F for Fake, Tasmania version

A new blog post by a museum curator in Australia’s island state calls to mind the critically-acclaimed Orson Welles docudrama.  Like the latter, it finds inspiration in the Picasso quote about art being “a lie that makes us realise truth.”  Also like the latter, we get an incredible story, marvellously told, with a glorious confession.

A quick recap: two weeks ago, there was the news that the curator of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) had shifted the works of art, that adorned its ladies-only lounge, to a ladies loo.   This was in response to a court ruling against the legality of having a gender-specific lounge.  Among the paintings moved were some that had been claimed to be by Picasso.   To quote from an Instagram post by the curator:

A new exhibition at Mona. Just for ladies… We never had female toilets at Mona before, they were all unisex. But then the Ladies Lounge had to close thanks to a lawsuit brought on by a man. And I just didn’t know what to do with all those Picassos…

The curator has now put out the aforementioned blog post in which she admits, with a certain flourish, that the ‘Picassos’ and other ‘invaluable’ objects, formerly on display in the ladies-lounge, were anything but that. 

This is some of what she has to say on how it all came to be:

[W]hen I began visualising the Ladies Lounge, I knew it had to be as opulent and sumptuous as possible. That meant handsome male butlers to wait on us, pour champagne and admire our beauty. Suck a toe or two. And if men were to feel as excluded as possible, the Lounge would need to display the most important artworks in the world—the very best.

There are New Guinean spears (brand new but presented as antiques collected by my grandfather on Pacific expeditions with Michael Rockefeller—you know, when he was ‘eaten by cannibals’), ‘precious’ pieces of jewellery (quite obviously new and in some cases plastic, purportedly belonging to my great-grandmother), and a ‘mink rug’ made by Princess Mary’s royal furrier (in fact a low-grade polyester).

Then there are the paintings. I knew they had to be ‘Picassos’. I am a tremendous fan of his work and hold it in the highest regard. He’s the great master, the pinnacle of modern art. And yes, his record with women is … intense. Women have been pulling him apart lately, questioning his supremacy. They question my selection of his art. And I like that. I liked that a misogynist would dominate the walls of the Ladies Lounge. Alongside a work by Sidney Nolan (another misogynist) depicting a rape scene, Leda and Swan.

I knew of a number of Picasso paintings I could borrow from friends, but none of them were green and I wished for the Lounge to be monochrome. I also had time working against me, not to mention the cost of insuring a Picasso—exorbitant!

A few days later I was having drinks with my friend Natalie. ‘Maybe I should just make the paintings myself,’ I said. We laughed—how absurd. But then, as with many absurd ideas, I decided it was a good one. So I made the artworks, quite painstakingly, with my own hands and the (perfectly shellacked) hands of my manicurist’s niece, who is far more competent in pen and ink and thus assisted with the etching. I chose the paintings for their colour palette and sensual depictions of the female form, exquisite against the green silk curtains of the Lounge.

Equally fascinating is how she describes what happened after that:

Three years ago I fantasised there would be a scandal: ‘Fake Picassos Exposed: Art Fraud!’ I imagined that a Picasso scholar, or maybe just a Picasso fan, or maybe just someone who googles things, would visit the Ladies Lounge and… expose me on social media. But instead:

Among artworks illuminated on the walls [in the Ladies Lounge is an] immediately recognisable Picasso.
—delicious

Across the lounge I spy Picasso’s Luncheon on the Grass, After Manet (1961)—one of the cubist’s many subversive, fractured retellings of Manet’s scandalous Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (1863).
—Traveller

The velvet-clad lounge … contains some of the museum's most-acclaimed works, from Picasso to Sidney Nolan …
—BBC News

... plush green curtains, lavish surroundings, original works by Picasso …
—New York Times

… a silk-curtain-partitioned private space in the gallery, with special artworks exhibited inside, including several priceless Picasso’s passed down to Kaechele from her great-grandmother.
—Women’s Agenda

I’m flattered that people believed my great-grandmother summered with Picasso at her Swiss chateau where he and my grandmother were lovers when she threw a plate at him for indiscretions (of a kind) that bounced off his head and resulted in the crack you see inching through the gold ceramic plate in the Ladies Lounge. The real plate would have killed him—it was made of solid gold. Well, it would have dented his forehead because the real plate is actually a coin.