<br>Jonathon Keats is a critic, journalist and artist. He is the art critic for San Francisco Magazine, and has contributed art criticism to Art & Antiques, Art + Auction, Art in America, ARTnews, Artweek, and Salon.com. His arts writing has also appeared in Wired Magazine, ForbesLife Magazine, TheWashington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is most recently the author of Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology (OUP). His conceptual art has been exhibited at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Wellcome Collection.<br>
<br> For some time and in a wide variety of media, Jonathon Keats has been revealing himself to be one of the most witty, penetrating and deeply contemplative minds of this young century. In careful and skeptical depth, his work searches and researches the unrevealed truths that lie behind many things we take for granted. In this bold, typically irreverent work, Keats asks a basic and impertinent question: Can any legitimate artwork match the public impact and significance of a scandalous forgery? Whatever we decide, in the end we are aware that we've been in the midst of that rarest of presences these days: a wholly original mind capable of expressing itself with clarity, precision and humor. --Stanley Bing, columnist, Fortune Magazine<br><p><br> Jonathon Keats's playfully learned volume is not only a history of modern art-faking but also a philosophical investigation of creativity and repetition in our era. It won't tell you how to forge, but it may convince you that you should. --John Dorfman, editor-in-chief, Art & Antiques<br><p><br> According to Jonathon Keats, 'Forgers are the foremost artists of our age.' To which I might add, 'Keats's new book is about to become the foremost text on the compelling world of fakes and forgeries. - Richard Polsky, author of The Art Prophets and I Bought Andy Warhol<br><p><br> There are many books on art appreciation. Jonathon Keats has written the first one on art forgery appreciation. Keats not only presents a rogues's gallery of history's greatest forgers. He also poses--in lively and engaging prose--provocative questions about the nature of creativity and originality as well as providing many uncomfortable insights about the art market. --Dana Gioia, Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts <br><p><br>