How Much is a Famous Forgery Worth?

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Felix Salmon has an interesting post today about the phenomenal recent sales growth of works by two early/mid 20th century Chinese painters, Zhang Daqian and Qi Bashi. In 2008, both accounted for only a few million dollars in paintings sold at auction. In 2011, extrapolating from auction sales through June, they accounted for nearly a billion dollars each.

Impressive! But I had never heard of either of them, so I checked out Wikipedia to educate myself ever so slightly. Interestingly, I learned that Zhang Daqian, in addition to being a great artist in his own right, was also one of the great forgers of the twentieth century. “So prodigious was his virtuosity within the medium of Chinese ink and colour,” says Chen Jiazi, “that it seemed he could paint anything. His output spanned a huge range, from archaising works based on the early masters of Chinese painting to the innovations of his late works which connect with the language of Western abstract art.”

So here’s my question: Is a Zhang forgery now a valuable commodity too? Would it be cool to hang one in my living room as a forgery? That is, not on the pretense that it’s an original 12th-century Song Dynasty landscape, but specifically that it’s a forgery of a 12th-century Song Dynasty landscape by a famous forger. Anyone happen to know?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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