![\"\"](\"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Screen-Shot-2012-02-23-at-9.33.44-PM.png\" "\\"Screen")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/81536920-1024x719.jpg\" "\\"Work")
<\/p>\n
Red-letter day for forgers \u2026 or no big deal?<\/em><\/p>\n By\u00a0Barbara Guggenheim<\/strong><\/p>\n The Warhol Authentication Board is disbanding. So is the Basquiat Authentication Committee.<\/p>\n And there are whisperings that others are not far behind.<\/p>\n You needn\u2019t be a rocket scientist to understand why. The work is interesting and the members enjoy tremendous perks, but the fun is gone. The cost of fighting lawsuits from owners of rejected paintings is sapping funds better spent elsewhere. The Warhol board, for example, spent up to $7 million to out-lawyer the collector Joe Simon, who ran out of funds and had to fold his tent and go home.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just about the money. There\u2019s also the criticism and notoriety that comes with the litigation. Think how embarrassed those members of the Dedalus Foundation were who informally accepted a Motherwell with provenance including a Kuwaiti princess, only to have to recant a year later when they determined that the work, among others, was inauthentic only after a year of intense research.<\/p>\n Establishing an artwork\u2019s authenticity can be a complex process. Many artists have catalogue raisonn\u00e9s. These volumes include photographs, provenance, literature, exhibition history and any other relevant notes for every artwork the author attributes to the artist. But those artworks can be forged. Authenticity boards function, whether there is a catalogue raisonn\u00e9 or not, to confirm or deny the authenticity of work.<\/p>\n With so many committees closing, what are we to do? How will the market be affected? Art dealer David Nash, who spoke on an International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) panel late last year, said there may be some inconvenience, but that many of the pieces collectors will be offered are either in the catalogue raisonn\u00e9s or have already been verified by the committees. That the art world has survived without committees in the past suggests it can do so in the future. I think David\u2019s right on the high level at which he deals, which includes iconic paintings by de Kooning. No doubt those paintings are easily traceable, but what about all those lesser works by the artist out there in the world? No one can tell me that there aren\u2019t a lot of fakes; and without the committees, how will the buyer separate the real from the bogus?<\/p>\n The Old Masters market is another example. The Rembrandt Research Project just closed after 42 years, in which they demoted hundreds of works. One poor museum in Copenhagen that started the 20th century with 10 Rembrandts ended up with only one. As Seymour Slive, a Rembrandt scholar, quipped, \u201cOne more meeting of the Rembrandt Research Project and the artist will cease to exist.\u201d Yet its activities, then, or its recent attempt to reattribute paintings to the artist they had rejected, hasn\u2019t hurt the Rembrandt market.<\/p>\n Tintoretto is another artist whose work has been recently reassessed. Of the 468 works subjected to the study, 148 have been demoted (ouch!) and 16 works thought not to be Tintorettos have been elevated. And the scholars, Frederick Ilchman and Robert Echols, haven\u2019t even gotten to the portraits yet.<\/p>\n Some people think buying from a reliable dealer or auction house offers a safety net, that the house or the dealer has done the due diligence, and if the piece turns out to be forgery, the buyer will be reimbursed. But a lot of buying was from older dealers who dealt the artist their whole careers. They kept records and knew everything about the artist. The problem is that those dealers are dying out, and, depending upon the assiduity with which records were kept, their knowledge may be lost with them.<\/p>\n Years ago, if I were considering buying a de Kooning whose provenance listed Allan Stone, I\u2019d simply call Mr. Stone. He\u2019d check his records or possibly would remember the transaction. But Mr. Stone and others are gone now, along with that wealth of knowledge we\u2019d all come to rely upon.<\/p>\n What many also see as a disaster if the committees disband is the lack of access to papers, notes, photos and the people who can decipher them. Committees have been criticized for not explaining why a painting is rejected. I doubt that\u2019s because of skullduggery. There are secrets about materials and the way the artist worked that the committees want to keep from forgers. It was only with great reluctance that the Warhol Board explained to Joe Simon the specific reasons why they nixed his\u00a0Self-Portrait<\/em>.<\/p>\n I happen to think Mr. Simon\u2019s painting is authentic\u2014for many reasons, among them that another in the same series, owned by Anthony d\u2019Offay, was put on the cover of the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 with Warhol\u2019s full collaboration, and Warhol himself signed a cover.<\/p>\n If we don\u2019t have committees to determine what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not, we\u2019ll tend to rely more on provenance, and that doesn\u2019t necessarily provide a reliable answer. One July, checking on a Maeght Galerie provenance for a Mir that our advisory firm wanted to sell, we called the Maeght Foundation. It was operating with a skeleton staff and couldn\u2019t possibly check before September. After humiliating pleas by us, it went into the records and confirmed our provenance.<\/p>\n Too often, though, a provenance sheet will simply say \u201cPRIVATE COLLECTION.\u201d That\u2019s understandable. A dealer who is getting material from a private collector who has other things to sell isn\u2019t going to tell the world who that collector is. In the art world, discretion is everything, and therefore it\u2019s not uncommon to get a provenance listing a whole chain of PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, one after another. Does this mean the painting\u2019s inauthentic? Certainly not. Sometimes I worry more when I get a provenance sheet filled with specific names that I don\u2019t know\u2014these could, after all, be made up. And even if I\u2019m lucky enough to reach a family that\u2019s named, it\u2019s unlikely a descendant will remember what his grandfather owned.<\/p>\n As former Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Hoving once put it, \u201cProvenance is a laugh \u2026 the fact that it came from so and so, and so and so gave it to the Prince of So and So. Fuck off, that can be faked up.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say an artwork comes from a distinguished family\u2014that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s right, either. One year, a client asked us to check on a Picasso drawing coming up in a Christie\u2019s London sale. Abigail was sure it was actually a print. The expert told her politely that she was crazy, the provenance was splendid. Indeed, it was, but when she took it out of the frame her opinion was confirmed. Provenance notwithstanding, it was a print, and Christie\u2019s withdrew it from their sale.<\/p>\n And, of course, just because the work you\u2019re considering\u00a0looks<\/em>\u00a0like the one in the books, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u00a0is<\/em> the one in the books. There\u2019s the old \u201cswitch out\u201d and \u201cswitch in.\u201d We were once offered a Dubuffet, for instance, that turned out to be a \u201cswitch out.\u201d The provenance sheet listed a well-known family in Palm Beach, and, according to the literature, the work appeared on the cover of a book. We tracked down the book; and compared its cover with the photo of the painting we\u2019d been offered. They seemed identical, but, using a loupe (that\u2019s art lingo for a magnifying glass), we noticed one stroke that was not the same. We didn\u2019t go forward with buying the work, and later learned that a Palm Beach framer, reframing the family\u2019s collection, had copied everything, returned the originals to the family, and sent the copies, along with the originals\u2019 provenance sheets, to dealers in New York.<\/p>\n A classic \u201cswitch in\u201d can be found in Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo\u2019s book\u00a0Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art<\/em>. London con man John Drewe had an accomplice forge an array of paintings and drawings, including Nicholsons and Giacomettis, all in the $400,000 range, modest enough in value to be below the market\u2019s radar. He created provenance sheets and inserted them into the artists\u2019 archives at the libraries of the Tate and the Victoria & Albert museums. That way, anyone checking on the works would find them duly listed.<\/p>\n Not long ago, while I was doing due diligence on a De Chirico, I learned that the painting had been in a gallery show in 1960. I found a copy of the show\u2019s brochure at the Getty, and though there was no photo of the painting in the brochure, its title and dimensions were listed. With \u201cswitch ins\u201d in mind, I remained unsure: Italian forgers not only forge the paintings, they also fabricate the catalogs.<\/p>\n If checking provenance is an inexact method for establishing authenticity, shouldn\u2019t we turn to science? Was the paint or type of canvas extant at the time the work was supposed to be painted? Not so fast. It\u2019s rare that you find anachronistic materials. The tests can be extremely expensive, and since most artists used a variety of materials in no consistent pattern, scientific studies are rarely a practical solution. (Any takers for fractals?)<\/p>\n The jury is still out on whether or not the closing of the committees will affect the market for those artists\u2019 works. Most of us will probably be willing to pay more for a work that\u2019s been approved by an authentication committee than we will for one that hasn\u2019t. Surely other committees will form and experts will take the reins. But will they be enough? Imagine what will happen when forgeries of Damien Hirst\u2019s spot paintings start trickling onto the market. (Word on the street is that they already have.) He\u2019s painted only a handful himself, and he\u2019s said about artist and one-time studio assistant Rachel Howard, \u201cShe\u2019s brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot paintings you can have by me is one by Rachel.\u201d<\/p>\n Will he or anyone else be able to tell a forgery from one of the 1,500 versions by Ms. Howard and others? Only time will tell. Sometimes, when I\u2019m feeling overly confident, I recall the words of Theodore Rousseau, an esteemed curator at the Metropolitan. \u201cWe should all realize that we can only talk about the bad forgeries,\u201d he said. \u201cThe good ones are still hanging on the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n Barbara Guggenheim started an art advisory firm in 1980. This essay is part of her book Art World: The New Rules Of The Game.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Red-letter day for forgers \u2026 or no big deal? By\u00a0Barbara Guggenheim The Warhol Authentication Board is disbanding. So is the Basquiat Authentication Committee. And there are whisperings that others are not far behind. You needn\u2019t be a rocket scientist to … Continue reading \n