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Comment by onetimemanytime | Hacker News Reader

Amazing, isn't it? If he can paint so good that experts can't tell him from extremely famous artists...shouldn't his work be valued a lot? I get the novelty on having, say, of one the few DaVinci paintings, but art in itself is valued as well.

>>"On 8 January 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, having suffered massive head trauma possibly delivered by a blunt instrument. He died in hospital on 11 January 1996."

probably revenge...someone may have lost a fortune due to his antics.

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The technique of the greatest painters is often not particularly difficult to copy. In my late teens I considered doing replica paintings to make money. I did a few, and I was somewhat surprised at how good they looked and how easy they were, and I’m only technically middling. (The dealer was only offering $200-$600 for them, and with material costs, it wasn’t worth it in the end.)

Some painters are technically amazing and difficult to copy, but they are rarely the greatest artists. John Singer Sargent is one; he had an amazing brush technique that can’t be overworked, yet captures forms and light very realistically - but you’d hardly call him a great artist.

I would call Sargent a great artist by any standard, and in multiple mediums. He may have made his money in portraiture, but even then he generated pieces like The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit that are outstanding art. But outside or portraits, his murals and bas reliefs are absolutely phenomenal and worth traveling for.

That is a very impressive painting. In spite of being fragile the vases are still around, the girls are long gone.

I like Sargent, and have seen a lot of his major works in person. I suppose I’m using a pretty high threshold for “great”, which I’d reserve for the top tier. My point was that the artistic worth of a painting is not tightly correlated to the technical skill of its painter. Good enough is usually all that’s needed.

There's some Dali quote out there where he says he is not that technically skilled as an artist, and if you look up close at some of his paintings in person, you can kinda see what he's getting at. He is no slouch by any means but he is definitely no Sargent or Vermeer. I think a lot of people who aren't really into art assume greatness=technical prowress, in particular those quick to poo poo modern art, but (speaking for myself at least) those who are in the art world are more concerned with the novelty and innovation of ideas (given some baseline level of craftsmanship, of course).

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who can paint hyperrealistically, because I know and understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into that level of mastery. But at the end of the day, I'm going to be far more impressed by an artist like Riusuke Fukahori who took that skill set and used it to create a new and novel sculptural technique. That's technical mastery combined with creative genius. That's great art.

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