TRACKING DOWN FORGED ART?

Patrick Krüger as expert at workshop on the authenticity of Jain manuscripts

The development of art history goes hand in hand with the spread of ideas and motifs, which is reflected at object level in imitations and copies. But when exactly does the reproduction of an object become a forgery? How does object-based religious research deal with the possibility of deliberate forgeries? And finally, what insights can be gained from demonstrable forgeries? Patrick Krüger reports on the results of the workshop and perspectives of his research on the topic.

From June 5th to 7th, 2024, the experts on South Asian manuscripts and miniature paintings Patrick Felix Krüger from CERES and Sonika Soni from the Museum Rietberg in Zurich (MRZ) discussed these and similar questions with reference to specific materials with the consultant for Asian cultures at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne (RJM) as part of the workshop "On the trail of art forgeries? Advanced research into Jainist miniature painting (India) from the collection of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum" that took place in Cologne.

Between 2018 and 2020, private collectors donated extraordinary collections of 164 folios of Jainist miniature painting to the museum, including an almost complete manuscript of the Kalpasutra. The period of production of the manuscripts from western India (Gujarat and Rajasthan) ranges from the 14th to the 19th century. Collections of Jain manuscripts are rare in German museums. At the same time, they are significant in terms of art and religious history, as they are among the oldest surviving examples of Indian manuscript art.

Selected folios from the collection were already on display in 2019/2020 in the exhibition "Saints and Ascetics - Jaina Miniature Painting from India", which the RJM presented in close cooperation with CERES. The workshop now offered an opportunity to examine the collection for contemporary imitations and "forgeries". In the course of a workshop discussion on 5 June, questions about the benefits and dangers of unrecognized forgeries in museum collections were raised, as was the need to overcome the fixation on subjective "connoisseurship" and the identification of "masterpieces" in favour of an appreciation of the cultural and religious-historical significance of objects.

Art forgeries are in any case a challenge for museums, but also for science. While the academic discussion of this topic has long been limited to European works of art, objects from non-European cultures are now increasingly coming under scrutiny. The shifts on the international art markets in recent decades have also led to an increase in so-called "academic forgeries", which are produced or instructed by people trained in art history or archaeology and which can often only be unmasked as imitations by experts with a great deal of time and technical effort. With regard to the scientific examination of art forgeries, it is important, especially in the context of academic forgeries, to determine which objects were and are reproduced for the art market at specific points in time and which are not. This allows conclusions to be drawn about the level of knowledge and expectations of (potential) purchasers and thus about established images and projections of the culture from which these objects originate.

Research into the manuscripts is a joint project between the RJM and CERES. The holdings are being examined from the perspective of art and religious history, but also subjected to scientific analysis. This is being done in close cooperation with the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, where part of the workshop took place. Systematic analyses of the pigments and painting grounds used complement stylistic and iconographic studies and can open up new perspectives for the chronological and regional classification of existing manuscript sheets. Last but not least, the workshop served to intensify the existing cooperation between CERES and the museums in Cologne and Zurich.

Research Section for Jainism - CERES - Ruhr-Universität Bochum (rub.de)