‘Art and Craft’ writes itself with its mysterious subject

Art and Craft
Directed by Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman
Co-directed by Mark Becker
USA, 2014

Mark Landis is a con artist. The documentary about his odd life, Art and Craft, makes that abundantly clear. But Landis hasn’t spent a day in jail in his life and probably never will, because he doesn’t separate people from their money or anything else of monetary value. He doesn’t commit theft or fraud or assault; despite having successfully conned the Smithsonian Institution, he has broken no federal law in 30 years of work. It’s an almost irresistible hook for a documentary: what does Landis do, and how does he get away with it? The movie practically makes itself.

What Landis does is this: he makes copies of famous works of art – by everyone from Picasso to Peanuts creator Charles Schultz – and donates them to museums as though they were the real thing. That’s not much of a spoiler, because Art and Craft takes great pains to show how long and difficult a process goes into the con: from photocopying pages from an art book to posing as a priest when he meets the museum curator in person. Presuming that this is not a reality-TV sort of artifice, directors Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman (the film is also “co-directed” by its editor, Mark Becker) capture Landis’ act succeeding on camera.

Landis’ con was already beginning to fall apart when the filmmakers became involved, and the people investigating him – Guardian reporter Aaron Cowan, and museum employee (and previous Landis victim) Matthew Leininger – are major characters in Art and Craft. But their stories are little more than background, a brief glimpse at Landis from the outside, looking in. The only telling detail is how Landis’ obsession with forgery can draw others in; Leininger is so obsessed himself that his own daughter knows Landis’ name and face by heart.

Not even the filmmakers can get into Landis’ head, what with the laundry list of mental illnesses (including schizophrenia) that he’s been diagnosed with and is happy to recite directly to camera. But they make an admirable effort. The most obvious thing that they catch is the degree to which Landis is willing to delude himself with pop culture. Sometimes Landis is willing to admit that he likes to steal from The Saint or a movie that he saw on TCM. But more often the filmmakers have to catch him trying to pass off an old screenplay as new wisdom, such as when he claims that “necessity is the mother of invention, but the stepmother of deception,” a line from an old Charlie Chan mystery.

What it all adds up to is: Landis may be ill, but he also likes doing this. He likes being on camera. He likes being the prized guest at an art exhibit dedicated to his forgeries, looking like the smartest guy in a room full of degree holders. He likes being told that he has great talent which he should put toward his own art, when in fact he does most of the hard work at Staples. His sickness is on camera, but so is his skill and the satisfaction he gets from it. Cullman, Grausman, and Becker don’t completely crack the egg that is Mark Landis, but they do an effective job of teaching one thing: Mark Landis is a art forger, and forgery is itself an art.

— Mark Young