{"id":5253,"date":"2025-09-05T00:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/?p=5253"},"modified":"2025-09-05T00:17:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T22:17:21","slug":"how-to-authenticate-a-work-of-art-and-still-buy-a-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/how-to-authenticate-a-work-of-art-and-still-buy-a-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"How to authenticate a work of art and still buy a fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The blue-chip art trade is so wonderfully cosmopolitan that even the fakes have illustrious international provenances. In fact, the real reason why this ridiculously corrupt and secretive industry cannot be regulated is that it doesn\u2019t have a home. We\u2019re always selling a picture from Tokyo, through a broker in Los Angeles, to a buyer in Brussels, so if a government should decide to put obstacles or regulations in New York, for example, the trade would just pivot and we would find ways to continue the deals elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Just to be candid, I am a New York based blue-chip art dealer, dealing in Picassos, Monets, Warhols and other expensive works. Just to be even more candid, I went to US federal prison some years ago for wire fraud because I lied about money. This misstep has surprisingly freed me up to speak out frankly about this industry, of which I\u2019m still a part.<\/p>\n

For the last 27 years (before and after my ordeal) I have been a very active dealer, and as such I\u2019ve been offered fakes at least once a week. That\u2019s roughly 1,300 weeks of looking at fakes throughout my time as a dealer \u2013 coinciding with exactly the same amount of time that I\u2019ve worked on selling real paintings. All this experience has made me an expert on both. By now, it\u2019s gotten to the point where I can tell a fake within two or three seconds. That\u2019s a fortunate talent in my business, but, actually, most people could develop it as well because 99% of fakes are easy to discern. The vast majority of fakes are usually sloppy, amateurish and often silly attempts to dupe the uninitiated.<\/p>\n

However, every art dealer will tell you that as seasoned as they are, there are those couple of examples that are so well done, that it shakes one\u2019s entire belief system. It\u2019s when you get fooled by one of these fakes at some point in your career when you say, \u201cand I thought I was good at this.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006 I was approached by Marco Saturni (I will change all the names here in order to protect the innocent \u2013 and to protect me from the guilty), a very shady Italian art dealer living in Athens with an offer of a marvelous Kandinsky work on paper. The work was a nicely sized Bauhaus-period watercolor with beautiful geometric overlays, and just the right amount of coloration. As wonderful as it was, I did not have a direct client for it, but one of my very good friends in New York, the venerated art dealer Gerard Erdos (again, fake name), had asked me for one. So I did something that would turn out to be fortuitously lucky: because I trusted Gerard so much, I told him about the piece, and eventually stepped out of the way to let him communicate directly with Marco. Gerard had done so much for me early in my career, that I simply said, \u201cjust buy me a nice dinner when you do the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since this is a story about fakes, you can probably guess where this is going. However, the truly surprising thing was how things unraveled. See, this Kandinsky was the rare fake that looked exactly like the real thing. In fact, it basically fooled most along the line, at least for a while, and, frankly, there is still a small voice in my head that occasionally pipes up to tell me that it might be real.<\/p>\n

Here is a little tip for you to tell if the next masterpiece you are offered is authentic or a cheap fake knock-off copy: compare the painting in your hands to a reproduction of it in a book, preferably the artist\u2019s catalogue raisonn\u00e9 (a catalogue raisonn\u00e9 is a compendium that aims to collect and publish all of the works by an artist). Do this comparison by focusing on every detail you see, then go back-and-forth between the two. If this sounds like a simple and obvious tactic, you\u2019re right! If you were good at \u201cspot the difference\u201d games as a child, you can do this too. Many things that we hold secret in the art business are actually basic and plain practices that we only pretend are so complicated that they require true expertise. But please don\u2019t tell any of my colleagues that I just divulged a state secret. They might try to indict me again.<\/p>\n

While comparing the images, Gerard and I found that the most convincing element in the drawing was an irregular magenta form in the upper left of the painting, which had been obviously made by blotting the paper with watercolor, and allowing the watered down paint to seep and, at least partially, create its own shape. These forms can happen by chance as the watercolor travels through the weave of the paper. This organic shape, we figured, could not be easily faked, and this particular element matched the image in the book perfectly.<\/p>\n

Besides the matching visuals, Gerard and I found the information that related to the drawing\u2019s history jibed as well. On the back of Marco\u2019s drawing was a label from a 1965 exhibition at the Ateneum in Helsinki, and in the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 this work is listed as being in a private collection in Finland and having been shown in that same 1965 Helsinki exhibition. The Kandinsky catalogue raisonn\u00e9 is meticulously put together by Vivian Barnett, who is, in my opinion, the art industry\u2019s very best expert (I am using her real name here). Her information is practically flawless. With all this concordance, all signs were pointing to \u201cyes\u201d!<\/p>\n

The least convincing aspect of this deal was who we were getting the Kandinsky from. Marco, I told Gerard, gave me the creeps, so at this point, Gerard contacted Marco and insisted to be put in touch with his source. Marco introduced him to a dealer named Alberto Capaldi from a company named Bankarte (I even changed this name for this article).<\/p>\n

This Kandinsky was so good that Gerard bought it from Capaldi\u2019s company for \u20ac750,000, knowing he would make enough money from a future sale to justify the purchase. Everyone, Gerard showed the Kandinsky to marveled at it. And his prospects for reselling it were promising. Gerard even brought the piece to Sotheby\u2019s with the idea of possibly putting it up for auction.<\/p>\n

This is the peak of the story. Like in a rollercoaster, there is a high point that is reached until everything goes downhill.<\/p>\n

This deal would\u2019ve worked well for Gerard, except for an eagle-eyed Sotheby\u2019s specialist who took a very close look at one tiny element and noticed what he thought was a discrepancy between the object in front of him and the one reproduced in the catalogue raisonn\u00e9. One minuscule triangle, which measured no more than half a centimeter in the drawing, appeared to be a slightly different color from the one in the book. In the color reproduction in the book, this triangle measured no more than 2 mm. The discrepancy was that the triangle in the book is yellow, and in real life, this triangle was white. And this minute difference caused enough alarm in this specialist\u2019s mind to nix the sale.<\/p>\n

But whatever this guy said, Gerard and I (he of course, was keeping me abreast as it was all happening) thought the specialist was wrong. There were several problems with his assertion. First of all, everything else about the Drawing was right \u2013 from its being in the book to it\u2019s having the proper Helsinki Ateneum label. How could a forger with such an exceptional eye for detail goof up this one thing? More to the point, the triangle in the book was next to another yellow form, so we felt that a tiny part of a color reproduction in a book which had been printed in the 1980s could easily have a flaw of registration, which would cause the yellow from the adjacent section to bleed onto the triangle. Printing was not as precise then as it is today.<\/p>\n

The Sotheby\u2019s specialist\u2019s doubt was enough to induce Vivian Barnett to contact the real collector in Finland, who had owned this work for many years. And unfortunately, this owner (whoever it was \u2013 the book does not divulge his identity) confirmed to her that the Kandinsky was still hanging on their wall. The work that Gerard had paid hundreds of thousands for was now a verified fake.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where things became truly bizarre. As the matter turned legal, the truth began to emerge, as did the cast of characters involved. It turned out that Capaldi had obtained the piece from a certain Mr. Viola, who himself had gotten it from a Mr. Mani, who had purchased the drawing (for about \u20ac450,000) from a certain Filatov family, who seemed to live between Israel and Berlin (Finland had nothing to do with this drawing). This is what we in the industry call a \u201cdaisy chain\u201d, and this is precisely why they\u2019re so dangerous. Not only does everybody along the chain want a cut, nobody really knows who is involved while a deal is happening.<\/p>\n

But would it surprise you to know that most art deals occur with daisy chains like this? And what if I told you that most art deals that actually succeed also happen with chains like this? Well, now you know why this unregulated industry is so damn unpredictable. Sometimes the most legitimate players fail, and the most illegitimate weirdos come through. This means we dealers are incentivized to pursue every opportunity, no matter how perilous it may seem.<\/p>\n

Gerard did try to go through legal means to get his money back, but with such a multinational and labyrinthine web of liars, he eventually had to drop the case. It turned out that everyone in the chain made a little bit of money, but not enough for one party to pay him back in full or to make it worthwhile for him to pursue.<\/p>\n

Viola and Capaldi both provided written attestations extolling their own honor, and saying that they disagreed with the opinion of the Kandinsky committee and that in their esteemed view, the work was undoubtedly real. \u201cPlease, come to Italy as soon as you can,\u201d Capaldi wrote, \u201cso you can look me in the eyes to understand that I am absolutely in good faith, as the one who sold you the painting and who will soon show you that it is authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both dealers then resorted to a tactic that is very common among fraudsters: they tried to discredit the experts. I have found that most experts in the business do a very good job and try hard to use their best judgment when authenticating artworks, so when people make these claims, it\u2019s a red flag for me. In other words, I would sooner trust the experts than the dealers. Nevertheless, the truth is that nobody is infallible, and I have seen some rare attributions by some experts that are very cleary wrong. But in this case, I fully trust the expertise of the authorities involved with Kandinsky. They are unimpeachable.<\/p>\n

Even so, I have been known to occasionally wake up late at night, consult the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 and compare these images again. That blot of paint, that label, the precision of the image \u2013 it\u2019s all so good! This was definitely the work of a master forger. I wish I knew who he was. I\u2019d love to know his other fakes and see if he could fool us all again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blue-chip art trade is so wonderfully cosmopolitan that even the fakes have illustrious international provenances. In fact, the real reason why this ridiculously corrupt and secretive industry cannot be regulated is that it doesn\u2019t have a home. We\u2019re always selling a picture from Tokyo, through a broker in Los Angeles, to a buyer in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":251,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5253"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5526,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253\/revisions\/5526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}