2024 — The Year In Art Forgery

Fake Collection Anatomized

Let’s start with “The Zaks Affair: Anatomy of a Fake Collection.” Released in March, the documentary investigates one of the world’s biggest collections of Russian and Ukrainian modernism. Dozens of the works have been sold to museums and private collectors over the past two decades. The collection is alleged to include over 200 oil paintings by modernist heavyweights including El Lissitzky, Liubov Popova, and Alexandra Exter. There are growing suspicions, though, that the story behind the provenance of the artworks is fabricated, and that many – if not all of them – could be worthless. This cliffhanger doc features several of the Russian avant-garde market’s significant players, the good and bad, many of whom have shadier backgrounds than the paintings in their obit.

$215 M. Pan-European Forgery Network

Towards the end of this year, Italian police blew the lid on a $215 million pan-European forgery network. Officers are investigating 38 people from across Europe suspected of being involved in the scheme to sell fake works attributed to some of the biggest 19th, 20th, and 21st century artists, including Pablo Picasso, Banksy, and Andy Warhol. The investigation so far spans Italy, Spain, France and Belgium, with suspects accused of conspiracy to handle stolen goods, forgery, and the illegal sale of artworks. News of the investigation was jointly announced by the paramilitary Carabinieri art squad and the Pisa prosecutors’ office and first reported by Reuters. Around 2,100 forgeries have so far been seized—their provenance or history of ownership revealed their path through a string of auction houses in Italy.

A Disputed Malevich and Disgraced Dealer at the Centre Pompidou

In June, ARTnews broke the story about a US technology company called CO2Bit Technologies exhibiting a highly disputed Kazimir Malevich painting at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, without the museum’s knowledge. CO2Bit rented one of the museum’s event spaces to show the work privately. The painting, titled “Suprematism” and supposedly dating to 1915, was embroiled in the investigation of Itzhak Zarug, an Israeli art dealer who was convicted in Germany of selling forgeries in 2018. CO2Bit’s chairman, Ronald Wilkins, said he purchased the painting for “seven figures” from Zarug and paid an art authenticator named Patricia Railing (who features in “The Zaks Affair”) for her assessment, although she denied this. The story illustrates how people bolster the provenance of questionable paintings by exhibiting them in major museums, among other tactics. In separate cases, dubious paintings have been sneaked into exhibition catalogs and catalog raisones in a bid legitimize their provenance. The Pompidou released a statement saying it had not given Wilkins permission to show the Malevich.

Basquiat Fakes Proliferate in Second CO2Bit Scandal

The Malevich scandal led to another ARTnews probe into CO2Bit in July. An intermediary said to be acting on behalf of the tech company was reportedly planning to exhibit an unauthenticated Jean-Michel Basquiat painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—without the institution’s permission. The unknown man hired New York Art Forensics, a Brooklyn-based art authentication laboratory, to authenticate and appraise a purported Basquiat painting, titled 200 Yen. It was sold in April 2020 by Bill Hood and Sons Art and Antiques Auctions in Delray Beach, Florida, for $3,300 to an anonymous buyer. A series of now-deleted press releases published by a now-defunct PR company called Eminence Rise Media said New York Art Forensics authenticated and appraised the work for $90 million. One release claimed the painting, which had no provenance records, was set to “be unveiled in top museums across the United States soon.” Despite this, New York Art Forensics’ CEO, Thiago Piwowarczyk, said the appraisal was “conditional,” but he refused to prove this to ARTnews. Piwowarczyk said the intermediary “asked me if I wanted to be involved in [exhibiting the painting at MoMA].” MoMA, it seems, drives a harder line than the Pompidou when it comes to vetting clandestine exhibitions. “The museum does not permit any outside artwork in any situation,” a museum spokesperson told ARTnews.

eBay’s Monet and Renoir Shot Down by AI

Back in May, Switzerland-based AI authentication company Art Recognition went to work scrutinizing paintings attributed to the likes of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir for sale on eBay. The company detected 40 artworks that had a “high probability” of being “not authentic.”

“We downloaded some images and there were fakes all over the place,” Art Recognition’s founder, Carina Popovici, told the Guardian. “Everything that we have analyzed turns out to be not real art, a negative probability with 95 percent or so. I’m sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg.” The paintings analyzed with AI included one advertised as a Monet titled Forest With a Stream— with a price tag of $599,000. A description for the listing stated: “I fully guarantee that the painting is an original 1867 oil on canvas signed and dated by Claude Monet. The painting is not in perfect condition and I do not have any provenance beyond me having it for over 20 years.” Another painting that was branded fake was listed as a Renoir and priced at $165,000. Despite this, eBay insists on its website that, “We don’t allow counterfeit items or unauthorized copies to be listed.”

It should be noted that AI is not a silver bullet in successfully authentication art; there’s a lot of scepticism surrounding its use. ARTnews canvased the views of several human art authenticators, including Simon Gillespie, who runs an eponymous art authentication and restoration studio in London. Gillespie said that he thinks of himself as a “top-class surgeon” whose “subtlety of touch” will always be required over AI. He said that while it’s inevitable humans will be substituted for technology in some aspects of authentication, he believes that any company using AI to soley attribute a painting “should be treated with [substantial] doubt.”

Faux-cassos in a Tasmanian Toilet Cubicle

One 202’s most unexpected—and most amusing stories—of forgeries unfolded in Tasmania in the summer. In July, the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart heard from the Picasso estate after it was revealed that several “Picassos” displayed in the institution’s “Ladies Lounge” exhibition were not by the Spanish master. Rather, they were fakes created by the curator and conceptual artist Kirsha Kaechele, and her manicurist’s niece.

The “Ladies Lounge”, created five years ago, garnered international controversy as its initial iteration banned any visitor who didn’t self-identify as female. The controversy grew after Jason Lau, a man from New South Wales, was denied entry in 2023, leading to a lawsuit in which Lau said the museum was violating Tanzania’s anti-discrimination act by turning men away even though they’d bought museum tickets. The courts agreed, and ordered the museum to make the “Ladies Lounge” accessible to every gender. Kaechele, who is married to the Mona’s owner David Walsh, found a loophole by shifting the exhibition into one place were men are officially banned—the women’s restroom. The knock-off Picassos were also transplanted into the cubicles.

When the Picasso estate contacted Mona to demand the paintings be removed, Kaechele abided and the case was closed without punishment.

This December, Tasmania’s supreme court overturned the ruling that the “Ladies Lounge” was discriminatory to men. It’s now reopened (minus the Faux-cassos) although Mona has permitted a small number of men to enter “so they can learn about housework.”

A Historic Art Forgery Ring in Canada

In June, a second suspect pleaded guilty to charges of fraud in the case dubbed by investigators as “Canada’s largest art fraud investigation.” David Voss, the mastermind of an art fraud ring active between 1996 and 2019, pleaded guilty to forging the provenance of thousands of artworks attributed to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau. Investigators had identified more than 1,500 forgeries from Voss’ fraud operation and seized some 500 pieces as of writing. Police also found that Voss “never met, acquired artwork from or otherwise interacted with Norval Morrisseau.”

Morrisseau was a renowned artist from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation and gained widespread recognition for his unique style within the Woodland School of Art.

The Globe and Mail reported that Voss “sketched out drawings meant to mimic Mr. Morrisseau’s distinctive style and then annotated each section with letters indicating their ideal color—‘G’ for green, ‘B’ for blue, ‘LR’ for light red and so on. He would pass the sketches to hired painters to lay on the prescribed colors, before the works were signed with the Cree syllabic autograph Mr. Morrisseau was known for and backdated, usually to the 1970s.”

The almost industrial scale of fraudulent Morrisseau works produced by Voss’ ring and the victims in their wake have also been the subject of a documentary called “There are No Fakes”, featuring Barenaked Ladies member Kevin Hearn.

Van Gogh Museum Gets Real About Fakes

And finally, this year the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam abandoned its 50-year policy of generally avoiding discussions of fakes. As the main research institutions on Van Gogh’s work, the museum has decided to be more transparent about publishing scholarly material in this controversial field.

The first works attributed to the Dutch master that have been openly put to the sword by the museum are a trio of paintings in private collections. They include a painting of a peasant woman previously authenticated by the museum before being sold by Christie’s in 2011. Having gone for almost $1 million, it is now dismissed as a fake. The Burlington Magazine published the research on this in its December issue, featuring an article co-written by three respected Van Gogh experts, Saskia van Oudheusden, Teio Meedendorp, and Louis van Tilborgh. In it, they downgrade works that were regarded as authentic in the definitive Van Gogh’s 1970 catalogue raisonée by Jacob-Baart de la Faille.