A: When it comes to art forgery – and forgery in general – no one is more infamous than the undisputed king of phonies, Elmyr de Hory. Good ole Elmyr seemed to live and breathe fakeness. What made him infamous wasn’t just the sheer number of forgeries he sold, though, but that they were really good forgeries! For 30 years, de Hory sold fake paintings by the world’s greatest artists, including Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. In fact, his forgeries were so good, so precise in every detail, that they fooled even the most experienced art buyers. And when the cat finally came out of the bag about him being a forger, instead of his career taking a turn for the worst, he actually began to attract his own cult following; people began paying high prices for “authentic” de Hory fakes! Believe it or not, legitimate museums currently host exhibitions of de Hory’s works; and as if that’s not enough, brace yourself for this irony of ironies: the forger’s forgeries are now being forged and sold by other forgers! (We know, your head just exploded.) And it doesn’t get any better: De Hory told his story in Fake! a 1969 biography by Clifford Irving, an author who himself went on to forge a phony autobiography of Howard Hughes! So what happened to our Elmer da Forger, you ask? Well, eventually, he ended up penniless (just like a real painter) and committed suicide in 1976, though rumor has it that he faked that too.