London Gallery Challenges Art Lovers to Find Fake Works

File photo. (Fuse/Thinkstock)(LONDON) — “Fake it until you make it” as the old adage goes. And that is exactly what is happening for the next three months at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, where visitors have been tasked with spotting a replica $120 art piece and the opportunity to take a replica of the fake print, should they guess correctly.

Dulwich Picture Gallery is England’s oldest public art gallery. Opened in 1811, it is famous for housing some of the world’s most important European Old Masters from the 17th and 18th centuries.

It is described as displaying art with an emphasis based on “quality rather than quantity” — an indicator that the present experiment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

The American artist behind the new display is Doug Fishbone. He describes himself as an artist interested in asking questions. He told ABC News, “There is a fear in the West of Chinese counterfeiting but how do we really know if something is real or authentic? We’re not out to defraud people just to challenge them.”

In the West, the notion of replicas is often deemed sub-standard, whereas in China copying cultural artifacts is deemed acceptable.

So for $120, the gallery commissioned a copy of one of their permanent collection from the Meishing Oil Painting Manufacture Company — a workshop in China where 150 artists, many of them art students, fund their own work.

Currently, Southern China is the world’s leading center for mass-produced works of art.

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