Speaker 1: If you went into the Gucci store and bought a handbag,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't ask the salesperson is this a real Gucci?
Speaker 1: You know, you would take that as a sort of
Speaker 1: given fact. So the fact that Noodler, you know, was
Speaker 1: the oldest gallery in the city. It was a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty five years old. It had worked with these
Speaker 1: artists in their lifetimes, and if you wanted to buy
Speaker 1: an abstract expressionist painting, that's kind of the place you
Speaker 1: would go to do that. By the mid two thousand's,
Speaker 1: Carlos and Glyphs forgery scheme was raking in enormous profits,
Speaker 1: and yet Glyphra was miserable. Later, she told a federal
Speaker 1: judge that Carlos beat her frequently, once going so far
Speaker 1: as to break her nose. The beatings, she claimed, were
Speaker 1: to keep her from bailing out of the family art business.
Speaker 1: Quitting wasn't an option. Carlos warned that if she left,
Speaker 1: he would kidnap their daughters solely and take her to Spain,
Speaker 1: and glyph Era would never see her again. Ironically, GPS
Speaker 1: relationship with Ann Friedman was blossoming. Rosalies demanded and received
Speaker 1: higher fees from Ndler as the fake paintings continued to
Speaker 1: sell for exorbitant prices. Ultimately, Gla would rake in more
Speaker 1: than twenty million dollars in her fourteen year forgery career.
Speaker 1: With that money came a commensurate lifestyle. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Carlos and A bought an enormous square foot house in
Speaker 1: the North Shore neighborhood of Sam's Point on Long Island's
Speaker 1: Gold Coast. The Mediterranean style home came with a two
Speaker 1: point three million dollar price tag, quite a property for
Speaker 1: a local art dealer and her seemingly unemployed partner. Friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors found the home beautiful and impressively furnished, but
Speaker 1: not without its quirks. The odd thing about it was
Speaker 1: they were paintings everywhere, and not just hung on the
Speaker 1: walls either. One time we went over to pick up
Speaker 1: the kids, my wife and I were in the house
Speaker 1: and we were kind of blown away by the art
Speaker 1: that we saw in the house, because, you know, Glaire
Speaker 1: always had the appearance of being successful. My name is
Speaker 1: Brian Scarlatto's I'm an attorney with Costellans and Fink in
Speaker 1: New York City, and I specialized in criminal texts, investigations
Speaker 1: and prosecutions. Brian was a family friend of Cfia and
Speaker 1: Carlos and Sand's point, their children attended the same school. Later,
Speaker 1: when Cpia's legal troubles began, she retained Brian as her attorney.
Speaker 1: We knew she had a gallery in New York, but
Speaker 1: when we went into the house, you know, we recognized
Speaker 1: several pieces that we knew there were war holes. I
Speaker 1: believe there was a Picasso, there was a Rothco, and
Speaker 1: others like that. And as I said, there was also
Speaker 1: very interesting furniture, and there was just so much art
Speaker 1: that some of it was leaned up against the wall
Speaker 1: because there wasn't enough room to hang it all on
Speaker 1: the walls. And you know, my wife and I think
Speaker 1: just assumed that they were using their art as storage
Speaker 1: for their gallery. But when you go into somebody's house
Speaker 1: and you see warholes in a Picasso and a Rothco
Speaker 1: and other things that you recognize, it's it's sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, overwhelming. You know, it was also casual. I
Speaker 1: remember remarking to my wife on the way out that
Speaker 1: you know, oh my god, they have this this little dog, Rocky,
Speaker 1: who was running around embarking. And I remember saying to
Speaker 1: my wife, what if Rocky were to pee on a Picasso.
Speaker 1: I mean it just and it seemed like it could happen, because,
Speaker 1: as I say, things were just stacked up against the wall.
Speaker 1: They were always very elegantly dressed, you know, had nice
Speaker 1: cars in a very nice house, and they seemed to
Speaker 1: travel the world, and they also knew a lot about art.
Speaker 1: And so they were my friends who were the art
Speaker 1: dealers and had a gallery. And Friedman was also living
Speaker 1: the good life. Ndler was trafficking almost exclusively in the
Speaker 1: David Herbert collection of fake Rothko's, de coonings and pollocks.
Speaker 1: Anne had a knack for reaching out to buyers that
Speaker 1: were exceedingly wealthy but not necessarily well informed. Domenico and
Speaker 1: Eleanor de Sole walked into the Knodler in late two
Speaker 1: thousand four in search of a Shawn Scully painting. Scully
Speaker 1: was a contemporary abstract artist. The De Soules were fond of.
Speaker 1: Domenico De Sole was just stepping down as president and
Speaker 1: CEO of Gucci and was becoming designer Tom Ford's partner
Speaker 1: in a new fashion company. The Desules had an ocean
Speaker 1: front home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and needed art
Speaker 1: to hang on its walls, and didn't have a Shawn
Speaker 1: Scully painting to sell them. She did, however, have an
Speaker 1: amazing Mark Rothko, as she had done so many times before,
Speaker 1: an enchanted her prospective buyers with the story of the
Speaker 1: ex family, David Herbert and the marvelous downtown art world
Speaker 1: of the nineteen fifties where artists sold works out of
Speaker 1: the back of their studios for cash. The Desoles glowed
Speaker 1: with excitement. They had never paid anywhere close to eight
Speaker 1: point four million dollars for a painting before, but it
Speaker 1: was a Rothco. The very name of the painting, untitled
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, evoked images of the troubled artist in
Speaker 1: his upper east Side carriage house, working late into the night.
Speaker 1: Like so many other paintings in the David Herbert collection,
Speaker 1: the work was notably smaller than a typical Rothco. Larger
Speaker 1: ones went for tens of millions of dollars. Once again,
Speaker 1: the painting had no real provenance, nor was it in
Speaker 1: the Rothco catalog resume, but Anne said she had no
Speaker 1: doubt the magnificent painting they were gazing at, which soar
Speaker 1: in value once it was placed in a future supplement
Speaker 1: to the catalog resume. The eight point four million dollar
Speaker 1: rothco was sold and hung in the Dosoles hilton Head
Speaker 1: family home. Eleanor later testified that friends would stop by
Speaker 1: just who and a over it. But what was a
Speaker 1: roth Cooke compared to a top of the market Pollock.
Speaker 1: Ever since Anne had hit a wall with the Leavy Pollock,
Speaker 1: she had pressed life for another. By two thousand seven
Speaker 1: she had it in hand, a classic drip painting with
Speaker 1: a silvery cast. Fully deserving, Anne thought of the seventeen
Speaker 1: million dollar price tag she attached to it. Through a
Speaker 1: pair of middleman dealers, a transparency of the painting found
Speaker 1: its way to a Belgian born financier named Pierre Lagrange.
Speaker 1: The Grange was a hedge fund manager, one of the
Speaker 1: richest men in London. He was drawn to the Pollock, but,
Speaker 1: like Jack Levy, he wanted assurances that the painting was authentic. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: Lagrange wasn't asking for an official eye far evaluation of
Speaker 1: the painting. He did want to be sure that the
Speaker 1: Pollock Krasner Foundation would authenticate the work. This was a
Speaker 1: problem for Anne. The Pollock Foundation had stopped authenticating any
Speaker 1: new works purporting to be Pollocks. As for the Pollock
Speaker 1: Catalog Resume, its last and final supplement, had been released
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four. Anne had the clout to arrange
Speaker 1: a meeting with the Pollock Krausner Foundation lawyers, in part
Speaker 1: because one of the lawyers was also her lawyer. She
Speaker 1: talked up the painting and stressed the importance of updating
Speaker 1: the entire catalog resume to be reprinted in full color.
Speaker 1: It was our only shot to have the painting added. Officially,
Speaker 1: the lawyers murmured and hummed, but the word authentication never
Speaker 1: quite entered the room. Anne had to think fast or
Speaker 1: risk losing the biggest sale of her career. On March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, Anne rode to Lagrangees camp and told
Speaker 1: them exactly what she thought the English collector wanted to
Speaker 1: hear quote. The Pollock Krasner Foundation has stated that they
Speaker 1: are intending to update and republish the catalog resume in
Speaker 1: full color and also in an online version. Every detail
Speaker 1: of the email was a lie. Lagrange and his chief lawyer,
Speaker 1: Matthew Johnson found the email less than persuasive. They wanted
Speaker 1: reps and warranties, as Donson later put it, which was
Speaker 1: to say legally binding language that the painting would be
Speaker 1: authenticated and that it would appear in the next catalog.
Speaker 1: Resume Friedman turned indignant. Quote. The distrusting and demanding language
Speaker 1: in this agreement of sale is not in keeping with
Speaker 1: the familiar and widely accepted standards and practices in the
Speaker 1: art business, she huffed. In her written response, it veers
Speaker 1: far from the spirit and understanding of our original agreement.
Speaker 1: I have not been confronted by anything like this in
Speaker 1: my thirty four years of experience as an art dealer.
Speaker 1: We have given you our word. Our invoice is always
Speaker 1: our legal guarantee, and has previously stated if this painting
Speaker 1: has proved not to be by the hand of Pollock,
Speaker 1: the sale would be canceled, to painting return to Knodler
Speaker 1: and the full purchase refunded to you end quote. The
Speaker 1: hypocrisy of the letter was breathtaking, but Ann's huffing and
Speaker 1: puffing seemed to do the trick. On November six, two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Pierre Lagrange completed his purchase of the silvery Pollock.
Speaker 1: The Knodler provided a written guarantee that Lagrange's pollock was
Speaker 1: from a quote private collection of the heir to a
Speaker 1: collector who had obtained it directly from Jackson Pollock. End quote.
Speaker 1: The air insisted on anonymity. With seventeen million dollars rendered,
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange gave his new painting a place of honor
Speaker 1: in his London penthouse, unaware that its true value it
Speaker 1: was little more than the canvas it was painted on.
Speaker 1: More art fraud in a minute. Around the same time
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange was acquiring his seven figure Pollock Glafia, Rosalie's
Speaker 1: success was perhaps going to her head. An opportunity for
Speaker 1: new business came up when her old friend Heimi Andrade
Speaker 1: introduced Gfia to an ex notler dealer named Julian Weissman.
Speaker 1: Rosale spoke to Weiseman about potentially cutting ties with ann Friedman.
Speaker 1: She wanted a new start, she said. As a show
Speaker 1: of good faith, she consigned three Robert Motherwell paintings to
Speaker 1: Wiseman's gallery, who works were said to be from Motherwell's
Speaker 1: Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. The third painting from
Speaker 1: the series ultimately sold by Wiseman for six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars to Mark Blondo, director of the Irish
Speaker 1: Kalila Gallery. Blondeau like Lagrange wanted authentication and he got it.
Speaker 1: Jack Flam and Morgan Spangler, co directors of the Motherwell
Speaker 1: Foundation known as the Dadalist, spent hours poring over the
Speaker 1: Blonde Motherwell. Its lack of provenance bothered them, but they
Speaker 1: felt obligated to authenticate it. The painting was just that good.
Speaker 1: Flam and Spangler spent the rest of two thousand seven
Speaker 1: finishing Motherwell's catalog resid A. As they did, they noticed
Speaker 1: a troubling trend more Spanish elegy paintings without provenance. There
Speaker 1: were seven in all, including the one now owned by
Speaker 1: the Khalila Gallery. To the foundation's dismay, four of the
Speaker 1: seven paintings were being sold by the Knoedler Gallery. Jack
Speaker 1: Flam insisted at all seven Spanish elegy paintings be shown
Speaker 1: together at the Knoedler and resisted as long as she could,
Speaker 1: but ultimately she caved and agreed. The Spanish elegies were spectacular,
Speaker 1: but curiously, they were all signed exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: This was strange for a painter who was known to
Speaker 1: vary his signature from picture to picture. Three of the
Speaker 1: paintings had gone from Gera to Weissman, indicating that Rosalis
Speaker 1: had played her side game, likely to ann Friedman's surprise
Speaker 1: now and admitted the obvious. All seven paintings had come
Speaker 1: from the same source for the moment, she refused to
Speaker 1: say who that source. Was Alarmed, the Dadalus Foundation demanded
Speaker 1: Knoedler higher, a widely respected forensic art expert named Jamie Martin,
Speaker 1: to test two of the disputed Spanish Elegy paintings. Martin
Speaker 1: also tested genuine when Motherwell paintings for comparison's sake. What
Speaker 1: Jamie Martin would do is he will take a painting
Speaker 1: and he will investigate all the aspects of the pain
Speaker 1: from the frame to the paints that are used. That's
Speaker 1: Jason Hernandez, Assistant District Attorney to New York Second District,
Speaker 1: and the course of his criminal investigation, Jason gleaned a
Speaker 1: wealth of knowledge about the forensic testing process. He'll take
Speaker 1: an incredibly small slice of the paint. He will investigate
Speaker 1: the dust that's in the crevices and the cracks of
Speaker 1: the paint, and he will determine, you know, what the
Speaker 1: composition of those materials are. He will look for what
Speaker 1: he calls anomalies, meaning things that shouldn't be there. And
Speaker 1: I'll give you a very very simple example. I think
Speaker 1: it was the DuPont Corporation at some point patented titanium dioxide,
Speaker 1: which really makes whites really white. It was patented sometime
Speaker 1: and I don't know the seventies I'm going to call it.
Speaker 1: But what that means is that if I present to
Speaker 1: you a Pollock painting and it has titanium diox, I
Speaker 1: didn't we have a problem because Jackson Pollock was dead
Speaker 1: before titanium dioxide was discovered. And Jamie Martin's report was devastating.
Speaker 1: He found that a red pigment in one of these
Speaker 1: Spanish elegies hadn't existed until years after the paintings were
Speaker 1: said to be made. All seven of the Spanish elegies
Speaker 1: were immediately scrapped from the upcoming Motherwell catalog Resone. The
Speaker 1: Kalila Gallerbay sued the Dadalists. The Dadalist sued Weissman, the dealer.
Speaker 1: In the end, all parties settled, with money changing hands
Speaker 1: and the Kalila's painting branded on its verso as a forgery.
Speaker 1: One day, while Jamie Martin was studying the Spanish elegies,
Speaker 1: Jack Flam had a memorable talk with Ann Friedman. She said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get Michael Hammer involved in this.
Speaker 1: He's very lititious, Flam later recalled. Despite her wish to
Speaker 1: keep the Spanish Elegy debacle off her boss's desk, Friedman
Speaker 1: and Hammer had forged an alliance right from the start,
Speaker 1: As a lawsuit would later allege, Anne had kept her
Speaker 1: boss in the loop on the sales of Rosales's paintings
Speaker 1: from the beginning. She sent Hammer short write ups of
Speaker 1: every new painting that came in. The writeups detailed how
Speaker 1: much the gallery paid Glofere for each picture wholesale and
Speaker 1: how much Nodler had sold them for retail to its customers.
Speaker 1: And yet years later, Anne felt afraid of Michael Hammer
Speaker 1: enough to worry he might sue her. It seemed as
Speaker 1: if each partner still kept some secrets from the other.
Speaker 1: From the start, Knoedler's owner, Michael Hammer had kept all
Speaker 1: but invisible in his spacious office at the gallery. Staffers
Speaker 1: rarely saw him, and when they did, it was hard
Speaker 1: not to be distracted by his artificial tan and a
Speaker 1: wardrobe that could charitably be described as extravagance. Hammers roughly
Speaker 1: two dozen vintage cars, some worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,
Speaker 1: only underscore the sense that here was a man of
Speaker 1: almost unimaginable wealth, free to do as he wished. By
Speaker 1: the fall of two thousand nine, news of the fake
Speaker 1: Spanish elegy paintings had reached the Prosecutor's office in the
Speaker 1: Second District of New York. Investigators were now sifting through
Speaker 1: and Friedman's seventeen years as head of the Ndler Gallery.
Speaker 1: Any hopes and had of keeping Michael Hammer out of
Speaker 1: the loop were dashed. Seeing law enforcement walked through the
Speaker 1: doors had jolted Hammer to his core. That October, he
Speaker 1: terminated and Freedman's employment from the Ndler Gallery. Her feet
Speaker 1: barely touched the floor as security guards swept her through
Speaker 1: the gallery and out the front doors under the Royal
Speaker 1: blue awning and was finished. We'll be back after this.
Speaker 1: Back in London, Pierre Lagrange was having trouble of his own.
Speaker 1: Just two years after buying his seventeen million dollar pollock,
Speaker 1: he was embarking on a divorce. He was advised to
Speaker 1: sell his recently acquired pollock and split the proceeds with
Speaker 1: his soon to be ex wife Lagrange was shocked to
Speaker 1: discover that neither Southnbies nor Christie's would accept the work.
Speaker 1: After all, the Pollock had no provenance, and its surfaced
Speaker 1: only a few years before. David and Pham, one of
Speaker 1: the world's most respected authorities on modern American art, was
Speaker 1: just as skeptical when he personally viewed the painting in
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange's London home. It was the ninth of April
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight when I paid a visit and
Speaker 1: I saw the whole collection of the and suddenly we
Speaker 1: got to the Pollock. Pierre looked at me. I looked
Speaker 1: at Pierre's advisor, and I think I said, what do
Speaker 1: you think? And I wouldcall very clearly, saying well, that
Speaker 1: has a history. And they were hoping for some more words.
Speaker 1: But I never said the west was silence. They were
Speaker 1: hoping that you would say the painting was right. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I did not say. La Grange had
Speaker 1: the distinct feeling he was being toyed with, and he
Speaker 1: was angry. Where was Ann Friedman anyway? News of her
Speaker 1: firing hadn't yet made its way to La Grange. The
Speaker 1: Knoedler was playing a vanishing game of its own. The
Speaker 1: gallery flat out refused to take back Lagrange's Pollock, nor
Speaker 1: would it be fund his seventeen million dollars. After all,
Speaker 1: the gallery insisted the painting was genuine. Lagrange was seeing
Speaker 1: read he wanted his money, and surfaced in November two
Speaker 1: with an email meant to lower the temperature. Once again,
Speaker 1: she insisted politely but firmly, that Lagrange's Pollock was one
Speaker 1: of several newly discovered works that would be added to
Speaker 1: a revised Pollock catalog. Resimee Ann's timing couldn't have been worse.
Speaker 1: Just one month after her attempt to band aid the
Speaker 1: Lagrange situation with yet another lie, Jackson, Pollock expert Eugene
Speaker 1: Thaw shocked the art world with a declaration of seismic proportions.
Speaker 1: Thaw declared that Legrange's silvery Pollock looked not right to him.
Speaker 1: Thaw was in poor health and he wanted to be
Speaker 1: sure his judgment was made clear, so in early two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, he repeated his claim in a videotaped Affidavid
Speaker 1: the painting looked fake to him, Thal said, AND's email
Speaker 1: was immediately and entirely invalidated. It was now February two eleven.
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange still had no interest in meeting Ann Friedman,
Speaker 1: but word was that a grand jury was convening to
Speaker 1: consider charges stemming from the fake Spanish elegies, and Anne
Speaker 1: was said to be a subject of interest. Lagrange decided
Speaker 1: he would meet with her after all, and suggested the
Speaker 1: lounge of the Carlisle Hotel with its serpentine rooms of
Speaker 1: overstuffed chairs. Anne arrived early to the Carlyle on a
Speaker 1: wintry day and shows a small table in a cozy
Speaker 1: lowlit corner. She recognized Lagrange from his long gray hair
Speaker 1: and angular face as soon as he walked in, and
Speaker 1: stood up to greet him and his attorney, Matthew Donson.
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange, I'm Ann Friedman. It's nice to meet you,
Speaker 1: she said, don't be so sure, Lagrange seethed in his
Speaker 1: eligian accent. Lagrange ordered a cocktail, the lawyer a coke.
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to meeting you and discussing the painting,
Speaker 1: and said, cheerfully, let's talk about how I can be helpful.
Speaker 1: I want my money, the groans said, his voice rising
Speaker 1: with each word. That's all, and tried to stay calm,
Speaker 1: She leaned forward a bit. It's hard to predict the market,
Speaker 1: she noted. She said they might have to wait a
Speaker 1: while before selling the painting, but she and La Grange
Speaker 1: would be able to help each other out of this fix,
Speaker 1: and said assuredly. That was when Lagrange lashed out quote.
Speaker 1: He started screaming at the top of his lungs. I'm
Speaker 1: going to set you on fire. Do you understand that
Speaker 1: I'm going to set you on fire? And you will
Speaker 1: have no life. It will be over, and it will
Speaker 1: hit the press and you will be done. And tried
Speaker 1: to reason with the Belgian financier in a calm voice,
Speaker 1: as if talking to an unruly child. Taking the painting
Speaker 1: back simply wasn't an option. She said all the experts
Speaker 1: agreed it was real, and so did she, and said
Speaker 1: she offered to take the painting on consignment and try
Speaker 1: to sell it to someone else. Lagrange was astounded. Anne's
Speaker 1: solution was to find some other sap to unload the
Speaker 1: painting on. Not only was that wildly irresponsible, but surely
Speaker 1: illegal as well. The two of them would be selling
Speaker 1: a painting Lagrange now believed was a fake. If Noodler
Speaker 1: didn't immediately return his money and take back the painting.
Speaker 1: Lagrange railed, he would destroy her reputation. He was furious.
Speaker 1: Lagrange and Johnson stood up. The meeting was clearly over.
Speaker 1: Everyone by now at the Carlysle was staring. This was
Speaker 1: a real scene, and recounted. The waiter came over and
Speaker 1: asked if she is all right. Later, Lagrange would deny
Speaker 1: A's account of the meeting. He hadn't raised his voice,
Speaker 1: he said. The calamity at the Carlisle merely confirmed Lagrange's
Speaker 1: worst fears. He was sure his Pollock was a fake,
Speaker 1: and Friedman persona non grata. At the n Nodler could
Speaker 1: do nothing to get him his money back. Lagrange's only
Speaker 1: move was to squeeze the reclusive Michael Hammer, Noodler's chairman,
Speaker 1: in whatever way he could to recover his seventeen million.
Speaker 1: Lagrange had no idea how utterly dependent the gallery was
Speaker 1: on the sales of Ga Feara Rosales's paintings. He did
Speaker 1: note with interest that Hammer had put one of the
Speaker 1: galleries two adjoining mansions up for sale for more than
Speaker 1: a year, The seventeen thousand square foot Italian Renaissance building
Speaker 1: at nineteen seventy Street had been quietly shopped around town
Speaker 1: for fifty nine point nine million dollars. That is a
Speaker 1: high price in a bear market. It remained for sale
Speaker 1: until February two thousand eleven, when it sold for thirty
Speaker 1: one million dollars, half its original asking price. As it
Speaker 1: turned out, the sale came shortly before the disastrous Carlisle
Speaker 1: Hotel meeting. Lagrange knew exactly where seventeen million of the
Speaker 1: mansions proceeds should go, but Nodler had no interest in
Speaker 1: giving any of that money back to the London hedge funder.
Speaker 1: The standoff with Lagrange remained a secret through much of
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven as lawyers attempted to resolve the situation.
Speaker 1: Then in October came news of the Motherwell Spanish elegy settlement. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Patricia Cohen, and I'm a reporter for the New
Speaker 1: York Times. Patricia's first scoop about the Noodler saga was
Speaker 1: dated October eleventh, two thousand eleven. I had no idea
Speaker 1: at that point that that story was going to kind
Speaker 1: of splode into one of the biggest art frauds of
Speaker 1: the last hundred years. I just started digging around, and
Speaker 1: even though that story was relatively short, I quickly realized
Speaker 1: that there was a much bigger story buried beneath this
Speaker 1: with with a lot more questions that came up, and
Speaker 1: then I started digging. Cohen's story in the Times prompted
Speaker 1: Lagrange to do something he should have done far earlier.
Speaker 1: He called Jamie Martin, the forensic expert who had analyzed
Speaker 1: the motherwells, and requested a test on the polit no
Speaker 1: auction house would touch. The tests confirmed Lagrange's worst fears.
Speaker 1: Various pigments in the painting had not existed in nine
Speaker 1: when the painting was supposedly made. It was forensically impossible
Speaker 1: for the work to be legitimate. The report Lagrange received
Speaker 1: in late November of two thousand eleven brought full throated
Speaker 1: legal action. In a searing letter to Michael Hammer, Lagrange
Speaker 1: demanded that Knodler refund his seventeen million dollars in forty
Speaker 1: eight hours or face a lawsuit. The letter would ultimately
Speaker 1: be the last straw from Michael Hammer to Lagrange's astonishment.
Speaker 1: Hammer responded by closing the Knoedler's brass doors permanently on
Speaker 1: November eleven, sixty five years after it first opened for business.
Speaker 1: Gafara wasn't actually named, but New York Times readers learned
Speaker 1: the name of Ann Friedman and learned too that she
Speaker 1: had been accused of selling fake Motherwell's while she was
Speaker 1: president of Nodler. Was there a sense of starting to
Speaker 1: connect the dots sort of? I remember that day very
Speaker 1: well because it was a big scandal. There was an
Speaker 1: FBI investigate issue. We were talking about, you know, many
Speaker 1: paintings in many millions of dollars, and I knew about
Speaker 1: the Pierre Lagrange lawsuit, and so I had basically been
Speaker 1: planning within the next week to have this you know,
Speaker 1: big expose about this, and then when the gallery closed,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh shit, we have to cover this,
Speaker 1: but you know, we've got this really other, big story,
Speaker 1: but I can't get into all of that yet because
Speaker 1: not every single piece had turned down. So essentially I
Speaker 1: covered that as a new story, um, giving enough detail
Speaker 1: that we knew something was going on, but also not
Speaker 1: essentially wanting to kind of expose what we knew was
Speaker 1: going to be part of this really big takedown. Incredibly,
Speaker 1: just two days before Noodler closed its doors and two
Speaker 1: years since she'd been fired, and placed a very strange
Speaker 1: phone call who noted Clifford Steel expert David and Fam,
Speaker 1: the same expert who had viewed Pierre Lagrange's fake Pollock
Speaker 1: in London, and telephone me on the November twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: The game was up. By then, basically we knew that
Speaker 1: it was all hopes since things were fakes in a
Speaker 1: truly baffling move, and was lobbying an Fham to have
Speaker 1: the burned fragment of a fake Clifford Steel painting added
Speaker 1: officially to the Clifford Steel Museum. This was the very
Speaker 1: same painting Carlos Bergantino's had burned with a hair dryer
Speaker 1: and told GA to say had caught fire in a car.
Speaker 1: I was absolutely astonished that Ann wanted me to write
Speaker 1: some kind of a letter about the Clifford Store Museum
Speaker 1: accepting this flagmant of the painting, and I told him
Speaker 1: point blank is not up to me to do it,
Speaker 1: so if anyone is going to do it, it would
Speaker 1: have to be approved by director, by the Bold and
Speaker 1: so forth. So it was to me um a phone
Speaker 1: call that left me spaceless. Even at the time when
Speaker 1: I wrote it, I bore exclamation marks after that note
Speaker 1: because of extraordinary On the morning of December two, two
Speaker 1: tho high pitched scream could be heard from the bedroom
Speaker 1: of a hotel suite in Miami, Florida. The annual Art
Speaker 1: Bosl Fair was about to begin, and Domenico and Eleanor
Speaker 1: Desole had arrived early to get premium tickets. Eleanor was
Speaker 1: scrolling through The New York Times on her iPad when
Speaker 1: a story jumped out. Domenico rushed from the shower to
Speaker 1: see what was wrong. Too shocked to speak, Eleanor handed
Speaker 1: him the iPad, her hands shaking. Patricia Cohen's first story
Speaker 1: in the New York Times had mentioned the Knoedler and
Speaker 1: publicly identified Glefara Rosales for the first time, but it
Speaker 1: was a short piece and the Disules may not have
Speaker 1: noticed it. That morning's follow up about Pierre Lagrange and
Speaker 1: his fake Pollock made the news all too clear. One
Speaker 1: of the soules first calls that morning was to Ann
Speaker 1: Friedman and swore to the Dosilas that the Lagrange Pollock
Speaker 1: described in the New York Times was real. So were
Speaker 1: the rest of the works in the David Herbert collection,
Speaker 1: including the Desuls, Rothko, the Dosilas demanded evidence who was
Speaker 1: this mysterious Mr x Jr. Through whom all these paintings
Speaker 1: had flowed, who was glefi Rosales, for that matter, and
Speaker 1: promised she would soon be learning the identity of the
Speaker 1: mysterious collector herself. The Soles were incredulous, and had previously
Speaker 1: told them she know the collector. As one of the
Speaker 1: Dess lawyers later put it, the most basic tenet of
Speaker 1: authenticity for the Rothco was a lie. Neither Anne Freedman
Speaker 1: nor the n Noodler Gallery knew the true identity of
Speaker 1: their supposed client. Among the dozen or so victims who
Speaker 1: began peppering the now defunct k Noodler Gallery with legal
Speaker 1: demands for their money back was Francis Beatty. To her
Speaker 1: shock and horror, Francis discovered that a Clifford Steel painting
Speaker 1: she had purchased from Anne in two thousand was likely
Speaker 1: just another fake from the supposed David Herbert collection. Beatty
Speaker 1: had loved Clifford Stills paintings from her earliest days. They're
Speaker 1: incredibly exciting. They look like sort of lightning or jagged
Speaker 1: cliffs in an abstract way. They have enormous electricity and sometimes.
Speaker 1: The colors are very I would say, dance intense, and
Speaker 1: they have a tremendous sense of movement, very dynamic. Finding
Speaker 1: them was a challenge. Clifford stills are rare. You don't
Speaker 1: know where in the current universe there's going to be
Speaker 1: a Clifford still for sale and one that someone might
Speaker 1: let you get your hands on. I mean, they're not
Speaker 1: sitting there in people's inventory. I had a colleague who
Speaker 1: came in and said to me, could you sell a
Speaker 1: great Clifford still, a great early still? And I said,
Speaker 1: you bet you I can, And he said, I know
Speaker 1: where there is one. There's a beauty, and Ann Friedman
Speaker 1: has it. Francis rushed over to the notler. She was stunned.
Speaker 1: The painting was perfect, the Jagon mountains, the colors, perfect size.
Speaker 1: I had sold to pictures of this pure so over
Speaker 1: a period. It took me, you know, fifteen years to
Speaker 1: find the first one, twenty years to find the second one.
Speaker 1: But of course it had no provenance. Oh I remember
Speaker 1: very specifically because I said, this has no provenance and
Speaker 1: it hasn't been exhibited anywhere. And so Anne wrote me
Speaker 1: an email saying that it belonged to a Mexican who
Speaker 1: had gotten it directly from Clifford Still and had been
Speaker 1: in the same family that entire time to close the
Speaker 1: deal and made an unusual promised to Francis. If we
Speaker 1: did the deal, she would reveal the provenance to me.
Speaker 1: I showed it to a wonderful restorer, very good friend
Speaker 1: of mine, Alan goldrac who had been the restorer who
Speaker 1: had unwrapped all the Clifford stills for the Metropolitan Museum's retrospective.
Speaker 1: Francis also showed the painting to David an fhem as
Speaker 1: much the Clifford still expert as the ultimate connoisseur for
Speaker 1: Pollock and Rothcobe. He had liked the picture very much.
Speaker 1: Despite the positive affirmations from experts, Francis remained wary. So
Speaker 1: I said to Anne, I need a Nodler guarantee, and
Speaker 1: you have to guarantee the authenticity of this picture with
Speaker 1: Noler behind it, so if the authenticity is questioned, you
Speaker 1: return the money to the client. And what did she
Speaker 1: say to that? Fine? And I got her to write
Speaker 1: a guarantee of authenticity on the Clifford still, and I
Speaker 1: gave a copy of it to the client. And at
Speaker 1: that point I thought you know what, We're safe if
Speaker 1: the worst thing possibly happens and something goes wrong. It
Speaker 1: is a Nodler guarantee, and no Ler is the last
Speaker 1: place in the world that would renege on any kind
Speaker 1: of guarantee. With that baby and two fellow dealers put
Speaker 1: their money down about one million dollars. They sold it
Speaker 1: for one point one million to the collector who had
Speaker 1: pushed for the still in the first place. An entire
Speaker 1: decade passed no issues with the painting. Popped up curiously, however,
Speaker 1: and failed to keep her side of the bargain with Francis.
Speaker 1: She didn't tell me who she got the picture phone.
Speaker 1: I probably should have pressed her on that, but I
Speaker 1: didn't because I think once I had obtained this Nodler
Speaker 1: guarantee in writing, I thought that I had sort of
Speaker 1: an impregnable defense. So fast forward to two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: Pierre Lagrange shouts it from the rooftops that he's paid
Speaker 1: seventeen million dollars for a fake Pollock. What was your
Speaker 1: reaction to that news. I'm not sure I want to
Speaker 1: say it on air. I mean, holy moley, um, we
Speaker 1: were absolutely stunned. We went and did the forensic testing
Speaker 1: I think it had some kind of white in it
Speaker 1: that hadn't been invented back then. And also the pigments
Speaker 1: were of more recent vintage. God, so at that point
Speaker 1: obviously you had to call your customer, who who bought
Speaker 1: the painting. We said, we're going to give you back
Speaker 1: your money and sue and I think we um We
Speaker 1: sent him a check for one million, one thousand, but
Speaker 1: he said to us that he thought the picture was
Speaker 1: now worth three million and he was going to sue
Speaker 1: us for that much money. I mean the suit must
Speaker 1: have cost three yo dollars. And then we finally settled.
Speaker 1: You settled with Ndler, which, of course, by now was
Speaker 1: almost like a dead man walking, right. I mean it
Speaker 1: had closed in officially, so you were you were negotiating
Speaker 1: with a company that did it even exist. Right. We
Speaker 1: were in the same boat as everybody else. Little by little,
Speaker 1: lots of people were settling to get something. So we
Speaker 1: were out the million dollars. We were out the cost
Speaker 1: of the litigation a million four so maybe it was
Speaker 1: more like a million plus. Well, that must have haunted
Speaker 1: you for a long time. It was a terrible thing
Speaker 1: for the profession. I'm the secretary of the Art Dealers
Speaker 1: Association of America. And I'm an art historian and I
Speaker 1: love the art dealing profession. It's full of wonderful, devoted
Speaker 1: experts and people who love art. And this was just
Speaker 1: a devastating blow. So it was on everybody's lips, and
Speaker 1: it made you feel like you've gone from decades and
Speaker 1: decades devoted to doing the right thing and suddenly you
Speaker 1: were all like in cahoots with al Capone. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was hugely distressing. What happened to the painting. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's because we got the painting back and it was
Speaker 1: in our basement and I really wanted to take it out,
Speaker 1: take it to, you know, the Clifford Still Museum, and
Speaker 1: you know, stand it up and look at other pictures
Speaker 1: of that vintage and figure out how why I had
Speaker 1: how I had made this mistake. There's no question that
Speaker 1: was a fake. But it was so damn good. It
Speaker 1: was in the story to Richard Fannigan and Company. And
Speaker 1: when we closed, when Richard left that building, I don't
Speaker 1: know where it is and I kind of have a
Speaker 1: mental note of trying to track it down and find
Speaker 1: out where it is. By March two, twelves had a
Speaker 1: team of lawyers harnessed up. Domenico Disle was a gentle
Speaker 1: family man, but being cond out of eight point four
Speaker 1: million dollars set of fire raging in his Italian soul.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just set on getting his money back. He
Speaker 1: wanted triple damages, a so called WECo penalty for what
Speaker 1: amounted to a conspiracy among all of the defendants. A
Speaker 1: trio of top art fraud lawyers began inundating the Knodler
Speaker 1: with demands for documents. The number of artists, the number
Speaker 1: of unknown works that cheap prices, know they're got them
Speaker 1: for the incredible markups they sold them for. That's in
Speaker 1: the papers we got in the first few months. Those
Speaker 1: are just invoices from the nother gallery. I spoke with
Speaker 1: the Disols attorneys, Aaron Crowle, Emily royce Baum and Gregory
Speaker 1: Clark at their law offices, so we had discovery from
Speaker 1: them relatively early on with those documents. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's a big part of the case, right from the beginning,
Speaker 1: right and also early on, before Jamie Martin had had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to examine a number of different works like
Speaker 1: he had looked at Pierre Le Grange's work. I think
Speaker 1: he had looked at ours. We were telling the judge,
Speaker 1: this is like you go to Canal Street and there's
Speaker 1: a table. You don't have to one watches fake. They're
Speaker 1: all fake. You don't have to test them all to
Speaker 1: know that they're all fake. And sure enough, Jamie proved
Speaker 1: that it was the same paint for the Pollock, for
Speaker 1: the roth Cooe. You know that spread ten years apart.
Speaker 1: Over the course of the two years between when we
Speaker 1: filed the case and leading guilty. Over the course of
Speaker 1: that time, Jamie Martin ultimately had access to eighteen works
Speaker 1: out of the fort on the list, and he proved
Speaker 1: every single one was a fake. What emerged was what
Speaker 1: we showed that trial with the witness testimony, that there
Speaker 1: were no experts who authenticated these paintings. For another it
Speaker 1: just didn't happen. The lawyers came up with six red
Speaker 1: flags clear indicators of a criminal enterprise. The one that
Speaker 1: seems to interest people the most is the profits. And
Speaker 1: you know, our expert testified that ordinarily in the secondary market,
Speaker 1: the dealer will make twenty to thirty percent of a profit.
Speaker 1: So they buy for a hundred dollars, they sell for
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty dollars, they get to pocket thirty dollars. No,
Speaker 1: there was making hundreds from the very beginning, making hundreds
Speaker 1: of percent profits, and as the scheme went on, it
Speaker 1: multiplied to six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred percent. Now
Speaker 1: instead of just a little deep in corn on paper,
Speaker 1: you had a pollock, you had a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: had a bunch of them, and so you know, and
Speaker 1: the profits were a loan, a signal. And I think
Speaker 1: this is that hit the jurors the most, that the
Speaker 1: profits were a signal that, like, something was wrong here.
Speaker 1: But the number of works was wildly off the charts.
Speaker 1: By early two thousand thirteen, the lawyers for the Soles
Speaker 1: had done enough discovery to feel they had a rock
Speaker 1: solid case. Jason Hernandez wasn't so sure, and assistant district
Speaker 1: attorney specializing in fraud cases in New York City's Second District,
Speaker 1: Hernandez had come to be wary of fraud cases built
Speaker 1: on the testimony of experts. That was testimony the defense
Speaker 1: could easily counter with experts of their own. After all,
Speaker 1: who was to say which expert would be right? Hernandez
Speaker 1: knew the case would be an enormous challenge. There were
Speaker 1: an unusually large number of prominent people who seemingly were
Speaker 1: going to stand by the paintings and say that they
Speaker 1: were real. That is uncommon, and I could see right away. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you get over that? Because if
Speaker 1: the person selling them is showing them to all of
Speaker 1: these steam people and they're saying, yep, looks right to me,
Speaker 1: looks good to me, that's not a criminal case anymore.
Speaker 1: Despite the mountain of lawsuits, only one case would go
Speaker 1: to trial. Eleanor and Domenico de Soule versus the defendants
Speaker 1: and friedmanfro Rosalee, carlos Bergantino's, Michael Hammer and the NLAR Gallery.
Speaker 1: That's next time on art Fraud, Why looks so awflyet
Speaker 1: tragic but on a happy face? Smiling can work like magic,
Speaker 1: but on a happy face. Take off the gloomy mask, tragedy.
Speaker 1: It's not your style. You look so good that you'll
Speaker 1: be glad you decided to smile. Art Fraud is brought
Speaker 1: to you by I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner,
Speaker 1: myself and Michael Schneyerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan and
Speaker 1: Zach McNeice. Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay
Speaker 1: Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneyerson.
Speaker 1: Blood on a happy face, on a happy face.