As a result, legitimate art is doing a bad job of taking us outside our comfort zone. Art forgery, on the other hand, does so brilliantly. Forgers are the foremost artists of our age.

I’m not talking about the objects they make. Their real art is to con us into accepting the works as authentic. They do so, inevitably, by finding our blind spots, and by exploiting our common-sense assumptions. When they’re caught (if they’re caught), the scandal that ensues is their accidental masterpiece. Learning that we’ve been defrauded makes us anxious – much more so than any painting ever could – provoking us to examine our poor judgment. This effect is inescapable, since we certainly didn’t ask to be duped. A forgery is more direct, more powerful, and more universal than any legitimate artwork.

Consider the work of Han van Meegeren, one of the foremost forgers of the 1930s and ’40s. A leading Dutch scholar named Bredius theorized that Jan Vermeer once made religious paintings, but no one could find them. So van Meegeren produced the work that Bredius described. The fact that these paintings looked nothing like any Vermeer in existence only added to their credibility. Van Meegeren found one of the feedback loops that generate unjustified belief. We should all take heed.