https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2018%2F03%2F30&entity=Ar00800&sk=88B167F0&mode=text
In retrospect, an elementary canary in the coalmine about the brazen fraudulence of Nirav Modi appeared when the now-disgraced diamantaire began to parade his art collection as proof of his multi-crore taste and discernment. The most famous photo of the beaming would-be connoisseur features a backdrop of terrible paintings arrayed like a peacock tail of dross all around him. Even worse, prominently displayed at both his elbows are two extremely shoddy, gaudy canvases bearing the signature of Francis Newton Souza, the late all-time great modernist artist of Goan origin who was born in Saligao in 1925. Both of Modi’s prizes are blatant fakes. As everyone now knows, everything about this instant billionaire jeweller was always irredeemably tainted by an extraordinary level of criminal deception. Just a few days ago, the Enforcement Directive alleges he continues to “abuse the process of law” in its case against him for swindling an astronomical 12,600 crores from the PNB bank. To that end, the Income Tax department has seized 150 paintings that had been shifted to a warehouse in an attempt to hide them. But just like the rest of Nirav Modi’s enterprises, it’s unlikely anyone will find more than a few genuine jewels hidden amongst piles of junk. In this specific instance, there’s no doubt the most surprised and aggrieved individual is Nirav Modi himself. No one whose reputation rests on authenticity would ever knowingly be photographed with grotesquely crude fakes. So it’s obvious he believed the very bad art was the real deal. Here, the charlatan was himself scammed, no doubt suitably grandly for millions of dollars. But there’s little real cause for schadenfreude, because this is just one more example of the malignant rot that pervades the Indian art world, utterly perverting what we know and understand about our most significant modern and contemporary artists. As far back as the 1990s, the mercurial but always methodical Francis Newton Souza became alarmed by the rampant proliferation of fake canvases being attributed to him, and sold in bunches to newly rich Indians who couldn’t tell the difference. He wrote a famous public letter raising the alarm about specific gallerists who were “unreliable in their dealings in art. They are greedy upstarts – they have jumped on the art bandwagon to make a fast buck! They employ forgers to produce the “artworks” they sell!” But Souza was unable to follow up further, and some he named have become amongst the best-known art dealers in India. It’s more than likely Nirav Modi fell victim to one of these “established” crooks, just as so many others were taken by his own close connections to India’s wealthiest and most powerful. Most probably, his fakes came accompanied with certificates of authenticity. Souza wrote angrily about that too in 1997, “mark this – a breed of “art experts” have come out of the woodwork! They give “certificates” for a fee, stating the fakes are genuine! The artists are duped too…” But in the 21st century, the situation is much worse. One very rare comeuppance occurred in 2009, when pioneering abstract painter (and Souza’s colleague in the Progressive Artists Group of the 1940s) SH Raza attended a lavish exhibition of his own work at the highly regarded Dhoomimal Art Gallery in New Delhi, only to point out many imitations. To be sure, art forgery is global problem. Last year, the western art establishment was embarrassed by the discovery that 20 of 21 paintings in an exhibition dedicated to wildly popular modernist Amadeo Modigliani in Genoa were fakes. Even more recently, there are plenty of people (including this writer) unconvinced of the authenticity of the new “most expensive painting in the world” allegedly by Leonardo da Vinci, auctioned to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia for an $450 million. But those are rare instances compared to India, where forgeries have saturated the marketplace, and are routinely certified authentic. It’s bad for everyone, but particularly awful for artists like Souza, whose genius is tarnished because almost everything the public gets to see with his signature is actually a cheap imitation. We already know a huge number were created by one British forger, William Mumford, who admitted in a UK court that he painted at least 1000 fakes attributed to Souza, and also MF Husain (as well as a couple of British artists). He spent just two years in jail, while these fakes continue to circulate uninterrupted. Look around the Indian art marketplace, Nirav Modi isn’t the only fool.
