Art in Textbooks

CAUTION ABOUT FAKE ART

Sources like eBay are legitimate places for you to obtain original Daniel Johnston art. However, you must be very wary, as there are fraudulent / fake imitations out there.

It is not difficult for people to take computer-graphic copies of art and make copies from it, combine it with other pieces, distort it slightly, or even just use art to trace fakes.

Below are several recent examples.

If you believe you have purchased fake art from eBay:

1) contact the seller

2) contact eBay security center and report the problem

Example fakes:

Original art viewable in our ART gallery http://www.rejectedunknown.com/art/BW2.htm	Fake art recently sold on eBay
The sitting duck figure on the right appears to be a trace of the figure from the drawing on the left. The drawing on the left was obtained from the ART gallery image on www.rejectedunknown.com. In all, we see about six clear reasons that this must be a fake - and without telling you (and the FORGER) too much about why the 2nd drawing has to be a fake, we conclude that it is. Even with this LITTLE information we've given you, the FORGERS will "be more careful" in the future - so future fakes are going to be harder to detect.
Here is the original over-layed on the fake:
How can you tell a fake from an original? Again, eBay is a LEGITIMATE (legal, good, honest) way to buy or sell original art. There are no steadfast rules for telling you how to judge what is real or fake. We are reluctant to say "too much" about how the fakes become apparent to us, because it would educate the forgers to make better fakes. You must become educated about the art, and about the seller. There will always be the scum-bags who can't do anything well, but they can FAKE it well - and that's what they do with their life. There have been great fakes of every artist from Van Gogh to Michael Angelo - they go after whatever has a profit in it. The sellers of fake art will CLAIM to have obtained the art from some legitimate source. If they give a SPECIFIC verifiable source, the chances are better that it is true (the name and contact info of the person who sold it to them). The SCAMMER will ALWAYS have some vague indication of exactly where they got it ("at a concert", "while in Austin", etc.) You will never be able to pin the forger down because he will simply claim that he was scammed when he bought the art. If he can't tell you WHO he bought it from - someone you can contact - beware! All art purchased from www.hihowareyou.com , www.rejectedunknown.com , and www.discoveredcovered.com are KNOWN to have come from Daniel directly. If you purchased from these sites you received a certificate of authenticity and a digital image of the piece is stored in Daniel's permanent digital archive as proof of it's origin. If someone sells art on eBay and says they purchased it from one of these web sites, ask them for the certificate of authenticity. This is not to say a certificate cannot be forged - but any art sold from these sites will have a permanent record of the certificate and art to substantiate it's originality. There is much original art that is available from OTHER SOURCES, but we are learning quickly that FAKES are in circulation, and may have made it into the hands of sellers who believe it to be original. Get the seller to guarantee its originality in writing and provide you with PERMANENT contact information, so you can contact them if you ever suspect differently. Everyone has a story of "where" they got the drawing, and the sellers of fakes always have "believable stories" - so unfortunately, the story has almost no value. How gullible are you? Be honest with yourself about that single point and you can probably see signs of the problem and steer away from the frauds.