What a bizarre tale, offering an interesting contrast to the case of Wolfgang Beltracchi and other mercenary, opportunistic falsificateurs such as Guy Ribes. (Note that none of these men attempt to create exact forgeries of existent works by an artist X but instead create new works ¨in the manner of X¨). But as Mark Landis himself sagely observes, ¨Everyone is the same but everyone is different." I must say that Landis bears an eerie resemblance to Norman Bates, with his strange persona and evident obsession with his mother. Fortunately, he is not a murderer, just an artist who found an odd way to achieve affirmation by the art world.
In the end, this film actually reveals more about the institution of art than the artist, just as in the case of films about Beltracchi, GIbes, Banksy, et al. Raises some interesting questions about psychiatry as well, given that Landis was hospitalized and heavily medicated at the age of seventeen, right after his father died, which was very traumatic to him. One has to wonder whether all the drugs he was continuously plied with did not have something to do with what he eventually became. He seems to have lived off of both an inheritance and public disability aid, obviating the need to work or derive money from his fakes, at least as far as I can gather from the film.
I am pretty sure that if Landis had tried to donate his fake paintings to larger, more famous institutions with more sophisticated staff persons, he would have been discovered much sooner. I imagine that the curators who were duped are thoroughly humiliated, especially given that some of his techniques were so brash. Xeroxing a picture and using it as a physical layer of the final art work? Really?
In the end, this film actually reveals more about the institution of art than the artist, just as in the case of films about Beltracchi, GIbes, Banksy, et al. Raises some interesting questions about psychiatry as well, given that Landis was hospitalized and heavily medicated at the age of seventeen, right after his father died, which was very traumatic to him. One has to wonder whether all the drugs he was continuously plied with did not have something to do with what he eventually became. He seems to have lived off of both an inheritance and public disability aid, obviating the need to work or derive money from his fakes, at least as far as I can gather from the film.
I am pretty sure that if Landis had tried to donate his fake paintings to larger, more famous institutions with more sophisticated staff persons, he would have been discovered much sooner. I imagine that the curators who were duped are thoroughly humiliated, especially given that some of his techniques were so brash. Xeroxing a picture and using it as a physical layer of the final art work? Really?