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In 2013 a reporter for the London Financial Times, wrote a story about Mark Landis after he got wind that someone from the Oklahoma Museum of Art believed that someone was donating forged paintings to museums all across the U.S. The donor did not use his real name and sometimes dressed as a Jesuit Priest, other times as landed gentry from the South. The reporter tracked him down in Laurel, Mississippi, a small town that is probably best known as the home of the popular home-renovation TV show, "Home Town."
As it turned out, Mark Landis, is an unassuming, 68-year-old genius with an IQ of 150 who has spent most of his life in mental health facilities, mostly in Mississippi, bravely coping with schizophrenia. However, despite that he has created not only flawless forgeries of the world's greatest art, but also a memorable body of original art, which he is now willing to share with the public in this book.
Intrigued by the news stories about Landis, two filmmakers, Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman, contacted Landis and expressed interest in doing a film. The result was a 2014 documentary that exposed America's most talented art forger by making him the subject and star of an Emmy-nominated film, "Art and Craft."
As a result of the forgeries, Landis was investigated by the FBI. He was not arrested for his forgeries because he never asked for money for the artwork and he never claimed them as donations on his income tax returns. In other words, he broke no laws with his deceptions. It was his way of making new friends.
Mark Landis is a genuinely likeable man who has had to overcome much in his lifetime. His honesty about his struggles in life is admirable. Despite the efforts of some to make him into a common criminal, his art fantasies were a threat to no one but himself. This is a book in which the reader can satisfy both intellectual and artistic palates. The tone and subject matter of the text is reminiscent of J. D. Salinger/s Catcher in the Rye, and the story of Mark Landis' life and art is reminiscent of the life and art of Vincent van Gogh, who struggled with mental health issues throughout his life. Despite the controversy of his forged paintings, Landis may just turn out to be the most important artist of our generation.
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Mark Landis is the star and subject of the Emmy-nominated documentary, "Art and Craft," the story of the search for America's greatest living art forger. For more than three decades, Landis donated artwork done by the world's greatest painters, to America's premier art museums, explaining that the valuable artwork had been in his family for years and needed a permanent home. Sometimes he showed up at the museum dressed as a Jesuit Priest, other times dressed as wealthy Southern landed gentry. His presentation was very impressive, but it was all a lie. By any measure Mark Landis is a master art forger, arguably the best con-man America has produced since Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. More likely, he falls in the autism spectrum and probably qualifies as a savant. According to Landis, he has an IQ of 150, putting him in the genius category. He is a prolific reader and has lived in the Philippines, throughout Europe, San Francisco and Chicago, where he attended the Chicago Art Institute.
