Art Fraud and Some of its Cousins

WORDS BY CHARLIE GLADSTONE

The news that Italian police have dismantled a Europe-wide network of art forgers fascinates me. In this case the fake works were passed off as being by Warhol, Klimt, Picasso, and Banksy (I actually think that Banksy is a cartoonist, not an artist and someone whose work only resonates because of where it’s made, but that’s for another day).

This whole bust kicked off last year when Italian police seized 200 fake pieces belonging to a businessman in Pisa. That led them to six workshops that produced fake works by some major artists. Now around 2000 fakes with a combined value of £170 million have been seized, including the entire contents of an exhibition.

This sort of thing is much more common than you might imagine. The art market is completely unregulated by government, and a great deal of work sells on the secondary market (ie; not direct to collector, from the artist/their agent/gallery, but from collector to collector). This means, of course, that faking is relatively easy despite the best efforts of major artists’ estates or agents.

And despite some recent slowdowns, the value of work by blue chip artists’ has sky-rocketed in recent decades, creating an investment class of mind-boggling value in a market with no regulation.

Go figure!

There are loads of ways to forge, steal from, or rip off collectors and here are some of my favourite art fraud books and podcasts of the last few years.

Art Fraud. Podcast.

Hosted by Alec Baldwin, who himself was a victim of fraud when he bought a work by Robert Indiana (he of those iconic LOVE works), this is a brilliant story that’s beautifully told. It chronicles the greed and lies that brought about the collapse of The Knoedler Gallery in New York. The Knoedler (established in 1846) was New York’s oldest gallery, a bastion of Upper East Side respectability.

One day a woman walked into the gallery with a canvas allegedly painted by Rothko under her arm. And so began a 17-year relationship with this mysterious woman, who claimed to represent a collector known as Mr X, during which the gallery bought and sold 40 fake works by artists including Rothko, de Kooning and Pollock with a total value of £80 million.

I mean you couldn’t make it up. And luckily you don’t have to. Highly recommended.

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. Book.

This book is astonishing; the story weird and unforgettable. It’s the true tale of a young man called Stéphane Breitwieser, who lives with his girlfriend in a room at the top of his mum’s house and steals over £1 billion worth of art from across Europe. What is so bizarre here is that he doesn’t sell it, just keeps it in his room because he likes it.

He’s addicted. He can’t stop and he’s really good at it, generally stealing in broad daylight.

His girlfriend is his accomplice, but the reader never quite knows how enthusiastic she is. His mother claims to have no idea until the end, when things dissolve into insanity.

If that précis doesn’t entice you to read this, nothing will. It’s great.

All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield. Book.

This exceptional book, written by the business partner and friend of Inigo Philbrick, the protagonist, tells the tale of an art student (Philbrick) whose rapid rise as an art dealer is aided by the patronage of Jay Joping, art dealer par excellence.

What unfolds is that within a few years of leaving art school, Philbrick is running his own gallery, and as required, making money for Jopling ‘as he sleeps’. (By the way there is no suggestion that Jopling does anything wrong). Then in fairly short order, Philbrick starts making a ton of money, flying in private jets, etc, etc. And, low and behold, ripping people off.

The scam is this.

Many ‘collectors’ don’t want to hang the art anywhere, they use it as an investment class. This means that they don’t ever see their art, it just waits in a warehouse until they sell it. Sometimes a syndicate of people group together to buy an expensive piece. Philbrick understood, therefore, that you could not only sell the same piece to various people, but perhaps sell half of it a few times and make a ton of money. So, that’s what he did, until the scam caught up with him and he fled to a Pacific island with his girlfriend, where the FBI caught up with him.

This is a great book, laced with an undercurrent of sadness and anger. The author was once Philbrick’s closest friend and business partner, but as is the way with these things, he was cast aside mercilessly as things unraveled.

There’s also a recent BBC two-part TV doc on this saga, called The Great Art Fraud, in which Philbrick appears a great deal. It isn’t as good as the book but it is worth watching. Philbrick seems remarkably uncontrite having served his jail sentence. His main defence -if that’s the right word- is that everyone in the art world is at it in one way or another, that there is a fine line between smoke and mirrors/illusion and outright fraud. And maybe he has a point.