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F For Fake: Life as an Art ForgerThe sad and possibly true tale of Elmyr de Hory
In which we discuss the sad life of the professional art forger, Elmyr de Hory, who tries to put on a brave, bourgeois face in the famous Orson Welles film, F For Fake.
In F for Fake, the writer, director, editor, and star, Orson Welles, leads us through (in part) a pseudo-documentary of Elmyr de Hory, the infamous art forger who created fake Matisses, Picassos, Modiglianis, and Renoirs in the twentieth century. Welles goes out of his way to show us the irony inherent in the film: de Hory is a faker who is being observed and written about by another faker, Clifford Irving. Irving wrote a famous fake autobiography of Howard Hughes that caused a lot of controversy. Welles also reminds us of the fakery of film and how combining images can tell a story that is perhaps different from the truth. Welles even brings his own legitimacy up for question. You've got to love that from a guy whose ego seems to match his waist size. When Welles catches up to de Hory on the island of Ibiza, it is 1974 and near the end of de Hory's life and career. He boasts of being able to sell his forgeries for thousands of dollars and that his work has fooled the experts. It is probably true that some museums will not own up to owning de Hory's forgeries for fear of losing face. What many may not learn from watching F for Fake is that de Hory's life as an art forger was just part of his interesting and tragic life story. Born Elmyr Dory-Boutin to wealthy parents in Hungary in 1906, he goes to art school in Paris and studies under Fernand Leger. Later, when de Hory returns to Hungary he becomes involved with a suspected spy, an association that lands him in a Transylvanian jail in the Carpathian Mountains. Shortly after he was released from the jail in Transylvania, he ended up in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany for his homosexuality and for being a Jew. He eventually escaped and returned to Hungary, where he found out his parents had been murdered by the Nazis and that their estate had been confiscated. His career as a forger was probably not as opulent as de Hory would like to make us think in F For Fake, and his fate was no Hollywood ending. After learning that French authorities wanted to extradite him and try him for fraud, Elmyr de Hory took his own life on Ibiza, with an overdose of sleeping pills on December 11, 1976. A sad end to a life's story that may or may not be true.
The copyright of the article F For Fake: Life as an Art Forger in Art & Society is owned by Mary Rayme. Permission to republish F For Fake: Life as an Art Forger in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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