What distinguishes a conceptual masterpiece from a bit of urban debris? A renowned painter from a commercial designer? Is copying allowed in art, and if so, says who? Who actually makes the objects we admire? How do you teach it, buy it, sell it, steal it, and what makes an acrylic-on-canvas painting a safer investment than gold?

COLORS’ newest issue Looking at Art, out in September 2013, throws light onto the mysteries of the art world. From the million dollar shark caught byAustralian fisherman Vic Hislop for UK artist Damien Hirst, to marble busts carved in a small Tuscan workshop for the world’s biggest contemporary artists and foreign dictators alike. From the Egyptian antiquities of the Greenhalghs, the UK’s most prolific forger family, to gigantic bronze statues by Mansudae Art Studio, North Korea’s #1 atelier. COLORS #87 reveals the fig leaf commissioned to hide David’s package, a watercolor camouflage technique that saved Afghanistan’s paintings from the Taliban’s morality police, and the truth about the Mona Lisa, who may owe her popularity not to beauty, but to a crime committed one hundred years ago.