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Mark Augustus Landis (born 1955) is an American painter who lives in Laurel, Mississippi. He is best known for "donating" large numbers of forged paintings and drawings to American art museums. He was exposed in 2008. == Biography == Mark Landis was born in Norfolk, Virginia. His grandfather, Arthur Landis, was a director at the now defunct Auburn Automobile company. His father, Arthur Landis, Jr., a lieutenant (and later lieutenant commander) in the US Navy, married his mother, Jonita (1930–2010), in 1952. Mark was born three years later, and the family moved around a good deal because of his father's various postings. Following assignments in the Philippines and Hong Kong, Arthur Landis, Jr. was posted to NATO in Europe, where the family lived in Cap Ferrat (France), London, Paris, and finally Brussels, where Landis began forging stamp cancellations for his friends.〔Wilkinson, Alec. ("The Giveaway" ), ''The New Yorker'', Aug. 6, 2013.〕 In 1968 the family returned to the United States, settling in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1971, Landis's father was diagnosed with cancer, of which he died the following year. At 17, Landis was deeply struck by the loss of his father and he was treated for 18 months in a Kansas hospital, where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He attended art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago then in San Francisco, where among other things, he worked on the maintenance of damaged paintings. He bought an art gallery, but it was not successful, and he lost money in a real-estate investment. So in 1988, he decided to return to live with his mother and stepfather, James Brantley, in Laurel, Mississippi. Before he left though, he wished to make a gesture that would please his mother and honor the memory of his father, so he donated a copy of a Maynard Dixon illustration he had created to a California museum as an original. This first successful attempt at art forgery convinced him to repeat the feat.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Moi, Mark Landis, peintre, faussaire et philanthrope )〕 For more than 20 years, Landis donated all kinds of faux pieces of art to institutions in the U.S., including more than 50 museums. He generally chose smaller museums, which did not have the same means of detailed analysis as the larger ones. While not all institutions were duped, the whole process went largely unnoticed. Landis even donated up to six copies of the same work to different museums. During this period, Landis also produced original pieces; some have been sold through Narsad Artworks, which sells work by artists with mental illness. As of 2013, it was still possible to buy note cards bearing a work entitled ''Magnolias'' by Landis (which copies a work by Martin Johnson Heade without credit).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Magnolias, note cards )〕 Landis lived at more than 15 different addresses between 1985 and 2000. Patsy Hollister, Narsad co-founder, believes Landis probably is more bipolar than schizophrenic, with an ability to paint extremely fast. Says Landis, talking about icons: "I gave to hundreds of churches."〔 Landis also is said to have worked in animation and advertisement.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Meet the Artists )〕 Landis' success derives not so much from the perfection of his faux artworks (sometimes a basic test exposes the forgery) as from his ability to copy all kinds of styles, his choice to imitate lesser-known artists and his ability to play the role of an eccentric, but sincere philanthropist. Moreover, museums tend not to authenticate gifts as carefully as works they buy.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mark Landis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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