For years, a struggling immigrant artist from Queens, New York, named Pei Shun Chen, was painting

masterpieces in his garage.

Masterpieces that turned out to be forgeries, work that fooled some of the most prestigious

art galleries in New York, and sold for millions of dollars. When the scandal finally broke in

2013, uncovered by a prominent Manhattan art dealer, the art world was stunned. But there was one

uncomfortable truth lost in all the outrage. Chen's fakes were not technically inferior to the originals. In some

cases, experts argued they were actually better executed. And that matters because it points to

something larger than fraud. Chen himself has maintained he had no idea the paintings would be

later sold as originals. By most accounts, he was simply doing what he had spent a lifetime doing.

Painting. Whatever has intent, the 73-year-old Qian, who had lived in the United States for four

decades, was arguably an artist in his own right, and his story points to something deeper than

art fraud. In Chinese cultural tradition rooted in Confucian philosophy stretching back more than two millennia,

imitation is not always seen as theft. It is apprenticeship. In that tradition, the highest compliment

you can pay an idea is to carry it further than its creator did. Take calligraphy for centuries

the most prized art form in Chinese culture.

The art historian Shen Fu perfectly captures the Chinese approach to knowledge,

writing, quote, each calligrapher must absorb and command his tradition, then transcend it

before achieving a personal style. To create one's own style, while having derived it from

the ancient masters, has been the

criterion for greatness throughout the centuries." In other words, innovation was not understood as creating

something from nothing. According to the historian Shen Fu, to invent is to imitate,

quote, adopting the style of a master with the intention not to reproduce,

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