Art crime: a brief introduction

Abstract

Art crime refers to criminally punishable acts involving works of art and includes a spectrum of phenomena as diverse as art thefts and confiscations, faked and forged art, vandalism, and illicit excavation and export of antiquities and other archaeological materials. This paper provides a cursory introduction to a variety of art crimes, and discusses the consequences of such crimes.

“Paintings Can Be Forged, But Not Feeling”: Vietnamese Art—Market, Fraud, and Value

“…As the art market is ambiguous but generates a significant amount of wealth (Campbell 2009;Horvitz 2009), art is easily involved in criminal activities. Scholars agree that there are three main types of art crime: art frauds, art theft and confiscation, and destruction of art (Charney 2016;Conklin 1994;Durney and Proux 2011;Fletcher 2017;Hill 2008;Passas and Proulx 2011). Similar to art market, art crime has various motivations, and the aim is never purely economic.…”

“…Similar to art market, art crime has various motivations, and the aim is never purely economic. Usually, there is also the desire to possess, to show social status or knowledge, or simply for aesthetic pleasure (Durney and Proux 2011). According to Piano (1993), art crime is also often connected to money laundering by criminal organizations.…”

“…There are several types of art fraud including fakes, forgery, copy, and plagiarism arts. Durney and Proux (2011) define fakes and forgeries according to the methods: fakes replicate the style of an artist while forgeries copy the painting. While fakes and forgeries is clearly art fraud, copies are harder to define as a type of art fraud because in some cultures, copying is not out of the norm (Han 2018).…”

“…Preventing art crime is crucial for the protection of humanity values and wealth (Alder and Polk 2007;Durney and Proux 2011;Fletcher 2017;Hill 2008). In the context of a small and emerging art market such as that of Australia, James (2000) claims that forgery and fakes make Australian art untrustworthy to the international art market, damage its reputation and reduce its economic value; meanwhile, the current Australian legal system is incapable of dealing with the ambiguity of art fraud (Alder et al 2011).…”

“…Among all the problems, art fraud is the most reported and discussed problem in Vietnamese media (An 2011;Bay 2016a;Ly 2008), and even The New York Times has dedicated an article to exploring it (Paddock 2017). Scholars have long considered art fraud as a type of art crime, which is legally punishable (Conklin 1994;Durney and Proux 2011). In Vietnamese context, as the above two stories suggest, the problem of art fraud has persisted for long time and it is affecting Vietnamese art.…”