Mark Landis, from Laurel, Mississippi, is one of the most prolific art forgers of all time, as well as a consummate con man. It is also quite possible that he is one of the greatest artists of our age.
His story began in the late 1980s when he moved back into his mother’s house at the age of 33 after experiencing various commercial failures. Mr. Landis had suffered from various mental health issues throughout his life, including bi-polar disorder and (probably) Asperger’s syndrome. These problems were intensified by the premature death of his father from cancer during Mark’s teenage years.
Mark Landis, an unnaturally talented artist, had attended the Art Institute of Chicago in his youth. Characteristic of Asperger’s syndrome, Mr. Landis showed an intense interest in repetitively copying known works of art by famous artists. As homage to his deceased father and still living mother, Mr. Landis donated his facsimile of a Maynard Dixon illustration to a California Museum in 1987, but presented it as an original work.
This first successful con turned into a lengthy and, ultimately, infamous career. For the next 20 years he targeted over 50 smaller, regional museums in the United States. He hoped they would lack the staff, expertise and resources necessary to discover his forgeries. To aid in this deception, Mr. Landis tended to create copies of works by lesser known artists.
Mark Landis never attempted to garner monetary gain from his actions. All his forgeries were donated as gifts. Mr. Landis posed as everything from a philanthropist, to a Jesuit priest, to the relative of a wealthy art collector whose estate he was helping to liquidate. His small stature and humble personality combined with his eccentric demeanor made him particularly convincing as an art donor. It wasn’t until 2010 that Mark Landis was publicly revealed as a fraud by a feature in The Art Newspaper. This article was largely driven by a dogged, years-long, behind-the-scenes investigation by Oklahoma City Museum of Art registrar Matthew Leininger.
This is where the story would normally end – evil forger unmasked to the joyous relief of an anxious art community. But maybe the story doesn’t really end here. While it is true that Mark Landis is a forger and a con man, he is also an unbelievably technically accomplished artist.
He has successfully emulated the styles of a wide range of schools of art – everything from Rococo to Impressionism to Modernism. Mark Landis has even flawlessly copied works by Charles Schultz (creator of the Peanuts comic strip) and Walt Disney! Having a stylistic range this broad is unheard of – and perhaps even unprecedented – in the art world. In addition, his escapades fooling museums for decades with self-made fakes are the stuff of legends. His technique is so flawless that many experts were fooled.
An artist – a truly great one – will always capture the zeitgeist of the age in which he lives. Mark Landis embodies both the best and worst of today’s art world. He is a fake, but we live in a world saturated with the fictitious and counterfeit. While technically polished, his works are derivative. But that is hardly any different from almost every Hollywood movie and pop song released in the past couple decades. In a sense, Mark Landis is society’s mirror, reflecting all our own shortcomings back at us. To be blunt, his style and approach are a perfect fit for the modern age.
Mark Landis’ self-deprecating, anti-establishment, contemporary appeal is best summed up by this quote he made in regard to a painting by American artist Charles Courtney Curran:
“My grandfather was a manufacturing VP for Auburn Automotives – he believed in the assembly line. That’s why I did so many of these, because you can do them like an assembly line. You get these boards at Home Depot, and you do the sky first because that’s the furthest thing back, and then you go forward. You can churn out three by the time a movie’s over on TCM [Turner Classic Movies].”
Yes, Mark Landis is a mentally unbalanced forger who is driven by personal loss. Yes, Mark Landis is a strangely unassuming con man who lives for self-aggrandizement. But Mark Landis might also just be one of the greatest artists of our time. Within a hundred years it is quite possible that museums will be proudly hanging his forgeries as the most representative works of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
