Klikyhák
Nápodoba hraje v lidském životě klíčovou (mnohdy až fatální) úlohu, ať už jde o „vědomé“ dětské napodobování dospělého anebo o „nevědomé“ neurobiologické procesy v mozku, kdy se mysl člověka za pomoci somatických markerů snaží navozovat mnohé možné situace tak, aby na ně byla v případě jejich reálného uskutečnění připravena. Je proto logické, že nápodoba takřka odnepaměti existuje i ve sféře umění.
Napodobování ve výtvarném umění má mnoho podob: od cvičného „kopírování“ pro vlastní napodobitelovu potřebu přes imitaci stylů až po nápodobu konkrétních děl. A právě určení toho, o jaký „případ“ nápodoby šlo, je stěžejní otázkou v trestněprávní kauze Josefa Ptáčníka, o níž prostřednictvím hutné výpovědi momentálně nepravomocně odsouzeného malíře pojednává dokument Romana Štětiny.
Josef Ptáčník maluje obrazy ve stylech slavných autorů už dlouhé roky, ale vytvoření desítek děl v charakteristickém stylu valašských mistrů se mu stalo osudným: bylo na něj podáno trestní oznámení pro podezření ze spáchání trestného činu. Ptáčník měl údajně využívat svých mimořádných technických kvalit a své zručnosti k tomu, aby díla, jež maloval nejen s maximální precizností, ale také s nebývalou rychlostí, vydával za originály. Díky svým prý podvodným praktikám si měl vydělat značně přes milion korun.
Celá spletitá kauza otevírá spoustu otázek, a to zdaleka nejen právních. Zatímco soudci zkoumají (anebo by alespoň měli zkoumat), zda bylo úmyslem Josefa Ptáčníka uvádět druhé dík svému výtvarnému nadání v omyl, pro teorii i praxi umění jsou podstatné jiné problémy: je nápodoba cizího stylu sama o sobě vůbec akceptovatelná? Je malíř-napodobitel umělcem? Existuje rozdíl mezi nápodobou stylu a nápodobou konkrétního díla? A kde leží subtilní linie mezi čirým kopírováním a pouhou inspirací?
Josef Ptáčník na takové otázky sice neodpovídá, ale možná, že k odpovědím naznačuje cestu. Při tom hovoří o začátcích své tvorby, světě „nepravého“ umění, způsobech, jak docílit takřka dokonalé iluze originálu, i detailech svého zadržení a vlivech, které mohly stát za rozpoutáním jeho kauzy. Nepopírá, že jeho díla imitují valašské mistry, ale odmítá, že by je prodával s puncem originálů, a nechápe, jak by vůbec mohla být vzhledem ke své ceně, svému množství i záměrně nepřesným podpisům „jakoby autorů“ považována za původní.
Josef Ptáčník je přesvědčen, že není českým Hanem van Meegerenem, neboť na rozdíl od holandského krále falza nevydával své výtvory za desítky či stovky let staré originály. Čistě z pohledu schopnosti „výtvarné mimésis“ však na van Meegerena zdatně navazuje. Ve formálně záměrně střídmém, leč obsahově neobvykle košatém dokumentu Romana Štětiny se o tom můžete přesvědčit.
Matěj Sýkora
- SQUIGGLE00:00:03.053
- 00:00:03.053
- I can say I have tried to copy almost all renowned painters,00:00:06.617
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- for example Kandinsky, whatever I liked I simply painted.00:00:13.204
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- Josef Ptáčník born in 1965 in Kolín trained as a car mechanic00:00:22.960
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- Well, I started painting when I was two and a half,00:00:35.977
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- we lived with my grandfather,00:00:38.678
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- and when it was raining he would take out paints and brushes,00:00:41.221
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- watercolours and we would paint together.00:00:48.999
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- He usually gave us a calendar and we would copy some motifs from it.00:00:53.372
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- The more you paint the better you get.00:00:57.768
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- I started at the age of two and a half,00:01:03.214
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- and whenever I had time I painted. I also did sport.00:01:05.887
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- So I didn´t have much free time. Drawing was a perfect way to relax.00:01:15.816
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- It was my hobby.00:01:22.370
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- When I was a boy I never copied others, I used to draw and paint my own way.00:01:32.590
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- I had my own distinguishable style.00:01:43.797
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- When I was about 25 I met a guy in Brandýs who wanted to decorate a hotel,00:01:47.315
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- he knew I painted, so he ordered about ten paintings.00:01:59.837
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- And there I met a guy who was a trained varnisher,00:02:08.283
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- he looked at my paintings and the other guy asked him if he could paint it.00:02:14.820
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- He said he would and so we agreed that00:02:21.858
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- he would take me to his studio and show me what he painted.00:02:24.733
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- So he took me there and when I saw his paintings, I thought they were photos.00:02:29.207
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- "Don´t touch it," he said,"it´s still wet."00:02:38.761
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- I couldn´t believe you could paint something like that.00:02:41.930
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- All those Flemish masters...00:02:43.958
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- I was amazed a then I told myself: "Well, you also have two hands,00:02:49.846
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- the same as he, so why the hell don´t you also try to paint like him?"00:02:56.872
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- In those days the average salary was two or three thousand crowns,00:03:03.653
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- and I asked him how much he charged for one painting.00:03:06.958
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- He said: "For this one I would ask for about eighty thousand crowns."00:03:13.958
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- I couldn´t believe it! And how long does it take to paint such a picture?00:03:18.400
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- And he said: "Look, it has to be done with ease00:03:20.736
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- and if you know how, it can be finished in three days."00:03:26.236
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- I said: "My god! You can make eighty thousand in three days?"00:03:37.525
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- In those days you could buy a house for that money.00:03:40.338
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- He said: "I wouldn´t sell this one for eighty thousand, it´s worth a hundred and sixty."00:03:42.023
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- The important thing was that he did it the old way.00:03:57.248
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- I never knew this was possible. I couldn´t believe that what I saw weren´t old paintings.00:04:00.857
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- He said: "The older the copy the more money you get."00:04:13.147
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- It´s as simple as that. You don´t cheat anyone,00:04:16.730
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- you just know how to use the varnish to make it look old.00:04:21.191
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- You can´t do this with oil paints, I think he didn´t use oil paints.00:04:25.969
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- And he also told me never to sign the paintings.00:04:37.106
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- It´s like forging money.00:04:40.158
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- Either put a squiggle in the painting or no signature at all.00:04:42.430
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- He never signed the paintings.00:04:47.088
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- He really knew what he was doing.00:04:49.010
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- He also did the re-lining and he mastered conservation techniques they used in the National Gallery.00:04:55.639
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- He applied quite thick varnish with wax, damar resin with wax.00:05:04.688
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- Once I told him: "I think I could also do that."00:05:14.237
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- And he said: "So why don´t you try it?"00:05:19.664
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- He gave me a photo and said: "When you finish it, bring it to me00:05:21.912
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- and I´ll give you twenty thousand on the spot."00:05:27.286
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- At home I said to myself "My goodness - twenty thousand - that´s my year´s salary!"00:05:29.380
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- So I spent a whole week working and when I proudly showed him the painting he said:00:05:33.291
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- "You must be joking! You won´t get a crown for this."00:05:43.193
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- "But you said you´d give me twenty! Can´t somebody give me at least five?"00:05:45.866
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- The answer was: "No! Either you get twenty or nothing.00:05:50.885
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- But there´s nothing in between. Everybody wants top quality."00:05:55.318
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- Just forget about it. This is rubbish."00:06:01.544
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- Later I sold it to an art collector for ten thousand.00:06:04.894
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- But he taught me a lesson. You either produce top quality or nothing.00:06:08.078
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- So I started visiting him and we were talking about the technique of the Old Masters.00:06:21.756
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- Naturally, he didn´t want to tell me a lot of things.00:06:28.699
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- He spent five years experimenting with varnish for the paintings to look old,00:06:33.471
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- so it was a secret and he didn´t want to share it with anyone.00:06:38.871
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- Of course I couldn´t resist looking at the things he had around,00:06:47.186
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- I saw soap and immediately wondered what he used soap for and so on.00:06:51.946
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- Back at home I was trying this and that until I succeeded...00:06:57.120
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- One of the possible techniques was tempera,00:07:15.109
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- if you buy pigments, you can make them as thick as you want,00:07:18.286
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- today you can buy all sorts of binders, for example I used putty,00:07:24.273
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- that was used for concrete, it was so hard it broke your nail,00:07:33.312
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- antique dealers use their nails to test how soft the paint is.00:07:40.091
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- So when you mix the pigment with, let´s say, putty00:07:44.576
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- so you can tell it´s there when you analyze the paints,00:07:51.455
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- you can see it´s on the base of acrylate for example,00:07:56.626
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- analysis will show that acrylate is present in the oil,00:07:59.603
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- but if you sell a painting under fifty thousand, it´s not worth analyzing the paint.00:08:04.503
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- If you sell it for less than fifty thousand,00:08:11.806
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- the antique dealer will only test it with his nail,00:08:13.840
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- he will illuminate it with a silicone lamp,00:08:19.493
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- it´s based on pigments because pigments are made of minerals.00:08:22.706
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- So you somehow get around it. The pigments are dry and00:08:30.487
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- they don´t need to be hardened the way oil paints.00:08:40.221
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- This way you can kill two birds with one stone.00:08:42.359
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- The silicone lamp in a dark room will show him it´s old,00:08:51.334
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- and he´ll use his nail to test it.00:08:59.256
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- And you sell the painting.00:09:03.471
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- But, of course, if you wanted to sell a painting for a million crowns,00:09:05.144
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- they would have the paints analyzed and find out.00:09:11.494
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- Once I asked him if he was so good at painting why didn´t he do his own stuff.00:09:22.825
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- Up until today he is the God of Painting for me.00:09:28.497
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- And he asked me: "What do you think is better? To be rich and unknown or poor and well-known?"00:09:35.838
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- "I guess rich and unknown," I said.00:09:45.325
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- This would be perhaps my choice because of the children,00:09:53.162
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- but if I didn´t have kids I think I´d rather be poor and famous.00:10:01.588
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- There´s something inside me telling me I´d like to achieve something.00:10:08.498
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- I think I was lucky in life.00:10:22.804
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- In the nineties Germans started coming here and were interested in paintings.00:10:25.827
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- There were even gays who wanted me to paint male nudes for them.00:10:36.698
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- They wanted to send me photos on my computer and so on.00:10:40.590
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- They offered twenty thousand for one painting, but I wasn´t interested in this crap.00:10:45.604
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- A lot of Germans contacted me and I went to Germany to meet one.00:10:57.956
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- I made a copy for one of them but another one, who spoke perfect Czech,00:11:04.306
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- agreed to buy copies of paintings from me every month.00:11:12.060
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- Mostly copies of Dutch paintings, still-life paintings and so on.00:11:20.560
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- I used to work as an ambulance driver00:11:26.773
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- and when I was sure I could make a living by painting00:11:31.475
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- so I left my job and continued to paint.00:11:37.387
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- But that German guy died and so I lost contact.00:11:44.959
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- While he was alive, I had money and everything was ok.00:11:50.352
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- When my son left elementary school he wanted to study hotel management,00:12:03.132
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- and so we moved to Vsetín,00:12:12.678
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- because he was only 15 at that time, I was still responsible for him.00:12:15.135
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- I was crazy about ice hockey and so was my son.00:12:22.008
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- He used to train in the mornings and play matches in the afternoon.00:12:30.282
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- I always had to be there.00:12:32.241
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- I couldn´t find a job there, because in this region there are no jobs.00:12:34.965
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- If I had worked as a truck driver, I wouldn´t have had time00:12:42.230
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- to help him and go to watch him play.00:12:46.853
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- So when I found out that there was a guy in Vsetín00:12:51.044
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- who collected paintings by Moravian Wallachian painters,00:13:00.456
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- I told myself I would try to make a couple of copies with Wallachian motives,00:13:03.178
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- and either he will like them or not.00:13:14.293
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- There were three artists - Schneiderka, Podešva and Hofman.00:13:29.045
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- Podešva´s brushwork was similar to Bauch´s, but not so colourful,00:13:33.497
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- his paintings were heavily impastoed,00:13:39.663
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- from my amateur view his style was original.00:13:41.129
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- Hofman was influenced by the Italian school of painting,00:13:45.721
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- because he studied in Italy.00:13:50.137
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- No offense, but I think he was an average painter.00:13:51.456
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- But Podešva and Schneiderka stood out.00:14:01.250
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- Schneiderka wasn´t really known in Wallachia, because he didn´t paint there.00:14:11.170
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- He lived in Italy and Croatia.00:14:16.892
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- He is known for his pastels, he drew kind of thunderbolts,00:14:21.042
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- connected them and it looked nice. He was good at rendering light00:14:24.149
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- the same as Dutch painters. This is how he did his pastels00:14:29.496
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- but his oil paintings were close to Nolde and those Norwegian artists.00:14:35.723
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- He used heavy impasto, you couldn´t tell the difference between a man and a house.00:14:42.576
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- I never saw a single original painting by Schneiderka because there aren´t any here.00:14:49.079
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- No books on his work were published, so the only pictures I saw were on the internet.00:14:58.935
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- To be honest, I didn´t recognize they were pastels.00:15:09.108
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- I couldn´t tell from the photographs.00:15:12.825
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- So instead of using pastels I used oil paints.00:15:17.896
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- In fact I painted squiggles in oil and sort of joined them,00:15:22.178
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- that means I painted the way Schneiderka never did in his life.00:15:27.252
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- He signed his paintings in capital letters, I signed them in longhand,00:15:30.275
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- on purpose, so that it was incomparable.00:15:34.461
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- He went to see the collector and when he came back00:15:52.521
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- he was enthusiastic because apparently he was really interested.00:15:54.746
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- So I said to myself: What am I doing wrong?00:15:58.710
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- I don´t write expert´s reports nor appraisals.00:16:01.577
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- The signatures are different.00:16:04.391
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- The technique is different or only similar,00:16:07.388
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- the layers of paint is different, the brushwork, everything.00:16:11.431
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- From a distance they looked similar, so I told myself: OK, so if I let him have them,00:16:16.376
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- the paintings were sold for 20 up to 50 thousand,00:16:22.384
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- so if I give him ten percent of the price, which is said to be usual in the world,00:16:25.682
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- I´ll give him two to three thousand per painting00:16:33.443
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- and he was all excited about it. I was surprised.00:16:37.065
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- I was able to paint four paintings in an hour.00:16:40.370
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- I never went to see him and because I didn´t know him, I didn´t feel bad about it.00:16:44.612
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- What I found strange was the fact that he was still interested a year later.00:16:51.725
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- Nobody told me what he did with the paintings,00:16:57.970
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- I thought he had a barn where he kept the paintings in hay or god knows what...00:17:01.088
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- Even a complete idiot would notice that this was weird.00:17:10.831
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- If you couldn´t buy one single painting by Schneiderka in Wallachia for twenty years00:17:12.943
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- so even a dolphin would know that if in one year three hundred paintings pop up on the market,00:17:19.901
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- so something is wrong, somebody must be painting them,00:17:26.345
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- they can´t be originals. He knew they were copies.00:17:29.302
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- But it was a good business for him and when it all came to light00:17:33.912
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- so he wants me to give him money.00:17:36.967
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- Everything´s OK except for the fact that I have to pay him because he´s out of business.00:17:38.591
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- He wants me to pay him one million compensation and the court says he´s entitled to it.00:17:44.464
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- First I thought it was funny but not later.00:17:47.385
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- At that time I painted for instance drunk Wallachian guys with bottles,00:17:52.690
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- dancing and drinking, bottles everywhere and thought it was fun,00:17:57.856
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- but of course I soon stopped laughing.00:18:07.651
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- 00:18:10.098
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- When all this happened, I went to Hrozenkov00:18:13.978
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- to the gallery where you can see the only painting by Schneiderka.00:18:22.783
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- Of course, he pained in a completely different style.00:18:29.064
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- If I had seen it with my own eyes earlier,00:18:32.112
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- and had I wanted to make a forgery, perhaps I would have tried it and00:18:37.421
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- I would have sold it for different money.00:18:42.408
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- Not for two thousand but for a hundred thousand or fifty.00:18:43.208
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- When they found my computer they naturally though I would have00:18:48.697
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- a record of all the paintings I did. Three hundred paintings.00:18:54.528
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- This Schneiderka painting I did in November and so on...00:18:58.996
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- They thought they would find the whole list there.00:19:03.938
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- I didn´t have one single picture in my computer.00:19:06.034
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- Nothing.00:19:09.255
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- Wallachian painters used really simple, classical frames.00:19:19.771
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- So I used to buy cheap worthless framed paintings for three hundred crowns.00:19:27.100
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- I´d prefer to paint on new canvas but canvas was expensive.00:19:32.153
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- I didn´t even take the canvas out of the frame.00:19:37.482
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- I simply painted it over with a layer of white paint,00:19:40.329
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- I didn´t even waste money on proper priming,00:19:46.566
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- I painted something and made it look old in harmony with the frame,00:19:51.460
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- because if you have a new painting and an old frame,00:19:57.252
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- it´s noticeable, everyone can see it.00:19:59.771
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- If both are in harmony, it looks good.00:20:02.182
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- In our country there aren´t many people who can do this.00:20:05.676
- 00:20:05.676
- But I can do it well, so why can´t I earn my living this way?00:20:08.695
- 00:20:08.695
- Just because I´m original, so why should I suffer00:20:14.120
- 00:20:14.120
- and be accused of forgery?00:20:17.006
- 00:20:17.006
- They searched my house and I had just bought a new vacuum cleaner.00:20:25.961
- 00:20:25.961
- The shop assistant advised me to change the dust bag in my old one00:20:28.898
- 00:20:28.898
- and gave me a new bag. I was just taking it out when the police came in with weapons.00:20:38.582
- 00:20:38.582
- They confiscated everything - wallpaper glue, everything.. They thought I used glue00:20:52.008
- 00:20:52.008
- to make the pictures look a hundred years old!00:21:01.478
- 00:21:01.478
- They took everything and up until today haven´t returned anything.00:21:05.233
- 00:21:05.233
- Of course they wrote down that they found dust from a vacuum cleaner00:21:09.998
- 00:21:09.998
- which I used to make paintings look old.00:21:14.478
- 00:21:14.478
- I never got a chance to say in public that all this was rubbish.00:21:16.105
- 00:21:16.105
- This is nonsense, how can dust from a vacuum cleaner make a painting look old?00:21:25.163
- 00:21:25.163
- I´m a truck driver now, I don´t wash all week long, I live like a homeless.00:21:38.671
- 00:21:38.671
- I have no choice.00:21:46.032
- 00:21:46.032
- I drive to Germany and back, it´s not an easy life.00:21:50.179
- 00:21:50.179
- I can´t do anything, I just have to wait and see what the outcome is.00:21:54.163
- 00:21:54.163
- As I say, now I have a job and I finished painting.00:22:04.985
- 00:22:04.985
- That´s it. I wonder what will happen...00:22:18.132
- 00:22:18.132
- I heard of a lady who makes hand-painted handbags.00:23:19.704
- 00:23:19.704
- So I thought I could make a little extra money.00:23:24.434
- 00:23:24.434
- I looked her up and she said I could paint whatever I liked on the leather,00:23:30.072
- 00:23:30.072
- and she would pay me 150 or00:23:35.113
- 00:23:35.113
- 00:23:35.113
- Her handbags sell well and I asked her where she got the idea to make painted handbags.00:23:43.389
- 00:23:43.389
- And she said:"Well, when I read about you, I was surprised you are a driver.00:23:50.945
- 00:23:50.945
- If I were you I´d go to a gallery in Vienna and show them the article about you00:23:58.369
- 00:23:58.369
- and I´m sure they´ll offer you a job."00:24:05.246