Fakes, fakes everywhere
December 5 2011
Picture: NY Times - a disputed Jackson Pollock.
At last the scandal that has been waiting to hit the modern and contemporary art world is gathering momentum. Recently we've had the news of the German fakers, and now the NY times has broken news of another possible forgery ring, this time in the US:
Federal authorities are investigating whether a parade of paintings and drawings, sold for years by some of New York’s most elite art dealers as the work of Modernist masters like Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock, actually consists of expert forgeries, according to people who have been interviewed or briefed by the investigators.
Most of the works, which have sold individually for as much as $17 million, came to market though a little-known art dealer from Long Island, Glafira Rosales, who said she had what every gallery dreams of: exclusive access to a mystery collector’s cache of undiscovered work by some of the postwar world’s great talents, including Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn.
The story may be related to the sudden closure of the legendary New York gallery Knoedler last week, after 165 years in business. Knoedler has been hit with a lawsuit from client Pierre Lagrange, who alleges that a Jackson Pollock he bought from the gallery in 2007 for $17m is a fake. Tests conducted by Mr Lagrange have established that two pigments found inthe picture were not invented till after Pollock's death.
