This is a Forgery (JOW)

I’d never consider forging the work of another artist, not even for an enormous profit, but if I had to, I know how I’d go about doing it.

O’ Forgery

By Justin Walker

Zero Canyon, a Kandinsky-inspired work by Julie Mehretu, is a beautiful piece and a great example of her unique style. It’s a piece that has haunted me for years. I can remember hopelessly sobbing as I launched into fruitless attempt after attempt to interpolate her lines, shapes, and color. “It’s all so beautiful,” I used to think to myself as I stared for hours at the Zero Canyon jpeg in Adobe Photoshop. I had watched Art 21, but it didn’t give me enough insight into her process. I was lost.

I thought if I projected images of things I liked onto canvas, I could differentiate my work from hers, maybe even surpassing hers in relevance. But nobody wanted to see a canvas covered in outlines of Xbox controllers, DVD cases, graphic novels, a bottle of Chianti (no Hannibal?), and various colors in the shape of a 2^nd generation IPod Touch. I ended up swapping the paintings at a local GameStop for a pre-owned Grand Theft Auto IV.

But I was nowhere in my practice, and grew tired of beating up innocent bystanders and stealing their cars to fulfill some silly obligation in Liberty City. I wanted more out of life than video-games victories. I grew impatient I decided to speak with the Campus Chaplain. I knew there was a good chance he’d tell me what I wanted to hear: that if I gave up swearing, alcohol, and internet porn, things would fall into place. We had a long, difficult but necessary conversation before he finally revealed to me what I had to do. He said, “You know what you have to do, right?” I said I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You have to copy Zero Canyon.”

Suddenly, it all made sense. If I copied Zero Canyon, I wouldn’t be haunted by it anymore. I’d get my pulse back. I would no longer be the no-named victim of a post-structuralist genius. I’d get my persona!

But first I’d have to assemble a team. I recruited twenty of most talented unemployed, graduates of little regarded art schools in NYC: schools like the South Bronx School for Kids Who Can Paint Good, the West Chester School of Ice Sculpture, and Pratt. They’d have to have a mean streak somewhere inside, so I’d do background checks, and pick the kids that were bullied in high-school, but not overtly, just enough to keep them from taking anything higher than a six to the senior prom. I’d want them angry, not crazy.

Our Plan: We’d deploy a twenty member group posing as an undergraduate drawing class to The Museo De Arte Contemporaneo De Castilla y Leon in Leon, Spain; the location of Zero Canyon.

Each student would be armed with at least a nine megapixel camera and assigned to a specific quadrant of the piece. Every inch of the canvas would be documented in digital form and wirelessly forwarded across the Atlantic, back to a server in my apartment in the Upper West Side. Sixteen indoctrinated students armed with pastels and color sticks would be assigned, at predetermined intervals, to copy the exact color, seen in their assigned space, one-sixteenth of the total area of the piece, into a sketchbook--this way we’d have a digital and artist’s record of each color used. The dimensions in centimeters were already provided.

We left Spain after work had been completed. I fed, clothed, and gave shelter to my loyal team-members. Though, later they did learn that I did not in fact own Grant’s Tomb. Still, they were happy and persisted into the night until eventual triumph-- I forged Zero Canyon!

I could barely contain my emotions when I saw the finished piece. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted. I gained a persona, and eventually started my current practice (It’s hard to explain…It’s something like viewers being implicit…chaos, men with circle heads, etc.).

This story, however, has a bittersweet ending. I could’ve sold my copy of Mehretu’s work for millions in the black market, but instead I decided to give it to the campus chaplain, the one who inspired me. It turns out that he wasn’t a chaplain at all, and was just a random creepy old guy who hung around campus prowling for “young meat.” Well, he became a millionaire, and invested in Facebook when it first went public. Now he’s a multi-millionaire, and I’m still in severe debt. But it’s okay, things are really a little better now that I can paint again.