WEBVTT - A Questionable Diebenkorn 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:06.080 The art world is an unregulated business billions of dollars. 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:10.800 It is essentially a money laundering business. You're working with 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:15.680 an artificial scarcity of market, and so it's fraud, with 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:23.880 people cutting corners and things happening. It was when Ann Friedman, 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.560 then the newly minted director of the Knoedler Gallery, first 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:34.640 met Gafa Rosales had a soho art opening. Larry Reuben 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.640 had been pushed out of Knoedler a year earlier in 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.680 a coup that ended with Ann Friedman being installed at 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:45.479 the blessing of Michael Hammer. K Nodler's sales were flat, 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.320 the clients were leaving in droves, and Ann Friedman needed 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:53.080 new work to help propel the gallery forward. The Knoedler, 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.639 always one step behind the times, was hurtling towards the 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:03.640 art world of a new millennium. The galleries long time 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.120 assistant him Andrade, had introduced Ann to the soft spoken, 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:12.560 polite woman of Mexican heritage. As fate would have it, 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.360 Gfia Rosalez had two works of art on paper she 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:21.679 wanted to sell. About. All that anyone could agree on 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.600 was that hime Andrade was a shy Ecuadorian man of 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.039 modest height. He was one of eleven children who had 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.920 come to New York in the early nineteen sixties and 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:37.319 found a home in a circle of artificionados. He'd made 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.360 his way to Larry Ruben's gallery one Street and worked 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.759 as the galley's driver. Reuben had then brought him over 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:46.959 to Knoedler as a sort of jack of old trades. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.800 His job was to do pretty much whatever anyone wanted 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.760 him to do. As Anne put it in one of 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.880 her interviews for Vanity Fair, he would do everything from 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.000 changing light fixtures to running errands. But he always wore 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:03.840 a blazer and a tie and went to fancy dinner 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.320 parties and escorted well to do women. He was like 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.080 a mascot, but I mean that in a respectful way. 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.880 He epitomized the spirit of the gallery. Despite a faulty 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.919 grasp of English. After half a century, Hymie was perfectly 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.800 capable of charming one of those women into buying a 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:27.839 painting from Knodler. Andrade's greatest passion was Latin American art. 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.359 As late as two thousand eleven, while the forgery ring 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:36.720 was metastasizing amid criminal investigations, the boyish Andrade gave a 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.440 talk about Ecuadorian art and his fifty years of immersion 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:45.080 in it at the mid Manhattan Library. The Knottler, in 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.840 a press release for it, would describe Andrott's long time 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.440 friend and dealer David Herbert as quote one of the 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:59.079 best American portrait artists. Unquote that was patently untrue. But Herbert, 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:04.120 upon his death, would be cast in another role as 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.920 a central figure in the back story of Knoedler's conspiracy 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.720 of fakes, possibly aided and embedded by hime Andrade, who 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:17.160 had just become David Herbert's executor. With boxes of documents 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:21.919 rich in art world lore, Anne would never quite come 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.560 out and say explicitly that him may have steered her 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.760 to the papers that gave rise to a conspiracy ring 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:32.760 of art forgers, but more than one Knodler's staffer would 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.800 take umbrage at the way Anne defended him less than 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:42.720 forcefully in Vanity Fair. Was Anne implying that hime Andrade 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.520 had introduced her to Glafia Rosales knowing the two works 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:50.360 at issue were fake, or had him done no more 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.720 than to introduce his boss to a Mexican woman who 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:58.400 shared his love of Latin American arts. Here again is 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.320 writer Michael Schneyerson. Leslie Feeley took a dim review of 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.800 Anne and her treatment of Himie. She said Anne treated 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.400 Himie more like a gopher than a mascot. Quote. He 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.840 was a very kind, dignified man, but Anne would send 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.920 him out to get her tampons. Unquote. He had a 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:20.760 poor education the legacy of his childhood in Ecuador. Jimmy 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.600 was a gopher. He that's he was. He was going 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:27.560 and he got to know a lot of people in 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.360 the art business. He had more aught in his home, 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.840 but all South America. That's the Noteler's art handler Joe 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:40.280 Stevens Andrade rented a ground floor apartment in an ornate 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.920 but musty rental building at seventeen East seventieth Street, literally 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.880 next door to the Noodler. He seemed to like being 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.680 on call for whatever needs a rose. I used to 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.040 stay there whenever I had openings because I worked so late. 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:57.719 And now I used to go and wife said, man, 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.000 I'm gonna come, I'm saying, Heimie's Chris, Jimmy. We'd go 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:02.880 a call out and have you know, you know, at 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.200 ten o'clock, ten thirty at night, after we locked up 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.400 and tell me about the apartment that he had. There 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.919 was stuffed, like this place is three four times bigger 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.760 than his apartment. He had a huge and art work everywhere. 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.360 Fifty pieces on the wall is big. He had all 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:27.680 this African South American sculptures everywhere, boxes everywhere. You couldn't 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.880 put another thing on that counter. That's a pack. He 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:36.120 had closets filled with this stuff. He was like, it 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:41.800 looked like aoid up who did everything. Rosales and Androde 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.520 had struck up a friendship based on Latin American artist 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.960 sometime in the late es. At some point, Rosals mentioned 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.800 she was trying to sell two works on paper by 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.920 Richard deepen Corn, the great abstract artist represented for years 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:01.359 by the Knodler Gallery until Larry reuben departure and Anne's 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.640 promotion did I may think Ann Friedman might take a 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.599 look and tell Glyphira what she thought. This was a 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:14.159 pivotal moment the first time Glypira Rosalee focused on Ann 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:20.240 Friedman as her target for newly minted forgeries. Soon enough, 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.760 and Friedman found herself looking at a pair of classic 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:28.520 deepen Corn drawings. Sadly, that great profusion of Ocean Park 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.400 paintings and drawings. All those Christmas mornings the staff had 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.919 described opening brand new deep In corn work had come 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:40.279 to an end. Deep In Corn had died in and 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.320 his daughter Gretchen and son in law Richard Grant, co 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.080 heads of the Artists Foundation, had ended the galleries long 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.560 association with Deepen Corn. They didn't much like Ann Friedman. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.360 They liked her even less after the coup that put 0:06:54.400 --> 0:07:00.280 her in charge. Still, Nodler was widely known as Eben 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:04.520 Corn's main gallery. There would be no more primary works 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.520 directly from the artist, but secondary works, those that had 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.000 changed hands at least once, were fair game for anyone 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.040 who wanted to buy or sell them, and Nodler could 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.880 put buyers and sellers together as well or better than 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.360 anyone else, given its history with the artist. So when 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.280 hera offered to show Anne too Deepen Corns, the Nodler's 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:31.720 director jumped at the chance. Days after Anne's coup in November, 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.920 a certain calm had come over the Kndler Gallery. Larry 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.520 Reuben had even agreed to stay on as director until 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.760 the last day of the year. The old art world 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:46.600 War horse had recovered his spirits somewhat and shrugged off 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.600 the coup. Perhaps it was time for him to leave 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:54.920 Ndler after all. Gracefully, he even did Ann Friedman a 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.720 favor by agreeing to take a look at the too 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.400 Deepened Corn works on paper. Like most of Deep and 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.840 Corn's work since the mid nineteen sixties, these were geometrical 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:09.040 abstractions from his Ocean Park series. When Anne asked where 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:13.760 they'd come from, Rosals demurred. Regrettably. She said her client 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:20.040 wanted to remain anonymous. That was hardly unusual for works 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:24.000 brought in by perfect strangers. Unfortunately, neither of the drawings 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.840 had identifying marks on their verso verso is what dealers 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.480 call the back of an artwork, no record of the 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.760 works tracing back to the artists studio. There was no 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.720 trace of later buyers and sellers, no auction markings either. 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.840 In a word, the drawings had no provenance. That was 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:51.880 a problem. So what is provenance. It's the paper trail 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:54.280 of what we know about an artwork, starting from the 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.920 time it was created. It tells us who owned it, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.000 when it was sold, where it was shown, and so forth. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.880 Had Deep and Corn been alive, the issue of provenance 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.160 for these works would have been moot after all, the 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.360 artist was the best judge of his own work. He 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.240 could say in an instant whether these two drawings were 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.240 done by his hand or not. When an artist died, 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.000 the primary work he left behind in his studio or 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:26.240 home was easy to judge and usually genuine too, so 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.440 it wasn't difficult for the artist's family or executor to 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:34.520 authenticate those works and record them for posterity. The challenge 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:39.000 came with secondary works sold after the artist's death, works 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:42.840 bought and sold and bought again, works that sometimes vanished 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:49.000 and then reappeared. Were they real or not? An artist 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:53.400 like Deep and Corn post a special challenge. His Ocean 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:58.360 Park works were all beautiful, but also quite similar. Larry Reuben, 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.400 as it turned out, was underwell by the Ocean park 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.360 esque drawings, and Freedman showed him quote I told her 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.280 I did not think they were good, Reuben later told 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.920 Vanity Fair, which was to say, I thought they were fake. 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:18.720 He said the gallery couldn't or certainly shouldn't sell them. 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.319 Not long after, Deep and Corn's widow, Phillis, paid a 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.800 visit to the Noddler with her daughter Gretchen, and Friedman 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.280 had called the drawings to their attention. And the family 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.800 were worried about them. When Anne laid them out on 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:34.400 a table at the gallery, Gretchen and Phillis stared at 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.640 those drawings for a long time. They looked quite good. 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:44.360 We really, we're pretty impressed. It was clearly a beautiful piece. 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:49.360 I am Gretchen deep and Corn Grant. My father is 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:54.160 Richard Deepon Corn. Despite the exceptional quality of the works, 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:58.480 the family felt they were not authentic. You could see 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:03.640 the hand of the forger in both of them. You 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:08.280 look at someone's work long enough in my entire life. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:13.839 I'm seventy six years old, so I was alive during 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:19.559 my father's career, and you have a sense of it. 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.360 Not perfect, but you do have a pretty good sense. 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.040 What I said to and at the time was that 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.680 the problem for me was that they didn't have any soul. 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.440 They didn't seem to breathe. I just couldn't relate to it, 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:45.360 even though it was clearly a beautiful piece, and reactions 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.720 surprised them. She didn't even thank them for calling attention 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.760 to what might be fake Deepen corns. Neither did she 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:55.959 suggest she would hand them back to their owner, whoever 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.360 they might be. The whole question of what the nobler 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:03.960 might do with them was simply not addressed. Of course, 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.880 she didn't say to in Freedman, I think they're fake, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.240 because you know, in the art world you cannot call 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.400 something a fake because if you do so, you might 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:18.280 be sued for defamation of property. So people are very careful. 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.440 Just Seli Reggaeteo is a reporter currently with the Center 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:26.000 for Investigative Reporting. She pursued the note of story for 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.000 several years and came up with a few scoops, starting 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.640 with the story of Dr Bernard Krueger. They might say 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.920 this doesn't look right, but you don't quite say this 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.280 is fake. So it's quite interesting that I talked to 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:42.480 both Russian Demonquirn as she was seeing this this pieces 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.560 as they were about to be sold, and then I 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.200 also talked to Bernard Krueger, who was looking at the 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.680 pieces from the buyer's perspective. And in both instances, you 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.640 see there were several things strange about this. You know, 0:12:56.679 --> 0:13:00.280 where they were coming from, how they looked, how much 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:04.520 they were being offered. All of those things adopts to 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:10.280 you know, there's something strange happening here. Here's Francis Beatty again. 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.240 I do remember going to a Deep and Corn show 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.360 of Deep and Corn works on paper and someone saying 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.520 to me, you have to be super careful because you 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.280 want to make sure that you're not buying one of 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:31.400 the things that the family has disavowed. And the idea 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:37.040 that you would show something, let alone sell it, that 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:42.360 the family of the artist has disavowed, is absolutely shocking. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:47.200 I mean, you have a responsibility to your client, and 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.160 if something has a cloud over it, the cloud is 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:59.439 never going to disperse. Since the drawings were secondary market works, 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.720 the family couldn't keep Ann Friedman from doing what she 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:07.560 wanted with them, which was, of course, to sell them, 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:11.640 as Larry Reuben later told Vanity Fair, and Friedman could 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.760 justify selling those two drawings because the artist's wife had 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.680 not called them fake, nor had Larry Reuben. I wasn't 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:24.160 one sure they weren't real, Reuben explained later. And you 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.880 can get into a lot of trouble by declaring something 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.880 as fake when you don't have the hard evidence. And 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.640 since I was leaving, I said to Anne, fine, you 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:37.640 handle it, and she did. Despite the doubts expressed by 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.200 the family, and Friedman sold the Deep and Corn drawings 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:50.240 to the perfect buyer. More art fraud in a minute. 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.840 Not long after the Deep and Corn Family's disconcerting visit 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.960 to Knoedler, a doctor named Bernard Krueger received a phone 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:04.920 called he never expected to get. Krueger was a collector, 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.960 perhaps not a great collector, but an eager one, especially 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.720 in regard to which your deep in Corn's work. He 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.000 liked to think he had an inside track. He was, 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:20.120 after all, and Friedman's doctor. He told me he loved 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.040 Devon Coorn's work for many years, and at the time 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.880 he was alive in the nineties, and even before that, 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.080 I think he started buying the first diven Corns in 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:33.000 the eighties. He had to go through Knodler because at 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:38.280 the time Richard Devon Corn was alive and Knodler represented him. 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.040 And what Ben Krueger told me is that every time 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.560 he wanted to buy a piece, it was not easy. 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.480 You would think you have money, you want to buy 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:49.400 a piece of art, You walk in and say, I 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.040 want this, But that's not how it works in the 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:54.680 art world. You know, there is no like free market, 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.040 or you know, they sell for whoever they want to sell, 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:00.800 and they might give up price to me and a 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.680 different price to you. And the way that Bernard described 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.600 to me is that Ann Friedman was quite difficult and 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.800 quite protective, and she would say to him, no, you 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:14.840 cannot buy this one. If you want, you can buy 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:17.840 this other one. He said to me, I would need 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.360 to beg to buy, and sometimes she would let me buy, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.520 and sometimes she wouldn't. And I asked him why why 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.000 would she do that? And he said, well, that was 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:31.600 her way of having power and having control. Despite having 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.920 an inside track as Hans doctor, Bernard Krueger was having 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.040 a difficult time purchasing a work from the artist he 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:43.880 most coveted. Surprisingly, all of that would change after Deep 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:49.120 and Corn passed away in early and all of a sudden, 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:53.080 Bernard Krueger gets a call from Knoedler saying, we have 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:56.800 the two different corns for you to see. You know, 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.280 they just came in. I think you would like it. 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.400 I was a ready, like, wait a minute, don't you 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.800 think that was change? For years you've been begging to 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.520 buy a dipping corn. All of a sudden they're calling 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.439 you and offer you a dipping corn. And he said no. 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:13.680 I thought I was great. I thought I was finally 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:17.119 getting a good deal on a dipping corn, because he 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:19.840 bought one of them and that was one of the fakes. 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.520 If I remember the numbers right. He told me the 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.600 last deep and Corn he had bought for like a 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.760 hundred twenty five hundred thirty five thousand, and that one 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.920 he bought for eighty thou dollars. So again he was thrilled. 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:35.920 He's like, all of a sudden, I'd been offered a 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.960 deep and corn, and it's cheaper than the last one 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:44.159 I bought. Nadler did well by those two Deepen Corn sales, 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:49.399 earning forty five thousand dollars on each. When word of 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.760 the sale reached the Deep and Corn family, they were shocked, 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.680 As the late artist's daughter Gretchen said, we thought, being 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.400 the naive people we were and being honest, we basically 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:05.000 thought she would simply return them and that would be that. Instead, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.199 she wrote a letter to my mother and to me 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:16.639 that we had come to the gallery and authenticated these works, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:21.440 and therefore she had sold them, and we were very distressed. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.560 I wanted to write to Anne and tell her that 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.480 this was not okay, and that we had not authenticated them. 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.280 She can sell whatever she wants, but she can't say 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:39.360 that we authenticated it. And my mother was very shy 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:45.680 about being in an antagonistic position with anybody, and she 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.280 really didn't want me to write on behalf of myself 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:57.240 or on behalf of her, and so that was dropped. Later, 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:00.560 Dr Krueger would say he had sold the work and 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.240 had no idea where they were. Perhaps, But over the 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:08.080 next fifteen years, the Deepened Corns would routinely hear of 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:12.119 fake Deepen Corn works on paper popping up in the market. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.520 Each new appearance meant that some new owner was trying 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.960 to unload his Deepen Corns, either with or without the 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:25.600 knowledge that they were fake. When the works once again vanished, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:29.640 the implication was just as clear. Some new owner had 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:33.160 been duped or worse, set out to con his own 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:40.080 next prospective buyer. In the years to come, stories like 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.720 that would find their way to the Deepen Corn Foundation 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.640 on a regular basis. Eventually, the family counted some two 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.639 d and fifty deep in Corn images around the world, 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:55.920 submitted for authentication or just out of curiosity. They ranged 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.919 from the occasional top drawer forgery to when art students 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.760 homage for class credit left in a garage to be 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:11.119 celebrated briefly as the real McCoy. Times were tough in 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:14.720 the art market of and few galleries were feeling it 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.280 as much as Noler, which had little to live on 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.560 after Larry Reuben's departure other than its reputation and venerability. 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.960 I mean, she wasn't making much money at I mean 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:31.800 business wasn't good, and so she needs something was needed, 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:38.520 something really special. Money was needed. Still, Anne seemed to 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.240 harbor lingering concerns about those works. Perhaps she was eager 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.280 to prove their authenticity to herself and to pave the 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:49.320 way for more paintings from Glafira Rosales. Surely Coalfia could 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:52.960 share with Anna telling detail or two details to assure 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:59.920 her the works had some shred of provenance. Gently, but firmly, 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.920 Glyphia declined to say anything about where the deep and 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:08.719 corn drawings had come from. She would only say she 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:13.040 was representing a man she called Mr X Junior, whose 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.240 parents had passed on to their son more paintings by 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:19.920 some of the best known artists of the post war period. 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.840 Soon enough, Anne was calling him Mr X Junior too, 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.280 and referring to his parents as Mr. And Mrs X. 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:32.520 It sounded a bit silly, but maybe a fan played 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:37.320 ball Glyphia might introduce Anne to Mr X Juniorphia did 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.120 say that Mr X Junior had more works to sell 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:45.679 if they could be placed discreetly. These were works that 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.639 had been long stored by Mr X hermetically sealed. Even 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.520 Glafira had said the paintings had been in storage for 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.199 so long that critics and collectors would be thrilled to 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:03.040 see these lost masterpieces finally unwrapped. I have never, and 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:08.040 I actually don't have any colleagues who I know, who 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:14.680 have regularly managed to obtain from a private person a 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:19.920 picture for let's say two hundred thousand dollars that then 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:23.240 they could sell for eight hundred thousand dollars. I mean, 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:30.680 it just simply doesn't happen. If somebody came to me 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:36.840 and said, I want to sell you this Cliford Still, 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:42.280 and I know that the Cliford Stills fair market price 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.240 would be a million, and they say to me, well, 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:49.880 I'm going to sell it to you for two hundred thousand, 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:57.439 I would think immediately that it was hot. What other conclusion. 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.960 It's the same in any business. I think if you're 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:03.840 a diamond merchant, somebody comes to you with the diamond, 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:08.960 and they're selling it to you for of its real value. 0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:11.560 You would assume that there was something wrong with it. 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:18.800 You say no, thank you. And if you bought a 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.720 painting by mistake, letting your passions get the better of you, 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:24.040 what would you do when you came to your senses. 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:28.240 These things once in a while happened to dealers. You 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:32.840 just you make a mistake, but the minute you do, 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:37.600 you recognize it, you give the money back. You know you, 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:40.840 you take it, and you learn from it. Otherwise you 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:44.920 lose your reputation completely and utterly. So that's one of 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:52.200 the really key things. It wasn't long before fa Rosalez 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.120 was back in the Nler, this time with a painting 0:23:55.160 --> 0:24:00.159 by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko under her arm. It was 0:24:00.200 --> 0:24:04.119 a beautiful work, has Anne described it later, with dark 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:08.480 orbs against a pale pink peach backdrop, and like the 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:12.200 Deepen Corns, it had no provenance other than the link 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:16.520 to Mr and Mrs X. I think that they were 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:22.480 the consortium, not just Cliff ear Right. They created paintings 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:26.880 that were actually quite smart because they were very highly valued. 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:32.040 I'm Maria Condakova, I'm an author journalist and psychologist, the 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.840 author most recently of the Biggest Bluff and also most 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:39.159 relevant to this, the confidence game. I mean, let's be honest, 0:24:39.160 --> 0:24:45.120 Abstract expressionism is not necessarily the most technically advanced paintings. 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:47.800 Now I'm not saying that Rothco is not technically advanced. 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:52.080 He is. He could paint anything. But for someone who's not, 0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:57.320 you know, incredibly technically advanced painters, probably easier to create 0:24:57.440 --> 0:25:01.200 a Rothco than a rum round one. That I think 0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:03.960 you said in your book, it's very important for the 0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:07.200 con artists not to move too quickly. That was the 0:25:07.280 --> 0:25:09.199 whole part of the what I think you call the 0:25:09.280 --> 0:25:14.240 long con. Something that con artists, the good con artists 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:19.199 have in abundance is patients. Some cons take decades to 0:25:19.560 --> 0:25:22.080 play out all the way. So you really need to 0:25:22.080 --> 0:25:24.479 be able to see the long game and not just 0:25:24.560 --> 0:25:27.480 be in it for you know, the immediate profit. You 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:30.080 need to be able to see how does this play 0:25:30.119 --> 0:25:32.920 out over time? And one thing that you have to 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:35.600 hand to life Era is you know, she didn't just 0:25:35.720 --> 0:25:38.720 do her homework on and she did her homework on 0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:42.080 the art mark and how that world works and what 0:25:42.240 --> 0:25:47.280 people expect if you walk in right away with twenty 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.280 roth Goes and a few Pollocks in there, someone's gonna say, Okay, 0:25:51.480 --> 0:25:54.280 hold on one second, we're gonna do some very heavy 0:25:54.320 --> 0:25:59.119 duty analysis on this, but one at a time. Lost treasures, 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:01.440 you know, we really don't want to part with them, 0:26:01.480 --> 0:26:06.040 but we're we're selling them piecemeal. That's much more compelling 0:26:06.240 --> 0:26:10.040 and invites less scrutiny. And she's also building the market 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:15.640 for herself because now, even though there was originally no provenance, 0:26:16.240 --> 0:26:20.000 now a lot of these pieces are in collections and 0:26:20.680 --> 0:26:23.920 some end up making it two shows and to museums, 0:26:24.000 --> 0:26:27.600 and so that creates the provenance that this is the 0:26:27.640 --> 0:26:32.000 collection of Mr. X. And some of these have already 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:35.080 been validated by some of the leading galleries and museums 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:40.360 and collectors in the world. I think that if someone 0:26:40.880 --> 0:26:45.520 brought me a Rothco who I didn't know and who 0:26:45.640 --> 0:26:50.160 had no kind of bona fidees in the art world, 0:26:50.720 --> 0:26:54.600 I would be very suspicious. Where did this person get it? 0:26:54.760 --> 0:26:59.359 And it was stolen? I mean, you don't just go 0:26:59.560 --> 0:27:06.919 oneer around with Rothko's right, and did show the painting 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:10.680 to Christopher Rothko, son of the late artist, who professed 0:27:10.760 --> 0:27:15.000 to find it beautiful That was enough for Anne. She 0:27:15.080 --> 0:27:19.720 bought the painting for one dollars from Rosalis. She sold 0:27:19.720 --> 0:27:24.600 it to the Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery for three thousand dollars 0:27:24.640 --> 0:27:29.280 for a gross profit of one hundred nine Later, when 0:27:29.280 --> 0:27:34.320 she heard about the sale, Francis Beatty found Anne's strategy underwhelming. 0:27:35.640 --> 0:27:40.200