At first glance, they might be identical. Two orange lozenges leaning out of shards of blue. Two paintings purportedly by the same artist. But look a little closer, and you’ll start to notice differences. The one on the left seems clunkier, its gradations in colour less subtle. The palette seems reduced, the brushwork less varied and interesting. The one on the right is
Painterly Architectonic (1917) by Liubov Popova, a cubist and suprematist painter who lived a brief and active life in early 20th-century Moscow. The one on the left is a fake.
The paintings have been on show in ‘Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake – Questions, Research, Explanations’ (currently closed due to Covid-19 restrictions; due to run until 7 February 2021), an attempt by this museum in Cologne to answer questions about its collection. The field of the ‘Russian avant-garde’ – paintings made from the late 1890s through to the early 20th century – is especially prized b
December 30, 2020 • Noemi Smolik on “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake”
View of “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake,” 2020–21. Two works attributed as Alexandra Exter’s
Kostümentwurf “Herodes,” 1921 and 1917 respectively.
WHAT HAPPENS when a painting is unmasked as a forgery? The colors, the forms, and the brushwork remain the same, and yet, everything has changed. The spell of authenticity, related to what Walter Benjamin called an artwork’s “aura,” has broken. A taboo-shattering exhibition organized by Rita Kersting and Petra Mand at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, titled “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake” and on through February 7, seeks to pick up the pieces, provocatively pairing