I ordered this book on a whim. I have always been interested in art history and art heist, and when I thought about it, I was surprised that forgery is not a topic I have ever explored. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I’m so glad I took a chance, because this is one of the most phenomenal books I have ever read.Tony Tetro tells his story in simple, unassuming terms. He never paints himself to be a victim or sugarcoats what he has done. He just tells his story. When he became a father at 16, his parents forced he and his girlfriend to get married. So he was 16 years old, trying to find a way to support a family. He did a series of odd jobs that he hated, but he would paint at night to relax. He tried selling his artwork, but nobody was interested. He tells us that he soon found out that it’s not really the artwork that matters – it’s only the signature.One day just for fun, he tries re-creating a famous work. He finds the challenge stimulating – figuring out how somebody would have painted this hundreds of years ago— the techniques and pigments that a centuries ago artist would have used. In the end he enjoys it so much that he starts doing it for fun, researching endlessly to figure out how to make his paintings look more authentic.Money is so tight that eventually, despite his better judgment, he signs one of his copies with the name of another famous artist and takes it to a local gallery. To his surprise, it sells for thousands of dollars. When he is making around $100 a week, he can’t believe how much money just came rolling in for one hour of work. You can almost feel his excitement as he counts the money, more than he has ever seen in his life. But his conscience gets the better of him, and he goes back to the person who bought it, returns the check, and confesses what he has done out of desperation.He thought that would be the end of him, but surprisingly, it was only the beginning. Far from being upset, the art dealer is thrilled and actually hires him. He quickly finds out a dirty little art world secret – the dealers really don’t care if the paintings are real or not – they just care if they sell. The more experienced and better he gets, the more dealers come to him on the sly, requesting artwork by certain famous painters. He can hardly believe how much money he is getting, and it’s hard to turn his back on this gold mine and go back to trying to figure out how he’s going to feed his family every day.Remember that he’s very young. What sort of dumb stuff did you do in your 20s that you would change today? Can you imagine an early 20 year old turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars for almost no work? He doesn’t make excuses for what he’s done, but through his explanations you can really see into his brain and understand how everything got started almost by accident and snowballed from there.He mentions that if you ask 100 people on the street what a forger does, 99 of them will probably say that “he copies famous art.“ But a good forger actually does just the opposite. A forger, at his best and most practiced, is a voracious learner, a fabulous storyteller, a relentless detective for clues. A forger is someone who obsessively studies history, finds just the tiniest place where there is room for doubt, and wills a painting to exist in that gray area.At the height of his career, Tetro’s work was astoundingly accurate. He went all over the world studying the masters. He was relentlessly practicing technique and copying signatures (so much so that even his own signature started to resemble Chagall’s), trying to get inside their heads, trying to figure out how they would have used the materials available to them during their time periods to create these pieces. He spends hours reading their letters and trying to understand what sorts of motivators they had. He buys old canvases from period, non-famous works and repurposes them to make his copies. He creates his pigments by hand, grinding colors with a mortar and pestle, using only materials that would have been available then, including rabbit glue, which is made from boiling the tendons and bones of a rabbit. Yuck. But you can almost feel his excitement as he figures it out… as he cracks the code. He takes coffee and dips cigarette butts into it for many days, forming a sludgy nicotine slurry. He then sprays this mixture onto the paintings, just as they would have absorbed dirt and grime and nicotine for many years of hanging in restaurants or homes. He vacuum dust and pollen from his patio furniture and uses that to wipe the canvas, again to show age. At one point he bakes one of his paintings in the oven for over a week to crackle it just right. He thinks about the fact that Italian paintings would have cracked more in a hot and dry environment, versus a British painting, which would have had more humidity and cooler summers.I never thought about forgers as being artistic geniuses before, but this guy really is. His depth of understanding, his knowledge, his creativity, they are just astounding. And although he doesn’t come out and say it, he very much implies that many of the famous artworks hanging in the most prestigious museums around the world are actually forgeries.At the end of the book he is caught, comes clean, dutifully serves his sentence and continues to give back to his community by painting city murals and working with at risk youth teaching them how to appreciate art. His advice for anyone who wants to become a forger? Don’t do it. Nowadays they have DNA testing and all sorts of electronic surveillance tools which were not available in the 80s when he was painting. Experts now can tell if the frame from a piece is made from wood which actually came from Italy or from somewhere else. They can detect the erased images underneath something you have painted from the previous throwaway painting that you wiped. They can even zoom in with ultra magnification and see the fingerprints of the painter. It’s astounding really.But I think the reason this book really stood out to me, other than how interesting it was to know how in-depth this man went with his work, is the fact that if great and famous artwork can be recreated so convincingly by someone today in less than a day, what really makes art famous? Just like all the billionaires who want a Monet or Chagall hanging on their wall as a status symbol, do we really appreciate art because we love to look at it, or just because we feel wealthy and powerful having it hanging in our homes? Was a famous art collection the social media of the day before there were computers? Was having a famous painter take your likeness the same thing as getting a killer social media profile picture?The author’s advice at the end of the book is very poignant. It is by somebody who has done it all, spent it all, lost it all, and learned a lot along the way. He advises us to enjoy each day. If a piece of art is monetarily worthless but lights you up with happiness every time you see it, then hang it on the wall and enjoy it. Don’t collect art just for a status symbol. Think about the person who poured his heart and soul into that piece and give it the respect and honor it deserves. Take a little time to be creative every day even if you aren’t any good at it – because it’s good for the soul. Remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we can find beauty in the most unexpected places if we just take time to look. Sometimes the greatest trials in life are actually the greatest lessons.I enjoyed this book so much. The author was so humble and honest. I personally was incredibly impressed with his art, knowledge, skill, and incredible technique. I wish he offered classes because I would love to learn – not how to forge – but how an old master might have actually created his work. I feel like this is as close as we will ever get to actually watching a master at work. It’s fascinating to learn how some of my favorite art pieces may have been created, and the tools and techniques which may have been used to put them to canvas. I almost wish that they could take people with this level of talent and have them re-create famous artworks which have been lost, such as Rafael‘s Portrait of a Young Man, or Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilea. Even if there was a little note saying that this was a copy of the original, I still think that his technique is so flawless that it would at least give people an idea of the grandeur of the original.What a fantastic book. It was so good that I couldn’t put it down. I found myself bringing it in the car so that I could snatch an extra paragraph at red lights. One of the best books I have read in a long time. If the author reads these reviews, thank you for sharing this story with such poignancy and honesty. It really touched me, and I thank you for that.