Mark Landis

Mark A. Landis
Born	Mark Augustus Landis (1955-04-00)April 1955 Laurel, Mississippi
Nationality	American
Education	Art Institute of Chicago
Known for	Painting, forgery

Mark A. Landis, born in Laurel, Mississippi, april 1955, is an american painter and forger. He has painted a large number of faux, which he successfully donated to american art museums.

Biography

His grandfather, Arthur Landis, was a director at the now defunct Auburn Automobile company. His father, an officer of the US Navy, was assigned to NATO in Europe, and lived with his family in London, Paris and Brussels. At 17, Mark Landis is deeply struck by the loss of his father. He is cured for 18 months in a Kansas hospital; he is diagnosed as schizophrenic. He attends art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago then in San Francisco, where he subsequently works in the commerce of art; among other things, he works for the maintainance of damaged paintings. · He buys an art gallery, but it is not successful. Broke at 30, he decides to return and live with his mother. Beforehand, he wishes to make a gesture that would please his mother and honour the memory of his father : donate a copy of a Maynard Dixon to a California museum; this first successful attempt will convince him to repeat the feat.. For more than 20 years, he will donate all kinds of faux pieces of art to institutions in the US, among which more than 50 museums. He chooses preferably small sized-museums, which do not have the powerful means of analysis of the larger ones. While all institutions were not duped, the whole process went fairly unnoticed, and unstopped, for more than 20 years, in spite of the large number of dispersed forgeries. Landis even donated several times the faux or a same work to different museums.

During this period, he also produces original work; some are sold through Narsad Artworks. In 2012, it still is possible to buy stationery bearing the Magnolias' by Landis. He often moves, staying at more than 15 different addresses between 1985 and 2000. Patsy Hollister, Narsad co-founder, believes Landis probably is more bipolar than schizophrenic, with an ability to paint extremely fast. Says Landis, talking about icons: "I gave to hundreds of churches.". Landis also is said to have worked in animation and advertisement.

His success derives not so much from the perfection of his faux (sometimes a basic test exposes the forgery) than from his ability to copy all kinds of styles, helped by a strong sense of deception and a strange and soft approach which obfuscates specialists.

Painters and authors copied

• Hans von Aachen

• Milton Clark Avery

• William-Adolphe Bouguereau

• Charles Courtney Curran

• Daumier
• Walt Disney
• Maynard Dixon
• Thomas Jefferson (letter)
• John Hancock (letter)

• Marie Laurencin
• Stanislas Lépine (Terrassiers au Trocadero) ·

• Abraham Lincoln (electoral tract)
• Alfred Jacob Miller (Head of a Sioux)

• Picasso

• Everett Shinn

• Paul Signac (Le Trieux)  ·

• Louis Valtat
• Watteau
• icons