New this season, a small gallery of “art fakes.” Alternative elaborations of great visual art classics that still have a reference to music. From month to month we will add them in this article, questioning if they are masterpieces or forgeries? Unveiling the truth about these artworks will be fascinating for all.
We asked a young artist, Chiara Palumbo, to make a series of original works but inspired by some great masterpieces of visual art. As usual, we like to mix cards, genres, languages. Over the years, we have constantly looked for collaborative grounds that would unite the arts (all arts) with ours, which is to make music. To coincide with the start of the new Concert Season, we commissioned the reinterpretation of some visual works, more or less famous, by authors of all eras and styles. Masterpieces or forgeries? Unveiling the truth will be revealed as we publish one per month starting at the end of October.
Fake 1
The first work (linked to the month of November) is inspired by The Betrayal of Images, an oil on canvas painted by René Magritte in 1929 and preserved in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The original work has a pipe instead of a violin, and the phrase obviously reads, “Ceci n’è pas une pipe.” (find out more)
With this paradox, Magritte intended to demonstrate the contrast between representation and reality.
But the idea of declaring in writing the function of an object brings to mind Woody Guthrie, who had added in large letters on his guitar, “This machine kills fascists.” It was the instrument with which he toured in 1930s America, fervent, thirsty for new music and eager for adventure.
In our case, then, what we see is not a violin, or at least it is not just that.
We like to think that it is also an instrument of culture and the dissemination of beauty, the value of which goes far beyond the definition of the physical object. Are these works considered masterpieces or forgeries? Unveiling the truth will be an interesting journey.
Fake 2
December’s forgery brings together two iconic figures such as Giuseppe Verdi and Andy Warhol. Between the two runs roughly a century apart. But if they were contemporaries, would they ever have met? More importantly, would the painter Warhol, would he ever have considered portraying the famous composer Verdi as an icon of an era? Like Mick Jagger or Liz Taylor?
We like to imagine so. In this elaboration a possible result of the strange Verdi-Warhol pair, replicable of course in hundreds of copies and in different colors. It all starts with a portrait of the Maestro di Busseto done by Giovanni Boldini in pastel in 1886, one of the most famous, capable of capturing the essence of the man and the artist; it is at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.
If Giuseppe Verdi and Andy Warhol had been contemporaries, would they have liked each other? Probably not, but that is another matter.
Fake 3
When Milton Glaser designed the famous poster for Bob Dylan in 1966, he probably did not imagine that one day his work would be borrowed to tell the story of another rebellious genius. Masterpieces or forgeries? Unveiling the truth behind these art fakes brings an interesting perspective.
Yes, because if Dylan is the poet of the American counterculture, Ludwig van Beethoven is the genius who defies fate.
Beethoven’s black silhouette, with its unmistakable profile, emerges from nowhere, austere and imposing. But above, an explosion of color lights up the scene: kaleidoscopic locks that look like notes from a pop symphony. And the message is clear: Beethoven, just like Dylan, was never a monochromatic figure. He was a creator of worlds, a rebel who rejected rules, an artist who defied deafness to hear something deeper than any melody: the very essence of humanity.
Fake 4
February’s appointment with faux auteur: Emilio Isgrò made the art of erasure his language, and we borrowed his conceptual eraser to rewrite a manifesto of our time.
Among the faded lines and black marks that obscure every word, only these emerge: “An orchestra is like the world, it must contain everything.” A phrase that echoes Gustav Mahler‘s thought, but expands in a new direction. Is this a masterpiece or forgery? Unveiling the truth may challenge our understanding of art.
This “false authorship” celebrates the idea that music is not just sound: it is inclusion, multiplicity, life. Like Isgrò erases to bring out meaning, we have removed the superfluous to make room for the essential. A message that, like any great symphony, truly contains everything.
Fake 5
Mimmo Rotella transformed the poster into art, tearing away the superfluous to reveal new meaning. With this “faux auteur,” we followed his lesson: old posters of the Orchestra della Toscana, superimposed as if time had let them settle on the walls of a theater, then carefully torn apart. Under each tear, the past mingles with the present. The names of conductors appear between uneven slits, while the mangled letters of an old program seem to whisper forgotten titles.
Images merge, creating a new narrative of overlaps and absences, gashes and revelations. Each tear is an act of memory and reinvention, a fragment of history that does not allow itself to be completely erased, but is transformed, like an echo that continues to resonate.
Among the fragments emerge broken titles, incomplete dates, colors that overlap like the sounds of an invisible orchestra. It is a tribute to his poetics of décollage, where what is lost leaves room for something unexpected. Music, like art, does not just exist: it renews itself, even in its scars. Are these images masterpieces or forgeries? Unveiling the truth can change our perspective.
Fake 6
Keith Haring always drew energy—the vital impulse, the rhythm that runs through bodies and cities. His figures are never still: they dance, jump, twist. But what happens if one of his iconic little men grabs a violin and lets himself be carried away by a new kind of energy?
Our “faux masterpiece” shows just that: a musician who seems to play and dance at the same time. Notes become lines, sounds turn into pure movement. In this image, the orchestra becomes an invisible dance floor where classical music stops being static and transforms into something pop—into body, into vitality.
Perhaps Haring never drew a violin, but he surely wouldn’t have minded lending his characters to an orchestra pulsing with energy. Because, if you look closely, even a symphonic concert is nothing but a collective dance, where everyone—musicians and audience alike—moves together.
