Charlatan of the Week: Mark Augustus Landis

It has been a long time since we’ve had a Feechie of the Week here at Jonathan-Rogers.com. This is not mere negligence on my part. I have searched (read: Googled) high and low for feechie-inspired behavior, but I don’t think people are acting as feechiefied lately as they normally do. It may be the cold weather. I should probably be paying more attention to what the Australians are up to, since it’s summertime there and they have crocodiles. If you have candidates you’d like to nominate, I’m all ears, believe me.
But in the absence of Feechies of the Week, I have considered the possibility of featuring the occasional Charlatan of the Week. This presents challenges of its own; even the best charlatans can be characterized by–shall we say–moral ambiguity. And the last thing this blog needs is moral ambiguity and/or turpitude.

But enough preambling. The Charlatan of the Week for January 24-3o is a Mississippian named Mark Augustus Landis. He’s a gifted artist and–more to the point–a talented forger of art. For the last few years he has been forging paintings by well-known artists and then donating them to museums around the country in honor of his dead parents and other relatives. Apparently he’s never attempted to sell any of his forgeries; he only donates them.

You can read the strange and fascinating story of Mark A. Landis in last week’s Financial Times Magazine: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5905c640-2359-11e0-8389-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1C7cmjAGB.