Being Van Gogh: Russian brothers fake art masterpieces (Feature)

By Filip Bubenheimer Mar 12, 2010, 2:08 GMT

Berlin - In a smoky art salon, tucked between kebab stands and international call shops, Mona Lisa's fixed smile hangs alongside Vincent Van Gogh, staring from an earless self-portrait.

This is the Berlin gallery of Russian brothers Yevgeny, Semyon and Mikhail Posin, who make their living by painting imitations of the world's most famous masterpieces.

Their works are not exactly forgeries, but very good copies or reproductions. The Posin brothers are said to be among the best of their kind in the world.

Only experts would be able to distinguish a Posin copy from the original - if the brothers did not mark the back of their paintings to comply with the law.

Indeed, one of the brothers' clients has been jailed for attempting to resell a Posin copy as the original, to an art collector in Antwerp.

'An idiot,' Yevgeny Posin said of the audacious swindler.

The Posin brothers say that charisma is the secret to a good copy. The tight-lipped troika have a certain aura about them, and look as though they had jumped straight out of a 19th-century Russian photograph.

'We master all periods because we are excellently trained. We know virtually no other artist who has our skills,' said Mikhail Posin, aged 61, the youngest of the three brothers.

The Posin brothers, who work out of Berlin's Neukoelln district, make it clear that they no longer need to prove their qualities, with good reason.

Orders never cease, and a German collector has opened a museum featuring nothing but the Posins' imitations. The Forgery Museum, 120 kilometres south of Berlin, has attracted more than 40,000 visitors since 2007.

The Posins grew up in Siberia and graduated from the Leningrad Arts Academy, before coming to Germany in 1985, as dissidents from the communist-ruled Soviet Union.

'We already copied art when we were children,' said Mikhail, his diminutive frame dwarfed by a huge sofa.

After their arrival in Germany, the harsh reality of the German art market forced the Posins to rediscover their early talent.

'We fake art because we enjoy it and because it earns us a good living,' said Yevgeny Posin, 62. His brother Semyon sat silently alongside, smoking through a cigarette holder as he recovered from a trip to the dentist.

'Copying is like acting. We have to empathize with the artist,' Mikhail explained. 'In the case of Van Gogh, we did not cut off an ear, but we read his letters in order to put ourselves into the painful state he must have felt,' he added.

The brothers take the same amount of time to copy a painting as the original artist took for the creation.

Once, the Posins threw a visiting painter out of their gallery after he claimed he had specialized in copying Monet's water lilies. 'He said it would take him three weeks, but this is absurd. Monet painted them within three hours,' Mikhail said.

A Posin copy costs at least 600 euros (800 dollars), and there is no upper limit.

'Some people think artists have to be poor in order to make good art, but being hungry does not improve one's paintings,' Yevgeny said.

Their customers are diverse. 'Some just want a famous masterpiece for their apartment, or want to surprise their wife,' Yevgeny said. 'Recently, an ambassador bought a Mona Lisa copy for his embassy.'

'Some collectors also order a copy of an original they own. They then put the original in a safe and hang the copy on the wall,' he added.

The Posin brothers have sold their copies as far away as Australia and Japan. Over the years, they say they have painted more than 500 pictures.

A growing trend is for customers to ask for modified copies of famous paintings.

'Customers ask to for their wife and child to be included in a Rembrandt,' Mikhail explained. 'We do this but, frankly speaking, we are not thrilled. It adds something strange to the picture,' he said.

The Posin brothers also paint their own motifs, most of which are inspired by religious images. Their personal art does not fly off the shelves in the same way as the fakes, but the brothers say that creating and copying art are two disciplines that benefit from each other.

'Someone who cannot create good pictures cannot copy well either,' Mikhail said. On the other hand, he said, practising one's hand on the finest examples from art history caused no harm either.

'I'd like to create more from my own artistic inspiration,' Mikhail said, puffing at his third cigarette in an hour.

Unfortunately, their thriving copying business leaves little time for self-fulfillment.