Celebrity is pretty easy to fake these days:
Jessa Crispin examines posthumous celebrity, which is often subject to the whims of an artist's relatives. For instance, Lord Byron's family burned the only copy of his memoir without reading it. Van Gogh's sister-in-law, Johanna, did slightly better:
The world responded to Van Gogh because of the mad energy of the work, but also because of the life story of the underdog and suffering artist — storylines we love and respond to so well. Had Johanna been at all cagey or hesitant to expose her brother-in-law’s less charming characteristics to the world, it might be another artist altogether on all of those coffee mugs.
The Dish 