Rembrandt to Picasso: Five ways to spot a fake masterpiece
5 comments
·March 13, 2025niceice
That was fun to read. There are cases where the forger messes up the signature and the gallery doesn't notice.
"As a final safeguard in authenticating a work of art, run the spell check. Doing so would have saved the collector Pierre Lagrange $17m – the price he paid in 2007 for an otherwise compelling forgery of a small 12x18in (30x46cm) painting falsely attributed to the American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock. Famous for his drippy style, Pollock has a surprisingly legible signature, an unmistakable "c" before the final "k". The skipped consonant would do more than expose a single forgery; it would shatter the reputation of an entire gallery.
The sloppy signature was just one of many missed red flags in works falsely attributed to Rothko, De Kooning, Motherwell and others that the Knoedler & Co gallery, one of New York's oldest and most esteemed art institutions, succeeded in selling for $80m. The fraudulent works had been supplied by a dubious dealer who claimed they came from an enigmatic collector, "Mr X". Just before the scandal erupted in the press, the gallery closed its doors after 165 years, while the suspected perpetrator of the fakes, a self-taught Chinese septuagenarian by the name of Pei-Shen Qian, who had operated from a forger's workshop in Queens, vanished; he later turned up in China."
WalterBright
It's kinda funny in a way. If you believe it is real, does it matter if it is a fake? If the only difference is titanium in the paint, does that make the actual painting better or worse?
umvi
Art is like cryptocurrency. It's valuable because it's scarce, not because it has intrinsic worth or beauty.
MrMcCall
If anyone wants to watch one of me and my teens' favorite documentaries ever, check out the story of art forger Mark Landis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Landis), named "Art and Craft" (https://artandcraftfilm.com/).
It's very strange and a bit sad but gripping.
"I'm addicted to philanthropy." --Mark Landis
Once upon a time, I worked on behalf of a few luxury goods makers, tracking down counterfeit versions of their items, and getting the obvious and less obvious fakes removed before anyone could waste money (and their perception of the brand) on them.
A few times, I would be invited to company HQ and introduced to the product, have the stitching and design details explained to me, a lay humble scruffy programmer. I can still spot a quality handbag from miles away because of it.
The work itself was _fascinating_ to me, and spotting fakes was... obvious but only once you knew _why_ it was obvious. A couple of examples:
* (easiest) Does brand X make phone covers? Well, probably not because that would make them look cheap and accessible to all, and that's _very much not_ the point of being a luxury goods house.
* (... tricker) Are there _any_ loose stitches visible, or imperfections of any kind? If I had been thinking logically, this wouldn't be an issue. But, like the buyers, I hadn't been, and I hadn't realised that -of course- luxury goods are hand checked by many people, many times over, because... again, that's the whole point of being a luxury goods house.
While there was plenty to learn about mismatched parts - plus the joy of independent designers creating new and sometimes quite brilliantly designed new items (always a shame, some of them knew the brand styles staggeringly well) - looking at the zips that match a leather which match so-and-so design element, the examples above covered the majority of counterfeit items by far. Can't imagine it's changed that much in the meantime.