Don't fall for the not-so-fine art of faking

Art forgery is as old as time. Well, almost. An article by the Sotheby’s Institute of Art has noted that nearly half of the global art market is estimated to be plagued with forgeries. The problem, however, hit me with a reinforced urgency a few years ago when we were approached by a government agency to verify some questionable works of art at the house of a now established con man.

He had fake works by a range of Indian and international artists, including artists like Subodh Gupta and the American KAWS. The point of concern was that they were all living artists, which only emphasised the need for a rigorous provenance check for art works and detailed registers/ blockchain.

PROOF IS IN THE PROVENANCE

Simply put, provenance tracks the journey of an art work from its creation to its present ownership. It is no different from the provenance of any other asset. For instance, if you are buying a plot of land, you are going to engage a lawyer, and then do title diligence: Who owns the property? How did it pass from A to B to C, and how is it passing on to you? You must ask the same questions about an art work.

Establishing provenance for works by living artists is slightly different from those by artists who are no longer alive. Contemporary artists work with dedicated galleries, which are responsible for the database and the artist’s career over a long period of time. Most living artists will have an entire catalogue and inventory of their works, and they usually give authenticity certificates co-signed with their galleries. Transaction histories are also maintained and, hence, it is best to make a purchase through their represented galleries, which can provide the paperwork.

It is for this purpose that the MoMA, New York, has digitised its exhibition catalogues and lender lists, among other things, from 1929. This not only creates a public repository of modern and contemporary art, but also serves as a database for collectors to track down previous owners of an art work.

If one is purchasing a contemporary work of art at an auction, although there is a legitimate expectation that the auction house has done its own diligence, a buyer could demand these documents, in addition to the artwork’s exhibition history. You can check to see if the artwork is recorded or will be included in a catalogue raisonné (critical catalogue) that is authored by an artist or a recognised expert.

Great provenance is strengthened by the seller providing the buyer with an invoice for the original purchase. It proves ownership, establishes the artwork’s value and creates a sale history for the work, all of which comes in handy for potential sales, as well as tax formalities.

A LITTLE TEA & DIRT
For works by artists who are no longer alive, the checks are a bit trickier, particularly because there are fewer estates that monitor an artist’s entire career. Hence, seeking correct provenance and the history of the work is critical. Legal experts note that often buyers do not realise art forgery unless flagged by an art expert, which is why getting it established by the experts that were involved with the artist and his/her work is critical.

Undertaking these practices will help collectors avoid the misfortune akin to the one that hit US’s Knoedler Gallery 15 years ago. It was sold paintings supposedly by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, when they were actually copies created by a Chinese immigrant. He had made the works look dated by using tea and dirt.

Another instance is that of the American gallery Pace which, in 2021, ended up purchasing a forged copy of Le Suiveur (The Follower) by Georges Seurat, under the impression that it had been inherited, and was being sold, by the artist’s grandson, a Jean-Pierre Seurat. The purchase was made on the basis of a PDF document containing framed fake images of Le Suiveur, along with “provenance papers claiming that the drawing originated from the collection of Félix Fénéon, the famed French critic and collector who championed young avant-garde artists such as Seurat, Henri Matisse, and Paul Signac”.

It was only after the sale had gone through that the gallery learnt that the seller, like the artwork, was an imposter; Georges Seurat had no grandchildren! Pace filed a lawsuit in 2022.

No process, however, is foolproof. Despite due diligence, art forgery continues to be a menace. Eucrim, an online forum for European criminal law, recently published an exposé on a European forgery network that had “counterfeited contemporary art, including works by famous artists such as Banksy, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dalí”.

Such instances only reinforce the need for continued due diligence by buyers to kee p the market transparent. It is important to know that there is no ‘deal’ in art transactions. If a deal is too good to be true, it isn’t. Only then will we become an industry where artists, and the people and institutions who support the artists, get their due.

The writer is managing director, Nature Morte Art Limited