Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 36 to 42.
John Myatt is showing me some of his recent creations. "That's a Giacometti," he says, pointing to an abstract in swirling whites and greys entitled Apples on a Stool (1949). "I'm not sure it's quite finished yet." Next, Myatt walks me to another wall of The Air Gallery, in London's Mayfair, hung with a Modigliani, several Picassos and, in the centre, a large Ben Nicholson.
For a painter who is celebrating his first London opening, Myatt is disarmingly honest about both his working methods and his failings as an artist. But then, this is not the first time that Myatt's versions of works by Giacometti and Nicholson have found their way into the West End.
Between 1986 and 1994, Myatt churned out more than 200 new works by surrealists, cubists and impressionists, passing them off as originals with the help of an accomplice, John Drewe, an expert at generating false provenances. Despite the fact that many of Myatt's paintings were laughably amateurish (they were executed in emulsion, not oil), they fooled the experts and were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of pounds by Christie's and Sotheby's. It was, said Scotland Yard's art and antiques squad when they finally caught up with Myatt in 1995, "the biggest art fraud of the 20th century". Indeed, to this day, some 120 'Myatts' are still said to be in circulation.
Now, having served his time - Myatt was sentenced to 12 months in prison in 1999 but was released for good behaviour after four months - he feels he has nothing to apologise for.
Instead, he is seeking to forge a new career, so to speak, as a purveyor of what he calls 'genuine fakes'. These are works by the very same artists he used to imitate when he was a criminal - not only Giacomettis and Nicholsons, but Monets, Matisses and Renoirs. They even come with the artists' signatures. The only difference is that on the back of the canvas is a computer chip and the legend 'Genuine fake' written in indelible ink.
Myatt didn't set out to be a faker. As a young art student, he had high hopes of establishing his own artistic style. But whenever he turned his hand to landscapes or portraiture, he says the result was invariably "academic" and "dull". Instead, he taught evening classes and began selling the odd fake to friends and colleagues.
(Adapted from English Unlimited Advanced by Adrian Doff & Ben Goldstein)
