John Myatt on Glenn Brown

you my name's John Myatt I live in Los Staffordshire and I was arrested for art fraud in 1995 of sentence for 12 months for conspiracy to defraud the art establishment the newspapers had described me as though one of the greatest art forgers of the 20th century I'm not so sure about that really there is a mindset that says authenticity is absolutely everything unless you can actually trace the item back to Gogan studio it doesn't matter well I don't agree with that the reason we're here today of course is because we're going to go to Liverpool and I'm going to see Glenn Brown's paintings for the very first time Glenn Brown it refers to existing works and existing artists and incorporates what he finds in his own painting what I want to see is a display of skill or wit or preferably both and the dogs just farted God that was a real massive one what did hear it flippin Eck Henry I think it's fabulously witty now the guy can really paint that's what's nice about this but um someone's having a little chat with you about um about what it's like to be a painter you can't get it if you can't see where the original reference comes from I think then you're a bit lost what I love about this is the way he's left this foot here unresolved just because it's actually also reminding you of the actual ways and means that that you deploy to achieve this kind of thing I've never been a great admirer of Salvador Dali frankly it's always kind of you know as a massive appeal to sixth formers I think he really was actually a complete charlatan I'm not a charlatan I mean yet yeah I'm not pretending to be something I'm not the root of every painting that he makes is a work by another artist and rather than working from originals he looks purely of reproductions so images in books and on the internet in postcards but what he's interested in is how disloyal that reproduction is to be original I think every painter has in mind previous artist works or renderings of something when they're creating a new image I was just thinking you know trying very hard to find a downside to all this really but then I could think of was if you didn't know much about the is that portrait of Saskia it's somewhere between hit her and and a self-portrait by Rembrandt then you wouldn't get the joke we don't need to know that this comes from a Rembrandt we recognize it as a very traditional type of portraiture every once in the new it's like this somewhere doesn't matter who painted it it's a modification of something that you do kind of recognize and that instant recognition draws you in and again you form a reading of that and then the other wacky stuff takes a fer if you NightA 20 buzz will be eyes the whole chase thing it has opened pretty severe case of cataract many ways is to bring you back to the fact that you're you're looking at a painter if you see the eyes is the first thing you go to any Mateus with the person round the surface that's a true link so it kind of blocks out that potential I have to meet him I really would all these for sale most of them have come straight out of of collections getting no I'll fake one that's what I do oh gosh I don't have whether I could you