Self-Portrait

About the Book

This is a memoir of the star and subject of the Emmy-nominated documentary, "Art and Craft," the story of the search for America's greatest living art forger, Mark Landis. A book in which the reader can satisfy both intellectual and artistic palates, the tone and subject matter of the text is reminiscent of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and the story of Mark Landis' life and art is reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh, who struggled with mental health issues his entire life. Despite the controversy of his forged paintings, Landis just may just turn out to be the most important artist of our generation.

For more than two decades, Mark Landis, a mild-mannered, gentlemanly senior citizen who lived alone in his deceased mother's apartment, painted identical copies of the work of the great artists of the world and passed them off as authentic when he donated them to museums all across the country while disguised as a Jesuit priest. Ultimately, the FBI cleared him of any malicious intent and Landis explained that he did what he did because of painful loneliness. Those transactions were his main contact with the outside world.

John Gapper, a reporter for the British-owned Financial Times, wrote a story in 2013 about Mark Landis after he got wind that someone from the Oklahoma Museum of Art believed that someone was donating forged paintings to museums all across the U.S. It was Gapper who tracked him down in Laurel, Mississippi, a small town that is probably best known for the popular home-renovation TV show, "Home Town," and it was he who became the first person to do a face-to-face interview with Landis.

As it turned out, Mark Landis, is an unassuming, 68-year-old genius with an IQ of 150 who has spent most of his life in mental health facilities, mostly in Mississippi, bravely coping with schizophrenia. The Menninger Clinic, which treated him as a teen, told his mother that he likely would have to be institutionalized for the remainder of his life. However, despite his mental illness (he is likely also autistic), he has created not only flawless forgeries of the world's greatest art, using materials purchased from Walmart and Hobby Lobby, but also a memorable body of original art, which he is now willing to share with the public in this book. In 2022, Landis' forged and some original paintings were exhibited in New York City at Salomon Arts Gallery in association with Wirth Galarie. His work also has been exhibited at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts.

Landis was not arrested for his forgeries because he never asked for money for the artwork and he never claimed them as donations on his income tax returns. Despite the efforts of some to make him into a common criminal, his art fantasies are a threat to no one but himself. He is a prolific reader and has lived in the Philippines and throughout Europe with his parents, and San Francisco and Chicago, where he lived alone and attended the Chicago Art Institute.