Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine Art Vol 2 No 4 April 2013

Painter’s Keys
with Robert Genn
Robert Genn’s
Studio Book
The personal touch
February 22, 2013
Dear Artist,
At shows, I often notice other painters with their noses pretty close to my work--trying to figure out what I’m up
to. Fact is, quite a few artists can make paintings that look like mine, but they don’t seem to be able to make them
made like mine.
A few years ago a slippery customer sent one of my paintings to China to get it copied. By sheer luck I had a look
at the result. I’m happy to report that even the best of the Celestial Kingdom couldn’t quite get it right. The painting
looked like mine, but the painter had trouble figuring out the order I laid-in its various layers and parts.
The name Otto Wacker might not mean much to you. He was a young art dealer in Berlin in the 1920s who
managed to find a lot of “undiscovered” Van Goghs and sell them here and there. He eventually went to jail for the
fakes, but not before many art critics, experts and museum directors had made a fools of themselves authenticating
and unauthenticating the lineup of the work in the courtroom.
Fact is, Van Gogh’s paintings were fairly easy to counterfeit. The style is unique and can be simulated. The technique
is pretty straightforward--characteristic and frenzied strokes directly and singularly applied, often with
colour right out of the tube. In other words, Van Goghs were faked because they could be. It’s estimated that at one
time as many as 600 fake Van Goghs were floating around Europe. In the case of Otto Wacker, his painter-friend
was never found, but most suspicion goes to his brother Leonhard.
I know this may sound perverse, but I think artists should consider giving their work such a personal touch that
future fakers will really have to scratch their heads before they might knock one off. As I mentioned, order is valuable--primer,
underpainting, glazing, scumbling, re-glazing, final impasto, etc. Also, changing the order on a whim
is more fun than a wheelbarrow full of Deutsche Marks. In my case, it surprises me that the fakers aren’t able to
pick up the various tones of my original primers.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: “The job of the artist is to always deepen the mystery.” (Francis Bacon)
Painter’s Keys - Robert Genn
Esoterica: If you’re at all interested in the fun and games of Otto Wacker, I thoroughly recommend Solar Dance by
Modris Eksteins. It’s a tribute to Van Gogh, an insight into life in Berlin between the wars, a parade of the great
art accumulators from both sides of the puddle, a cameo of a failed painter by the name of A. Hitler, and exploratory
operations on art dealers both honest and crooked.
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