The Art Forger

Rating 4.85

Having recently enjoyed "Metropolis", Shapiro's latest, the topic and concept made this an obvious choice. Meticulously plotted, well researched and paced, we're brought into the world of art, forgery and theft.

We first meet Claire Roth, an MFA who like many artists struggles to gain notoriety. While in school she develops an intimate relationship with Isaac, one of her professors and their bond deepens over time. But when egos get in the way of artists, the outcome is rarely positive. Soon after the split, she learns his work has been selected for a gallery showing. Among the pieces is "4D" a contemporary piece about time, which alarms Claire since it was hers rather than Isaac's. Unable to prove she'd painted it, Claire show more becomes destitute and takes a job with a reproduction company where she learns the techniques of creating copies. Given her passion and skill with a paint brush, her reproductions are as good as the original, if not better.

Aiden Markel is a much sought after collector and gallery owner. He approaches Claire with a proposition to use her reproduction skills with a fine art piece rarely seen. A tidy sum along with a show at his gallery are the benefit. She experiences trepidation until he arrives with the Degas painting "After the Bath", claiming its the original that had been stolen decades previous. He tells her the copy will be sold to an anonymous buyer and the original be returned to its rightful home. Claire invests weeks researching forgery techniques and the painting's history and in the process, stumbles into a labyrinth of mystery.

In order to clarify the painting's history, the author inserts letters from one of Degas' lovers periodically. While the plot unfurls, Claire begins work on the copy and in the process falls head over heels for Markel. But like all good mysteries, darkness lurks in the corners.

Once the forgery is completed, emotions flair when Markel's story of the sale becomes suspect. Torn about her next move, she relies on her old friend Rik, an art museum curator who later becomes the white knight.

Shapiro's skill at building momentum and knowledge of the art world becomes obvious as is her ability to create believable, interesting characters. I couldn't help but think about similar plots in movies I'd seen, since art forgery has always been of interest. I would have given it 5 stars, but a tinge of predictability became evident early on, though she DOES throws a curveball toward the end.

There's little doubt the author has a knack for unique stories, characters, mystery and surprise. And those are the earmarks of good writing, Highly recommended in all respects. show less

3.5***

Claire Roth is an aspiring artist who is making a living (just) by painting reproductions of old masters. And then she’s approached with an opportunity she cannot resist. A Degas painting is delivered to her studio, along with all the tools she’ll need to reproduce it … well, to actually forge the painting. In return she’ll not only be paid handsomely, but she’ll get her own show at Boston’s most prestigious gallery. But as she begins to study the original in preparation for painting the forgery, she makes a startling discovery.

Set against the backdrop of the infamous art theft at the Isabella Stewart Garner Museum in Boston – still the largest unsolved art heist in history – this is a marvelously intricate show more story. My feelings about Claire kept changing as I learned more of her backstory, and saw how vulnerable she was to being manipulated by unscrupulous men in a position of power. And then again, how could she be so stupid?!

Despite wanting to slap Claire silly a few times, I was engaged from beginning to end and Shapiro kept me turning pages to see what would happen next. show less

Maybe it's my fascination with forgeries. Maybe's it's that the book is set in Boston, right near where I lived for several years. I'm sure it's partly both of those things, but I'm also sure that much of why I absolutely loved B. A. Shapiro's debut novel The Art Forger (Algonquin Books, 2012) is that it's just a good book.

Claire Roth, a down-on-her-luck artist stuck doing reproduction work to make ends (sort of) meet, is surprised one day when a high-end Newbury Street gallery owner shows up and asks her to create a copy of a masterpiece to order. But this is not just any masterpiece: he asks Claire to create a copy of a Degas painting which she immediately recognizes as one stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the famous show more 1990 heist. Shapiro takes this basic plot and makes an absolutely wonderful tale of it, weaving in layer after layer of deceit, confusion, and historical detective work.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Claire's checkered past in the art world, delve into the dark underbelly of the art market and explore what might have been behind the Gardner thefts, and also take a flight of fancy back to the days of Mrs. Jack herself.

I had to pace myself a bit so that I didn't zoom through this one all in one go. Shapiro clearly enjoyed the research process, and besides just being a good story, the novel also provides a readable take on just what forgery means and about the power of art and story more generally.

Highly recommended. show less

B.A. Shapiro's novel is a forgery. Not the clever kind of meditation on forgery that you might find in Dominic Smith's wonderful The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos. No, this kind of forgery derives from taking what is essentially a piece of genre fiction - romance, mystery - and laying on a glossy shine of art and history in order to make it look like a work of literary fiction.

The story itself appears promising enough in this respect. The protagonist, Claire Roth, an aspiring artist from Boston who makes a living doing cheap reproductions of masterpieces for an online company, is drawn by art dealer Aidan Markham into a criminal conspiracy to reproduce a stolen Degas painting. Her reward is a hefty financial pay-off, an exhibition of show more her own work, and a promise that the Degas will be returned to its rightful owners at the end of the process. At the same time, Claire is haunted by an intrigue involving a professor and artist, Sir Isaac Cullion, with whom she was once romantically involved.

In the hands of a different author, this novel could have been a masterful contemplation on the problems of virtue, authenticity, and art. Instead, it's little more than chick-lit romance, full of cliches, absurdities, and immature self-rationalization. The author goes out of her way to stress what a principled and noble person Claire is - she volunteers at a juvenile detention facility, for instance, buying expensive paint for the teenagers even though she can barely afford to pay rent. But these ostentatious displays of virtue are entirely undermined by the various moments when Claire tacitly creates the very dilemmas she later aims to solve.

This lack of emotional and moral responsibility makes her come across as little more than a self-serving, hypocritical, and ultimately self-pitying victim. Not only does the protagonist fail on feminist grounds, she fails to meet the basic parameters of authentic adulthood. Claire thus comes across as naive and delusional in her approach to both art and love. Nonetheless, as always seems to happen in this kind of genre fiction, the heroine is ultimately portrayed as a victim, the pathos of which is amplified by the fact that, in reality, she is also an unacknowledged artistic genius, a fact that is obscured by the machinations of evil men.

What I ultimately hated about this novel, though, is that it willfully set out to trick me. From its cover art to its advertised story, it promised to be a real work of literary fiction, a serious meditation on art, women, forgery, and so on. Where I was built up to expect something along the lines of Dominic Smith, instead I found something not dissimilar to The Da Vinci Code. This recent trend of exploiting art to make third-rate fiction look more interesting and serious than it really is has got to stop. show less

“In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and roamed the Museum’s galleries, stealing thirteen works of art.”

“It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history.”

-The Gardner Museum Heist

Claire Roth is a talented young artist, but after being involved in a scandal, involving a past boyfriend, she has been black-balled by the art community. She now paints reproductions. When an old friend and gallery owner, approaches her, to forge a painting, he offers her a chance to have her own, one-woman show, which will gain her the respect she yearns for. The glitch is: the Degas painting that she is asked to copy, appears to be one show more of the stolen artworks, from the Gardner theft.
This sends Claire down a very dangerous path, which involves local police, the FBI and possible prison time.
There is mystery, intrigue, romance and gorgeous descriptions of art and the process of creating art. The author seems to know her stuff. The novel begins to stretch credibility in the last third or so, but not quite enough to sink the story. A good, old-fashioned yarn. show less

The Art Forger" by B.A. Shapiro was quite a bit more than I expected. Set in Boston, it explores the world of fine art, including the evaluation of paintings and the politics of gallery shows. It also includes references to the $500 million dollar art theft at the Gardner Museum some 20 plus years prior to the events of this story.

The protagonist is Claire Roth, a young artist who has recently received a masters degree and is looking to make a name for herself with her painting. Unfortunately, her former lover was Isaac Cullion, former teacher, and the critics golden boy. When Isaac was creatively blocked, Caire painted a picture for him called "4D," depicting time as a river. The critics loved it, and piled a multitude of praise on show more Isaac. On the surface, this would appear to be a good thing. However, Isaac became more and more distant and finally could no longer look at her without the guilt for his deception eating him away. Able to stand it no longer, Isaac broke it off with Claire. Feeling like the proverbial woman scorned, Claire went to the museum housing 4D and told the director that she had in fact painted the work being attributed to Isaac Cullion. After a series of tests and comparisons, it was determined that Isaac was indeed the painter of record (although the finding was not unanimous and there were other factors involved.) Claire was dubbed 'the great pretender' and was blacklisted from every major museum.

Fast forward three years. Claire is still painting, although still not able to show or sell any of her work. To pay the bills, she paints for online reproductions.com, or repro for short. Repro had sent her to classes where she learned how to paint high quality reproductions. She even became certified in Degas reproductions. Then one day in walks Aiden Markell, owner of the famous Markell G gallery and former broker for Isaac Cullion. He had a proposal for her, although he would not give out all the details until she agreed, which she eventually did. Markell had somehow obtained the original Degas painting "After the Bath," which was one of the paintings stolen from the Gardner museum. He was to pay Claire $50,000 and give her work a private show in his gallery if she would paint a copy of 'After the Bath.' The money was nice, but the real incentive was the private show where she could showcase her work and talent in order to make a name for herself (other than the great pretender.)

When Markell dropped his original off, Claire had a gut feeling that something was wrong. The painting just did not look like Degas' other works. As she looked more carefully and performed what non-invasive tests she could, she finally determined that Markell's painting, the one that had hung in the Gardner museum for nearly 100 years before its theft, was indeed a forgery. But who could she tell? Who would believe the great pretender? And besides, how could she tell anyone without revealing she was in possession of stolen goods? So she finished her copy, collected her $50,000, and prepared for her one woman show at Markell G's. Aiden, for his part, was to sell Claire's copy and anonymously return the original (which was really a fake unbeknownst to him) to the Gardner. However, the man Markell sold Claire's copy to was arrested, and Claire became worried that she and Aiden, with whom she had become romantically involved, would not be far behind.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I learned that artists see the world differently than I do, and that neither is any more correct than the other. Yet for a short time, I was allowed a peek into their world, to see how they view this world and what things are important to them. I also learned way more about art forgery than I will ever need to know, since I can't even draw a straight line let alone paint a masterpiece. This is not the typical 'who done it,' but instead more like 'where is it.' I also really felt for Claire as she, despite her wonderful talent, seemed to make one mistake after another. But that is what makes these novels seem real to me, because real people do make mistakes, sometimes the same one over and over again. As I said earlier, this is a different type of mystery, but variety is the spice of life. show less

Claire Roth, an aspiring artist in Boston, has been a bit of an outcast in the art world lately and is working making copies for Reproductions.com to make ends meet. She is approached by Aiden Markel, the owner of well-known gallery Markel G, with a proposition she's unsure she can take: make a copy of one of the Degas paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the notorious 1990 heist, and he'll return to the original to the museum as well as make her name by offering her a show.

The level of detail about art and forgery included as Claire researches the painting and talks about what she does for her job at "Repro" lend a credibility to this thriller about an unsolved mystery. I simultaneously learned a lot and was show more left wanting to read and learn more about the Gardner heist and art forgery. I read fast, as the narrative moves along and I found myself unsure to the last about the "goodness" of some of the characters. Claire impressed me and irritated me by turns, as she was clearly smart about art but not about some of her relationships, and her naivete was grating. Flashbacks to events of three years earlier and insertions of (fictitious) letters from Isabella to her niece Amelia rounded out the story nicely. show less