I was first introduced to this art fraud, one of America’s most significant art fraud, through a true crime Youtube video. However, I realized that Netflix made a documentary exploring this event in 2020 — Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art. As I am then reintroduced to this very significant part of American art history, I would like to share a brief summary of the chronicle of events; however, I do recommend watching the Netflix documentary if you are slightly interested in this piece of history.
Knoedler & Co. was one of New York’s oldest and most reputable commercial art gallery, opening in 1846. Knoedler has history and reputation, for when it was founded, California was not even a US state. It became a leading supplier of Old Master paintings to the robber barons of the Gilded Age: Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Clay Frick. However, it would eventually close in 2011 due to the issues around their art fraud.
Ann Freedman was promoted to president of the Knoedler & Co. art gallery in 1994. When she took over, the gallery was part of an older generation that was overshadowed by more modern and fashionable businesses downtown. However, that same year, an unknown woman would walk into the gallery and change the fate of the art gallery. Glafira Rosales came into the art gallery, bearing a Rothko work on hand. Rosales said that she had an anonymous friend, named “Mr. X,” who would like to consign the work to Knoedler but also stay anonymous. However, the undiscovered Rothko work she held lacked an essential piece to authenticate it: provenance. Provenance is the history of ownership of a painting or work of art; it establishes an item’s collectible significance beyond what is appeared on hand. Despite the limited provenance and the sketchy backstory, the work she held really did look like it was made by Rothko. When authenticators hired by the gallery came, they hesitantly said that it might have been created by Rothko; has she discovered an unfound Rothko painting? Freedman consigned the work and sold it. Freedman will then sell over 60 paintings between 1994 and 2011, adding up to about $80 million.
How did this scam finally come to light? In 2007, Julian Weissman asked Jack Flam, an art authenticator for the Dedalus Foundation, to look at a Motherwell painting from Rosales. Flam was a known authenticator for Motherwell because he not only is an expert on art but also was a friend of Motherwell’s at some point before Motherwell passed away. When Flam saw the painting, although he saw unusual cracking on the painting, the painting did look similar to Motherwell’s style. When he continued to get multiple requests for Motherwell paintings only from Freedman and Weissman, he became suspicious. He still authenticated these paintings and took photographs of the paintings for a Motherwell catalogue raisonné (a catalogue made by an art expert or authenticator of every painting an artist has ever created, like a portfolio). When reviewing the work from established Motherwell paintings compared to the ones from Weissman and Freedman, the paintings from the two looked just messy in comparison; he saw that they didn’t have the same versatility and thought into the edges and strokes. Moreover, he saw that the signature looked like it came from a template; Motherwell in particular liked to change his signature, but the works from Freedman and Weissman were identical.
When Flam went to Freedman to tell her that the painting Rosales sold to her could be fake, she argued with him — saying that they were real — and kicked him out. As a result, he tipped off the FBI and an investigation was open. During the investigation, they found that Rosales was evading her taxes, and when she was arrested, she confessed, the truth finally coming to light. The fakes were being painted by a Chinese man named Pei-Shen Qian in Queens. As punishment, Rosales had 9 months of house arrest and had to pay $81 million in restitution. Knoedler & Co. shut down in 2011 as a result of the fraud, and Freedman and Weissman were sued by the people who were scammed in a civil lawsuit.
A big critique resulting from this incident is why do we care? Why are we grossly interested if rich people are getting scammed by art forgeries? Why do we give so much monetary value to artworks by famous artists if most people are unable to differentiate the difference between the original and a fake? However, I believe the series of events, before the secret became too big to hold in, allow us to glimpse into the largely unregulated industry of the art market.
