Well movie posters hopefully have weathered the Haggard (and isolated others)
forgery melt down. But
obviously based on the below article in todays NY Times, the art world has a
serious problem.
Ebay seems to be a huge enabler as does the dreams fostered by reality shows
like Antiques Road Show.
I have been hit recently with requests for so called original art ranging from
Icart, to Dali, to Matisse and two others. Of
the now close to 16 pieces offered from different clients since April, exactly
ONE piece (an Icart) has checked out
to be original. (Unfortunately they paid $2500 in 1992 and it is now worth
$450-$850)
I bring this up only in that if I am being hit with requests from clients who
purchased these items in the 80's, 90's and 2000's
to see if I can find a buyer in today's market (And c'mon my office is the 3rd
pylon underneath a bridge on I-10 next to Smokes, the homeless guy)
you guys have to be as well.
freeman
Below is the article entitled:
A Picasso Online for Just $450? Yes, It Is a Steal
Bargain hunting online? How about an original Rembrandt for $900 (“you can
clearly tell its age by the paper,” the seller of this etching attests), or a
signed piece in ink by Matisse for $1,250. (The artist’s work is, the online
seller notes, “radical and unprecedented in the history of Western art.”)
Yes, Sotheby’s can command more than $100 million for a Picasso at auction. But
shoppers on the Web can find an “original” painting by that master for a mere
$450 — less than a pair of designer shoes.
Every day works labeled “original” and “authentic” and attributed to titans of
the art world are offered at closeout prices by online galleries and auction
sites. And every day people buy them.
That these works are sometimes fake or misleadingly labeled is no surprise to
art experts and to foundations that monitor online art sales. But fraud has
saturated certain sectors of the art market, experts say.
“In every country that I visit, even Abu Dhabi, I’m approached by artists or
estates who are desperate about the fake situation,” said Véronique Wiesinger,
the director and senior curator of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti
Foundation in Paris. “We counted the other day 2,005 fake Giacometti sculptures
for sale” on just one Web site, she added.
Many reputable online sellers, of course, deliver precisely what they
advertise. “There is a lot of buying online, and most people are satisfied,”
said Alan Bamberger, an art consultant and appraiser.
Over the last few years the Internet has broadened the art market far beyond
the exclusivity and opaque jargon of its moneyed enclaves and has helped turn
the slogan “art for everyone” into reality. But it has also become a sort of
bazaar, where shoppers of varying sophistication routinely encounter all
degrees of flimflammery, from the schemes of experienced grifters to the
innocent mistakes of the unwitting and naïve. A recent study by statisticians
at George Washington University and the University of California, Irvine,
estimated that as many as 91 percent of the drawings and small sculptures sold
online through eBay as the work of the artist Henry Moore were fake.
The Giacometti Foundation and the Picasso estate view the problem of bogus art
sales as so acute that this year they helped found a new association, the
International Union of Modern and Contemporary Masters, to promote legal
protections “against the circulation of counterfeit works of art.”
Art is legitimately sold on the Internet at a wide spectrum of sites, including
those run by individual artists; established galleries that have expanded
online; and new galleries that represent the work of emerging artists. A
byproduct of so many reputable businesses’ selling art through the Web these
days, experts said, is that it has become easier for those that are less
reputable to pass off forgeries.
Fakes can take many forms. Most common are unauthorized reproductions that
violate an artist’s copyright or trademark. Other times the reproduction has
been authorized, but someone adds the artist’s signature — either forged or
copied — to transform a cheap poster into an expensive “signed” limited edition.
Finally, there are out-and-out forgeries sold as the work of an artist.
Last month David Crespo, the owner of a gallery in Madison, Conn., was charged
with selling fake Picasso drawings that he had been duped into buying on the
Internet years earlier. Mr. Crespo had paid nearly $50,000 for a supposed set
of Picasso drawings from a seller known as Collectart4less, according to court
papers. After discovering that they were reproductions, he sold several to
unsuspecting buyers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors say,
providing false documents attesting to their authenticity and provenance. (Mr.
Crespo has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
Online art is often accompanied by a “certificate of authenticity” or a
registry certificate. But these are generally not worth much as a measure of
authenticity, experts say, unless they have been signed by an artist or his or
her authorized dealer.
The registry certificates are often sold by online businesses that give out
certificates attesting that someone has registered a work — not that the art is
authentic. At one site, for example, National Fine Arts Title Registry, anyone
who fills out a form and pays $10 can print out a certificate minutes later.
Trawling eBay and other Web sites for fakes is a daily activity at the Calder
Foundation in Chelsea, said its chairman, Alexander S. C. Rower, who is
Alexander Calder’s grandson. At the foundation recently, Mr. Rower explained
the myriad ways that buyers and sellers were deceived. Using an iPad, he
pointed to an image of a 12-inch-high sculpture of an elephant balancing on its
upraised trunk a wire with a red sun on one end, and a crescent and a yellow
half-star on the other. “This is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen in my
entire life,” Mr. Rower said.
Several galleries around the world advertise it as a limited edition by Calder,
although the artist had nothing to do with it.
Employees of eBay do not vet merchandise sold on its site, though the company
does investigate complaints of counterfeits, said Amanda Christine Miller, a
spokeswoman. Mr. Rower said that eBay was prompt in removing fakes.
James Stow, who buys and sells art online, using his Florida kitchen as the
packing and shipping department, frequently posts articles on his Facebook page
schooling amateur collectors on how to avoid being swindled. A recent one was
titled “Buying Old Masters Prints-Etchings on the Internet? Are You Kidding ...”
He is not.
Among the art and collectibles Mr. Stow recently listed on eBay was a
“Rembrandt ‘The Hog’ Etching” for $249.99.
How could it be so inexpensive? Mr. Stow said the etching had been trimmed so
that there was no mark from the original copper plate, a distinguishing feature
that many experts use to authenticate a work.
And how does he know it is real? “I looked it up in the catalogue raisonné,”
the definitive compilation of an artist’s work, Mr. Stow said.
He added that he relied on his 20 years of experience to distinguish between a
genuine etching and a faked copy.
(Etchings printed from Rembrandt’s original copper plates vary enormously in
quality and value, depending on whether they were made more recently, using
worn plates, or printed during the artist’s lifetime; the older ones can fetch
more than $1,000,000. Mr. Stow is selling another Rembrandt etching for $2,600.)
For the caretakers of estates, protecting an artist’s legacy can be expensive.
Ms. Wiesinger said the Giacometti Foundation spent more than 40 percent of its
operating budget in 2011 on tracking fakes, up from 25 percent in 2004. And the
foundation last year began awarding 10,000 euros (about $12,000) to
institutions or individuals who bring public attention to the prevalence of
fakes and forgeries.
In Mr. Rower’s view, sellers, frequently hobbyists, are often as uninformed as
buyers. He noticed, for example, that people were mistakenly selling
teardrop-shaped candy bowls as Calders because they saw on them the letters “C”
and “A,” in a version of Calder’s characteristic initialing. It turns out the
“C” and “A” stand for “copper alloy.”
You would think that the reputations of those who repeatedly sell fakes online
would suffer. But Mr. Bamberger, who runs the Web site artbusiness.com, said
consumers generally did not base their assessments of sellers on the
authenticity of the art, because they may not know the difference. Rather,
customers tend to look at whether a seller packed carefully, shipped on time
and answered questions promptly.
Do those three things well, Mr. Bamberger said, and chances are that people
buying art on the Internet will give you high marks.
Barry Werbin, an art lawyer in New York whose father was a fine-art dealer,
says customers who buy art online are out of their minds. Buying art in person,
with expertise, is hard enough, he said. But people hear about astonishing
finds at garage sales or watch television series like “Antiques Roadshow” and
feel that same kind of good fortune can strike them online.
“It gets everyone riled up and makes for great television,” he said, “but such
finds are very far and few between.”
Of course, some buyers may be fully aware that they are buying fakes, ones that
look delightfully realistic and spruce up their homes. But Mr. Bamberger said
many people who bought art over the Internet were, at heart, bargain hunters,
delighted to think they were getting a deal.
“If you’re going to buy a fake and you believe it’s real,” he said, “then
you’re going to be happy with it.”
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