i've been making forgies since i was 18 years old. So it's like i've been doing this half my natural life at this point. Most pepe forge, they forge their contemporaries because it's easy to get the material. Otherwise you have to artificially age things. I remember he was trying to fake a jackson polock, and the paint he uses, they don't make any more,. Like he used industrial machinery paint back in the forties. When you paint machine, you want not to rust. And also, they wold color coat things in factories. They paint the stuff on. It's like oil and grease, like it laughs at anything.
Art crime is booming and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings (or at least some very realistic forgeries) are the loot du jour. Reporter Brett Sokol and a guy who used to forge Basquiats explain.
This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, fact-checked by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram, who also edited.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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