Van Gogh forgery hangs in YUAG

By C.V. Swift

Oscar Wilde once declared that "All bad art is sincere." If Wilde was right, then the Yale University Art Gallery's permanent collection may have just taken another small step towards lasting greatness. But before adopting Wilde's epigram as a guiding philosophy, the YUAG might have paused remember that the divine Oscar spent a good many of his earthly years in prison. Indeed, as revelations of forgery and fraud emerge from the offices of 1111 Chapel St., the YUAG seems poised to take a giant leap into the all too sincere world of retribution.

The scandal began yesterday afternoon when Mark Aronson, chief conservator of the YUAG, offered his resignation to the Gallery's director, Susan Vogel. Behind Aronson's resignation is the discovery that, after years of speculation and study, the Yale History of Art department has finally determined YUAG's prize possession, the 1888 Vincent van Gogh masterpiece "The Night Café," to be forgery--a fact that Aronson had been concealing for years.

"I accept complete resonsibility for this whole affair," Aronson, who claims to have been, until yesterday, the sole living guardian of the painting's secret history, said. "Neither Yale or the YUAG should be taken to task." President Richard Levin, GRD '74, was not available for comment, but Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, expressed regret: "Personally, I'm very disappointed. Officially, however, I can only confirm that the University had no hand in this cover-up. Financially and administratively, the YUAG is entirely self-sufficient."

When money doesn't talk

Whether the YUAG was aware its version of "The Night Café" was a fake when it acquired it in 1903 is unknown. But according to Aronson, at least two generations of conservators prior to his tenure had kept the forgery under wraps, mainly for the purpose of financial security. "I had been warned of the devastating effect [the revelation of the true status of "The Night Café"] would have on the Gallery's economy by my predecessor as soon as I was hired for the job," Aronson said. "Anyone can see that it was in the best interest of the Gallery to have it be believed to be authentic.... I came to see my job as similar to maintaining belief in Santa Claus: if it doesn't hurt anyone, and benefits so many, why reveal it?"

When asked what "benefits" the public might receive from looking a forgery instead of the work of a great master, Aronson replied: "It's not the public that I mean. It's the gallery. "The Night Café" has brought money to the YUAG in a time when funding for museums is at a record low." One need only look at the near-empty collection boxes in the Gallery's foyer to see that how pressing a problem funding is for the YUAG at the current time. And with plans in the works to build a new space for display and storage of the collection [place TK], many employees at the YUAG are feeling the belt tighten; with the Khan building in need of repairs and rewiring, the staff has not received a substantial pay-raise in the past two years. "You can't work here without feeling financial constraint, both personal and professional," Aronson said in his defense. Even Vogel agreed: "Working here is becoming more and more a labor of love," she said.

A "must-have"

"The Night Café" has been the single largest source of revenue for the YUAG since its acquisition. Art aficionados and even casual art-lovers from all over the globe star New Haven on their traveling itinerary, in part because it is home to the world-famous painting. The museum's holdings are also a draw for potential History of Art majors considering Yale. "Although I'm encouraging a more personalised college environment for Paul [her son and prospective Yale student], you just can't overlook this great collection," Artie Heimelwitz of South Orange, New Jersey said outside the YUAG on Wednesday. Heimewitz was one of the approximately 10,943 out-of-town visitors to the museum so far this year.

Naturally, when visitors come, they fill the Gallery's coffers. "I would guess that over three-fourths of our annual revenue here [in the Museum Shop] comes from foreign visitors," said Howard el-Yasin, Museum Shop director. "They come with their fat wallets and spend, spend, spend."

Reproduction rights to "The Night Café" have also increased the cash flow into the Gallery. "Van Gogh is hip," said Nancy Armstrong of YUAG's Rights and Reproductions department, describing the painting as "a must-have. We have publishing houses and authors from all over asking for permission to reproduce the image.... My kids all have new shoes--cool ones, too: Reeboks--thanks to van Gogh's popularity."

Double dutch

So what gave the game away? What prompted Aronson's sudden confession after fifty years or more of conspiracy and cover-up? Aronson can thank the perseverance of Willem van der Leeuwen, GRD '99, a graduate student in History of Art, whose story in discovering the forgery of "The Night Café" is in many ways as interesting than forgery itself.

A graduate of the Sorbonne, van der Leeuwen knows as much about van Gogh as many published scholars. Growing up with a father who was a conservator of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, van der Keeuwen has come to know van Gogh's brushstrokes and bilious greens almost better than his own family; certainly, he's spent more time with them. "Those paintings were my brothers," van der Leeuwen declared. "I knew their moods, their complexities. My father sometimes allowed me to touch them. But only very gently." At this point, van der Leeuwen, whose calloused hands betray a more than scholarly interest in painting, placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. "They became a code, like Braille, if you will, that I could read. The "Wheatfield with Crows" has a texture particularly pleasing to the touch."

Did the presence of van Gogh's masterwork in New Haven influence van der Leeuwen's decision to attend Yale? "I was so excited to come to Yale because I knew this was where the great work was hung. The first thing I did was to come and see it in the flesh." Van der Leeuwen claims that he had an immediate presentiment that all was not right with the work. "When I saw it for the first time, there was something --how do you say?--fishy about it." Van der Leeuwen's suspicions were aroused as early as five years ago, but he did not wish to alert the Gallery authorities with no more evidence than a "funny feeling" in his stomach. He needed proof.

The master race

Van der Leeuwen, whose six-foot, two-inch tall body is topped with a wide, unfurrowed brow and placid, blue eyes, cites forbearance as his best quality. "One needs such patience in dealing with great works," he said. He explained, patiently, the traditional methods of detecting van Gogh forgeries. "There have been a number of van Gogh forgeries around. Most notably, those sold by the art dealer Otto Wecker in the late '20s in Berlin. X-rays were used to prove they were fakes in that case. But often, and especially in the later paintings, much can be learned from pigment tests."

Why especially in the later works?

"This is a secret that few know; one that my father told me. Once his madness progressed to a certain degree--by the time he got to Arles--van Gogh began to mix drops of his own blood in with his paint. In a letter to his brother Theo, he mentions this briefly, claiming this addition gives the paint a perfect [consistency] for impasto work. Cutting off an earlobe was nothing for this man.... What this means, of course, is that modern DNA technology can prove a late van Gogh to be genuine or forged." Though such technology has not, to van der Leeuwen's knowledge, been performed before, the results would be unequivocal. "To everyone, that is, but the Simpson jurors," van der Leeuwen said, smiling.

But van der Leeuwen felt he could not ask the YUAG to run any such tests: "My analysis was from instinct, not fact, and conservators are very territorial. To demand analysis of this work would have insulted the conservator's expertise. I am a graduate student, I am not a facsist," van der Leeuwen explained.

Instead of using modern technology, van der Leeuwen had to rely on his eyes. Because "The Night Café" is the only painting in the YUAG that is mounted behind a pane of glass (due to the fact that van Gogh's impasto technique--the heavy layering of paint on his canvas--is particularly susceptible to damage), van der Leeuwen claims his research was greatly inhibited. Not only could he not touch the painting, close inspection of it had to be made through this wall of glass. "Basically, my method was to stand and stare at the painting as close as I could for as long as I could before the guard would ask me to move on. To meld with the painting, I could not do."

It was only last week, after again staring at every inch of the painting, that van der Leeuwen noticed something. "It was the problem of the princess and pasta--or how do you say?--the forest and the trees," he said. "I had been looking so closely at the thing for so long that I missed the most glaring errors. I feel a little stupid about it now."

"I guess it was fortune that I realized it, though. I had been reading a book on light and color theory. The book talked about artificial lighting and its impact on the color schemes and themes of modern art. It talked at length about the invention of the lightbulb, which it dated to 1891," van der Leeuwen said. Van Gogh's composition of "The Night Café" has been unquestionably identified as 1888--van Gogh was at Arles and wrote to his brother about the painting. Because the painting in the YUAG shows a café illuminated by electric light and not gas lamps, the painting must be forgery. "`Bazoom!' I said when I realized it. `Bazoom! Bazoom! Bazoom!'"

The writing on the wall

Van der Leeuwen mulled over his findings and telephoned Vogel that night. "She thought I was a kook. A crazy. An improperly-canned artichoke. I admit it sounds crazy. But I made her promise to meet me early the next morning so we could have a look at the thing together," van der Leeuwen said.

Once van der Leeuwen's findings were verified and he explained his background in van Gogh studies, Vogel put her trust in his expertise. "I was understandably reluctant," Vogel said. "But his passion persuaded me." The Gallery appointed him to a closer investigation of the work. He took paint samples and ran them to a DNA lab. There were no traces of van Gogh's blood, although the famously red color of the walls was found to be obtained by additions of small measures of another substance (which proved later to be raspberry jam). Microscopic inspection of the lightbulbs themselves revealed another interesting feature of the painting. One of the lightbulbs had a small, black scrawl on its base which van der Leeuwen had to photograph and enlarge several times before it was found to be handwriting. The missive was written in a mirror script, not unlike that of Leonardo da Vinci, which, when reversed, revealed the following legend: "gotcha, suckerz!"

"It was the z in `suckerz' that most offended my intellect. Too vulgar!" said Vogel. "But running a museum is all about sacrifice. I'm willing to swallow my pride for the sake of the Gallery. We're going to keep the painting hanging just as it always has. It is our hope that more people will be interested in a really convincing forgery of a van Gogh than one they took for genuine."

Will there be any changes to the way the painting is displayed?

"Well, we're keeping it behind glass like it always has been," Vogel said. The only thing is that we've changed the title. Where the placard used to read `The Night Café,' it now reads `Gotcha, Suckerz!'"