Con/Artist: The Life and Crimes of the World’s Greatest Art Forger by Tony Tetro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Working-class kid from a small New York state mill-and-factory town with an eye for art lights out for California to seek his fortune. And boy, does he find it – for a couple of decades. Tony Tetro had a gift for drawing copies of pictures: he could make copies so precise his brother accused him of tracing them… until Tony pointed out his own version was bigger than the original. Settled in a cheap apartment in southern California, working as a furniture salesman to support his teenaged wife and baby daughter, Tony haunts museums, and practices making perfect copies of Rembrandt, Monet, and Picasso. He truly reveres Caravaggio. He cold-calls on galleries in swankier parts of town with them (signed as Tetros), and gets nowhere. Then, inspired by a chance discovery of Clifford Irving’s bestseller Fake! on a grocery store rack, he painstakingly creates a fake Chagall drawing, signing it with the name of Irving’s master forger, Elmyr de Hory. With a story of a dead grandfather, he offers it to a dealer, who smiles knowingly and writes him a check, asking if his grandfather might have anything else in store. Tony hawks a fake Modigliani to another dealer, who falls for it… at first. When the dealer finds out he’s been had, he comes back with an offer: “You’re gonna work for me now.” He shows him a couple of kitschy landscapes that could be found hanging on every late 60’s motel in America and says, “Think you could do some of these?” He can. He does. He’s on his way.
He churns out Chagalls, Dalis, whatever the market will bear. The prices go up. He’s got all the work he can do. The money rolls in. He has all kinds of friends and connections. All-night parties at swank restaurants? Check. Gallons of booze; bushels of cocaine? Check. Breathtakingly expensive Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis? Check. (Did you know you could actually forge a Ferrari? Tony Tetro does, and he did it.) A long string of women lining up at the bar? Check.
What’s amazing is how easy it all was, to hear Tony tell it. When he needed a pro to help him solve a technical printing issue, he calls a local printer out of the phone book and presto! He has two willing experts who help him fake hundreds of images, up to and almost over the brink into some serious currency counterfeiting. Need a builder for a secret room in your condo to paint your forgeries and store all the fake documents in? A few phone calls and he has one – who also helps him empty and strip the room after a police search failed to find it…. If you had any doubts about how utterly corrupt, greedy, dishonest, and self-serving the art market is, this book will erase them. And Tony Tetro benefited from, nay, enjoyed every minute of it. He doesn’t sound the least bit sorry. And it wasn’t all easy – he loved doing the paintings, but says the really hard part was fabricating the provenance and documentation necessary to convince a dealer, a curator, or a customer about authenticity. His research is serious and detailed in developing the plausible, corroborated stories needed (with a little help from faked certificates, forged signatures, even art books with illustrations sliced out and replaced with his versions).
Till – of course – it all falls apart. One stupid mistake by one dealer spreads in the media to wash up against others; a second stupid mistake by Tony’s dealer sinks him. The tale becomes one of downfall, confession, and reformation. Broke, gutted, he spends 9 months painting traffic safety posters for LA County, and teaches city kids how to paint murals. Under minimal security, he genuinely liked the kids – coulda been worse. After all, when he says he barely had enough to eat, he just sold off that $3000 watch sitting in a drawer. And now he’s gone straight. Now he jets around the globe painting “legitimate” copies for obscenely wealthy and egregiously creepy billionaires, appears on “Fake or Genuine?” TV shows, and vacations in Costa Rica at will. Plus he’s famous (though he regrets all the dough he lost on that forged Ferrari). His website is replete with side-by-side pictures of his versions of famous original works (and a LOT of comments like: “Hey! Tony! Remember me? We used to hang out at [insert bar here]!”) He gets paid to do what he truly does love to do – paint. So, see, it all kind of turned out okay.
An odd and roistering mixture of honesty and self-serving, and a really ugly look at the world of art dealing. Even high priests of top-flight art historical study and major museums are not immune – not that they ever were. Fascinating in a queasy way. But definitely recommended for anyone with an interest in art, art history, and a curiosity as to how the fakers do their tricks.
** Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.**
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