, with a parody catalogue introduction, ‘Approach to Hat‘, written by Waugh under the nom de plume A.R.de T. and Guinness’ brother-in-law Tom Mitford in heavy disguise masquerading as the artist at the private view.

There’s a source whose data is locked but which both Perplexity and ChatGPT tell me indicates that the Bruno Hat still life with pears linked above sold for the equivalent of (maybe) $31,068. I can’t verify that figure anywhere else, but the Sotheby’s listing originally estimated it at 15,000 – 20,000 GBP. The point on these isn’t for me about pinning down any specific price, but to understand that even properly framed hoaxes take on a historicity of their own, and the art included as part of the greater narrative may take on financial or sentimental value for people.

By the way, some people use the term ‘fictive art’ to describe works in this genre, and there’s a woman, Antoinette Lafarge, who has a number of video lectures on YouTube about different aspects of this as a trajectory of artistic practice, which I appreciate.

#3 Disumbrationism

There are other examples out there of outright hoaxes or more coy fictive art, but the last one I’ll include that seems like it fits in with the others above: Disumbrationism starting in 1924, or the art of Paul Jordan-Smith, under his assumed fake Russian name, Pavel Jerdanowitch. Hoaxes.org has a good long article on it, but the tldr is that he pretended to be a Russian painter to dupe art critics who he believed overly favored Modernism, which he disliked. And they took the bait. Here’s another article on Artsy.net about it. I’ve not yet been able to validate whether or not the Pavel paintings ever sold for money, but still very interesting.

I’ll post about any other relevant items like this that I turn up. But these are good solid fun starting places…

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