A traditional publisher with a non-traditional approach to publishing
By Mark Landis with Christen Shepherd
SELF PORTRAIT OF A MASTER ART FORGER
Non-Fiction | Biography
In 2013 a reporter for the London Financial Times, wrote a story about Mark Landis after he got wind that someone from the Oklahoma Museum of Art believed that someone was donating forged paintings by the Masters to museums all across the U.S. The donor did not use his real name and sometimes dressed as a Jesuit Priest, other times as landed gentry from the South. The reporter tracked him down to Laurel, Mississippi, a small town that is probably best known as the home of the popular home-renovation TV show, “Home Town.”
“Things are seldom what they seem.” — Mark Landis. Every so often someone comes along and holds up a fun-house mirror to the art world. For 30 years Mark Landis with his donated “forgeries” filled this role with verve and humor. While Landis is a serviceable painter, his true gift is his resourcefulness and audacity so well portrayed in the laugh-out-loud-funny documentary, “Art and Craft.” In this disarmingly candid autobiography, Landis displays an irresistible naiveté that belies his wide-ranging knowledge of art and the ability to devise a refreshingly innocent scheme that allowed him to hoodwink dozens of museum curators.
– Birney Imes, author of Juke Joint, Whispering Pines and Partial to Home.
Little did I know when I first met Mark Landis in 2011 as we began filming the documentary Art and Craft, that he would impact me in the way that he has. His creativity and resourcefulness—an evidenced by his work—always inspire me, but it’s his mischievous sense of humor and particular point of view that define his true creative spirit. I’m happy that with Self-Portrait of a Master Art Forger more people will be able to spend time in his mind and in his world.
– Jennifer Grausman, Director and Producer.
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