Back in April, I reflected on Errol Morris’ essay “Whose Father Was He?” about a Civil War-era identity mystery. Morris’ most recent essay series in The New York Times is titled “Bamboozling Ourselves.” It’s an examination of the Han Van Meegeren Vermeer forgeries, which Jane McGrath included in her list of the 10 Biggest Lies in History.

Morris acknolwedges that there have been two books recently published on the subject — Edward Dolnick’s The Forger’s Spell and Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers. These books, he says, are timely commentaries, given the way “imaginary returns, fakes and frauds” have affected us. But as Morris’ essay reveals, Van Meegeren wasn’t any ordinary forger, copying Vermeer’s famous works down to the brushstrokes. Rather, he co-opted Vermeer-like details, such as the artist’s signature shades of blue and yellow and “heavy-lidded eyes,” and created entirely original paintings. That is, original paintings based on a forgery.

Interviewing Lopez, Morris seeks to determine why anyone would believe that these works were authentic. Lopez says, “The collector and the forger are in cahoots. The forger wants the collector to snap it up, and the collector wants it to be real. You are on the same side.” But the issue is even more complicated, Lopez later explains, because Van Meegeren, a Nazi, was catering to a Nazi aesthetic. That’s just as frightening as it sounds. Morris hypothesizes why Nazi leaders were willing to pay top-dollar (top-guilder?) for the Van Meegeren forgeries: “they liked these paintings because they saw themselves in them,” or, “they wanted to enhance their stature by owning a work of one of the greatest Dutch masters, by owning a Vermeer.”

Van Meegeren took some dicey chances with his forgeries, the greatest risk being the sale he made to Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring. And when he faced punishment for having sold a Dutch national treasure to the Nazi party, Van Meegeren hurriedly confessed that it was no treasure — it was a fake. Being a fraud ultimately saved him.

Morris interweaves this narrative with a rather unnerving discussion of Holland’s “complicity” with the Nazi agenda. I’m curious to know what you think.

Background:
How Lying Works
Are there Nazi war criminals still at large?
Could treasure hunters have discovered Nazi gold?