Thursday, June 18, 2009

Errol Morris: Bamboozling Ourselves, Part 5

The Devil’s Orb

Jonathan Lopez and I resumed our discussion of Van Meegeren. I was still in search of an answer to the question of whether Van Meegeren was an apolitical huckster or a Nazi. Perhaps there were some additional clues in Teekeningen 1.

ERROL MORRIS: So is Van Meegeren’s success, success in pandering? Finding out what Nazi collectors want, and then giving it to them?

JONATHAN LOPEZ: To some extent, yes. Although, that’s only part of it. He really was an artist, and he did have to become involved in the aesthetics of what he was doing and making things that he himself found appealing.

ERROL MORRIS: He had to incorporate something of himself in his painting — even the forgeries. By the way, many of the images in your book are just amazing, the Van Meegeren drawings. They’re so strange. “Creepy” is the right word.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: Oh, the Nazi drawings?

ERROL MORRIS: Yeah.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: Yeah, the one with the snake and the deer. That’s pretty horrendous. And the one with the soap bubble, “The Devil’s Orb” ["Grain, Petroleum, Cotton"]—

ERROL MORRIS: The soap bubble is utterly amazing.


Teekeningen 1
“Grain, Petroleum, Cotton” by Van Meegeren.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: That horrendous scary-looking book. My wife makes me keep it behind a door in my office so that nobody knows that we own the thing. Because you look at it — Jesus Christ what is this? It’s this sinister-looking book. It’s just creepy-looking. It’s enormous; it’s black. It’s got this gold Gothic script on it. It looks like an evil book.

ERROL MORRIS: Evil?

JONATHAN LOPEZ: Well, pretty bad...

Read the rest of this installment at the NYTimes.com...

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