Mark Hayes posted: " To the Black Maisonette the Childe Nettleton came This line is of course from the infamous fragment of the lost narrative poem by Bob Brown, found written on the back of a fag packet in 1992. Many have since claimed it was inspired by Robert Browni" The Passing Place
This line is of course from the infamous fragment of the lost narrative poem by Bob Brown, found written on the back of a fag packet in 1992. Many have since claimed it was inspired by Robert Browning's 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'. There is some question of whether the 'e' on Childe is just a smudge and the line should actually read 'To the black maisonette the child Nettleton came.' That 'e' making all the difference, as was often the case in the early 1990's.
That line then is either the title and opening line to a lost epic narrative poem about a Frankish Carolingian knight called Nettleton in the time of Charlemagne. Or notes made by notable racist and Neighbour Hood Watch member Bob Brown about the activities in and around the maisonette's at the end of his street and the local louts buying weed and 'E's from the dealer who live there.
In any regard, as he just won't get his own blog, Will Nett sent me another guest post. It is possible he is the 'childe' in question from the back of the fag packet. If so it is not because he is a Frankish Knight from the Matter of France, but a disreputable travel author from Teesside who has spent much of his life hanging around with villains in grotty public houses, before taking repeated short trips to Eastern Europe and back.
A Brush With The Law By Will Nett
Could you spot a fake? The folks at Vienna's Museum of Fake Art certainly can. The building, on Lowengasse, is a tribute to artistic fakery in all its nefarious forms. The airy one room display is home to some of the most provocative paintwork ever committed to canvas, but not for reasons you might expect. It suggests that a 'copy' of a piece of art, much like a musical cover version, is perfectly acceptable. The illegality of the process comes to the fore when a piece of work, according to the Museum's guidebook, is 'sold on condition or agreement to be traded, without informing the buyer.' A period of seventy years is to have passed, however, before a 'copy' can be painted. Naturally, within this grey area, there's a lucrative market for knowingly fake art, and artists like Eric Hebbron, author of 'The Art Forger's Handbook' whose quote, 'the world wants to be fooled' are displayed prominently.
It is within these vague parameters that I find myself, surrounded by the works of Elmyr de Hory, and that of the genial 'Han' van Meegeren, who famously duped Herman Goering to the tune of 1.6,000,000 gilders with his forgery of Vermeer's Christ with the Adultress. van Meegeren stuck it so metaphorically far up the art establishment that, engulfed by their usual vanity and hubris, they simply doubled-down and claimed that the fakes were indeed real Vermeers. It was a twice as sweet outcome for the Dutchman as an artist who's work had been previously rejected by his contemporaries; now he was a wealthy man off the back of it.
The museum is not restricted to paintings. Staying with the theme of poor artistic judgement by the Nazis, Konrad Kujan's faked Hitler diaries are also displayed, along with one of 8,965,080 counterfeit UK banknotes recovered from Lake Toplitz that were intended by the Germans to weaken the British monetary system during World War II. Eighty years later and the UK has proven that it needs no help from anyone when it comes to destabilizing the economy.
Other represented replicators include songwriter-turned forger John Myatt, who's fakery extends to his claim to have written Janet Kay's 1979 Top Ten hit, 'Silly Games.'
Aside from his chart aspirations, he knocked off canvas after canvas of Giacomettis, Matisses and Chagalls, that were then supplanted carefully into the art world by his associate fraudster John Drewe. Both men met the same fate as van Meegeren, going on to serve prison sentences as the price of their deceptions.
I'm minded to think of the artistic merit- if any- of other artistic fields. Songs are routinely covered; films remade or 'reimagined' but there's no demand for 'cover' versions of books for example, or great paintings.
What then, are these 'genuine fakes' - as Myatt called them- worth, now that they are as famous as their originals; and who is to say which is which?
As we have seen in the UK over the last decade, the general public simply love to be conned; charlatans elected to the most senior public office, and their donors embroiled in corporate fraud; TV presenters indulging in illicit affairs; sportsmen- it's almost always men- claiming life-threatening injuries.
Be it art, or something other, people can't get enough of it.
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