Speaker 1: I have to say that when I learned that this
Speaker 1: was one person, I was a little flabbergasted. I really was,
Speaker 1: because these artists, yes, they're all around the same period,
Speaker 1: but their styles are very, very different, and he did
Speaker 1: a good job. I mean, there are other fakes in
Speaker 1: art history, and as I used to like to joke
Speaker 1: when I gave talks, the best fakes are still hanging
Speaker 1: on people's walls. You know, they don't even know or
Speaker 1: suspect that they're fakes. By two thousand two, an unlikely
Speaker 1: trio of con artists had grown rich from their forgery
Speaker 1: Schemepra Rosalez had worked her charms and unearthed a dazzling
Speaker 1: collection of abstract Expressionist paintings destined for Ann Friedman to
Speaker 1: acquire for the Knodler Gallery, and convinced herself that the
Speaker 1: works were genuine. She was desperate to squeeze every dollar
Speaker 1: of profit she could from the mysterious works works that
Speaker 1: had no provenance. Anne had bought the paintings for unthinkably
Speaker 1: low prices and sold them at sky high markups. The
Speaker 1: profit margin was so high that the Knodler had come
Speaker 1: to rely on the mr X Junior collection for its
Speaker 1: very survival. Meanwhile, the fraudsters were living the American dream.
Speaker 1: Carlos Bergantinos, the ideas man, patient, Kuon the artist, and
Speaker 1: Glepara Rosalez, the resourceful salesperson, had executed a scheme that
Speaker 1: was paying enormous dividends. Along with rising profits, however, came
Speaker 1: increased risk. By two thousand two, Jack and Fan Levy
Speaker 1: had spent upwards a four point three million dollars acquiring
Speaker 1: master works from Knodler. The biggest prize was a two
Speaker 1: million dollar Jackson pollock, identified simply as untitled nine. It
Speaker 1: had a greenish cast and measured twelve by eighteen inches.
Speaker 1: It was small for a pollock, but impressive all the same.
Speaker 1: Before the sale could be finalized, however, Jack Levy insisted
Speaker 1: that the pollock be vetted by Eye Far the International
Speaker 1: Foundation for Art Research. Up to this point, none of
Speaker 1: the works brought in by Glafira Rosalee had been subjected
Speaker 1: to forensic scrutiny, and Friedman was so convinced of the
Speaker 1: works authenticity that she readily agreed to the Leavi's terms.
Speaker 1: The work was already owned by Jack Leavy, so Noodler
Speaker 1: was not quote the client or the person who submitted
Speaker 1: the work to eye FAR. There's a lot of misunderstanding
Speaker 1: in the field about that. I am share and flesher.
Speaker 1: I'm executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research,
Speaker 1: which is much better known under the acronym FAR. I
Speaker 1: FAR as experts provide a thorough and impartial analysis of
Speaker 1: visual works of art through profnance research and forensic testing.
Speaker 1: I FAR is also well known for their pioneering work
Speaker 1: and art theft, having created the first database of stolen art.
Speaker 1: I spoke with Sharon in her corner office overlooking the
Speaker 1: New York Public Library. I FAR, now a fifty year
Speaker 1: old institution, works with researchers and forensics experts to help
Speaker 1: authenticate artwork submitted from all over the world. Jack Levy
Speaker 1: purchased his pollock from the Knodler with no inkling that
Speaker 1: it might be fake. Signing up for an eye FAR
Speaker 1: analysis was a mere legal nicety, or so he thought.
Speaker 1: Despite the many pollocks that came through I FAR. Sharon
Speaker 1: too had no doubts that the Levy pollock would prove
Speaker 1: to be right maas initial assumption was, of course, this
Speaker 1: would be great. We're going to find a new pollock,
Speaker 1: because it would never entered my mind that a work
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be good would have been sold through the
Speaker 1: Ndler galery. Sharon was unaware of the deal Jack Levy
Speaker 1: had struck with Ann Friedman and Nodler, but to her,
Speaker 1: having the sale of the Pollock be contingent upon I
Speaker 1: far determination of authenticity made a lot of sense. My
Speaker 1: logic said to me that someone who purchases a seventh
Speaker 1: figure work from a reputable gallery, if the work turns
Speaker 1: out not to be what that person hopes and expects
Speaker 1: it to be, that they will turn right around to
Speaker 1: the gallery and try to get their money back. Usually,
Speaker 1: when a buyer asks a gallery for their money back,
Speaker 1: the gallery writes them a check instantly as a matter
Speaker 1: of course. Reputations, after all, are at stake. But what
Speaker 1: if the gallery insists the painting Israel and refuses to
Speaker 1: give the buyer their money back. Acting on her gut,
Speaker 1: Sharon took an extra measure to protect herself and I
Speaker 1: far I insisted that the node Le gallery sign an agreement,
Speaker 1: saying they would not sue because there would be nothing
Speaker 1: protecting us. Because if we didn't come up with the
Speaker 1: positive review I assumed we would. I could just see
Speaker 1: exactly what would happen. It would be returned, He'd get
Speaker 1: the money back, and then the gallery would say, well,
Speaker 1: how can you prove that it's not you're defaming our name,
Speaker 1: our character or whatever. It was just a vision I had,
Speaker 1: and so I insisted that they signed something, and they did.
Speaker 1: I Far began working on the Leavey Pollock using the
Speaker 1: same methods they would apply to any painting submitted for authenticity.
Speaker 1: There are some steps that are consistent for every painting,
Speaker 1: and then each project takes on a slight life of
Speaker 1: its own. So we are very committed in general to
Speaker 1: what I like to think of as a three pronged process,
Speaker 1: which is scholarly research, connoisseurship, the expert eyes. We had
Speaker 1: actually quite a few specialists who examined this work, in
Speaker 1: some cases more than once, and the physical properties of
Speaker 1: the work, which sometimes includes a detailed lab examination forensic examination.
Speaker 1: Right away, the scholarly research aspect of I Far work
Speaker 1: turned up red flags for starters. The paintings lack of
Speaker 1: provenance was a problem for Sharon. We were sent the
Speaker 1: skimpiest possible provenance information that one can be sent for
Speaker 1: a work that is of a major artist, and of
Speaker 1: seven figure value essentially enough. And I actually personally called
Speaker 1: Anne I knew an and cultured to give them the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt, saying, we can be more helpful
Speaker 1: on this project if you supply more information to us.
Speaker 1: And at that time she actually said, you're researching the provenance,
Speaker 1: as I said, of course, we always researched the provenance.
Speaker 1: What did you think? And she said, I thought you
Speaker 1: would just bring experts together to look at the work
Speaker 1: and say whether it's good. I said, we're doing that
Speaker 1: as well, But of course we research the provenance and
Speaker 1: was in a predicament I far as work was thorough
Speaker 1: and consistent. And because Jack Levy had officially submitted the
Speaker 1: work to I Far not Nodler, there was nothing Anne
Speaker 1: could do to finesse her way out of the problem.
Speaker 1: Sitting on Sharon's desk, a deeper I Far dug into
Speaker 1: the history of the Levy Pollock the more nervous and
Speaker 1: seemed to become for Sharon. The backstory just wasn't adding up.
Speaker 1: It was just simply said and relayed to us. It
Speaker 1: was acquired through Osario. This was it. The Osorio story
Speaker 1: conjured up by gap Rozalice had now made its way
Speaker 1: through Ann Friedman to Sharon and I Far. Alfonso Osario
Speaker 1: had died, but his longtime partner ted Dragon was still alive.
Speaker 1: So I contacted Dragon simply to find out, after he
Speaker 1: lived with Osario from many years, could he provide information?
Speaker 1: Is he familiar with this work, is he aware of
Speaker 1: Osorio ever having dealt with it? And what was Ted
Speaker 1: Dragon's reaction? He had never seen the work. He didn't
Speaker 1: think there was any connection whatsoever to Osario because had
Speaker 1: there been, given his in amit relationship with Osario over
Speaker 1: so many years and particularly at that period, that he
Speaker 1: would have known if there was a connection. And we
Speaker 1: did other research as well, and we could find nothing
Speaker 1: to substantiate the Osorio connection. The Osorio provenance was crumbling
Speaker 1: under scrutiny from I Far. The whole notion of Osorio
Speaker 1: serving as a middleman between dealers and artists went nowhere.
Speaker 1: But what about the painting itself. This particular work was
Speaker 1: canvas mountain on masonite, which is a type of fiberboard.
Speaker 1: Paula did have canvases mounted on masonite. In this case
Speaker 1: it was mounted on the rough side of the masonite.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones of his that were mounted were
Speaker 1: mounted on the smooth side of the masonite, but he
Speaker 1: also painted directly on masonite. I can't tell you that
Speaker 1: one of the specialists to examine this work immediately was upset.
Speaker 1: They felt that it was mounted on that mason I
Speaker 1: just so that we couldn't see the back of the canvas.
Speaker 1: That's why they're doing it, you know, to hide this.
Speaker 1: I put here on the cover of a detail of
Speaker 1: the painting. Sharon was showing me the cover of one
Speaker 1: of I Far's publications from two thousand sixteen, titled Hindsight
Speaker 1: Lessons from the Noler Rosalee Affair. On the cover are
Speaker 1: two rectangular photos of Jackson Pollock's signatures on paintings. Red
Speaker 1: arrows indicate that one is an actual Pollock, the other
Speaker 1: a fake. The photos are zoomed in to show the
Speaker 1: detail of the signature itself and the canvas. Here's the
Speaker 1: signature Jackson Pollock that's signed on that painting, and this
Speaker 1: is the bottom you can see. Here, here's the canvas,
Speaker 1: and here's the mason I when Pollock did it, first
Speaker 1: of all, he did it on the other side of
Speaker 1: the masonite, on the smooth side, and he put some
Speaker 1: sizing on it, and over the fifty year period from
Speaker 1: nine to two thousand, the masonite with his sizing had
Speaker 1: aged and colored completely differently than the masonite in this work.
Speaker 1: How interesting. Wow, So you really had there was maybe
Speaker 1: a first red flag. For sure. It was more than
Speaker 1: the first red flag. We already had some red flags,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, not just the provenance any connection
Speaker 1: whatsoever to Pollock. Are their photo archives that show this
Speaker 1: work in the background. Are their letters that mentioned a
Speaker 1: work that fits this description? We did all of that.
Speaker 1: These were the kind of telltale details that led I
Speaker 1: far to issue its shocking opinion. We said, we cannot
Speaker 1: accept the work as a work by Jackson Pollock. It
Speaker 1: is the same as saying I'm writing a catalog raison
Speaker 1: A and I'm not including your work in the catalog
Speaker 1: raisin A. We couched our words because we couldn't hammer
Speaker 1: that nail in the coffin. Absolutely, Anne was pretty ticked,
Speaker 1: was she not. Did she not speak publicly and disparage
Speaker 1: and she certainly spoke privately and disparaged us two people,
Speaker 1: because it got back to me all the time years
Speaker 1: later when she felt free to talk about the Leavy
Speaker 1: Pollock and I far As rejection of it, and would
Speaker 1: blithely say, quote, there was a recent history of bad
Speaker 1: feeling between I Far and Knoedler unquote, Hi far As
Speaker 1: experts were biased and implied that was why I Far
Speaker 1: had nixed the painting, where I felt she impugned our
Speaker 1: integrity by saying there was a history of bad feelings,
Speaker 1: therefore she wanted to dismiss what we said. First of all,
Speaker 1: there was no history of bad feelings that I knew of,
Speaker 1: and certainly not during my tenure, and I had already
Speaker 1: been here a few years. But more importantly, to assert
Speaker 1: that even if there were bad feelings, it might change
Speaker 1: our report. I was incredulous that anyone would make such
Speaker 1: a statement, because we only exist because of our good
Speaker 1: name and our reputation for integrity. We're not going to
Speaker 1: assulliate and I'm not going to let anyone else sully it.
Speaker 1: With Far's final judgment on the Levee Pollic in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, and took the painting back very discreetly. She
Speaker 1: returned the two million dollars to Jack Levy contractually, she
Speaker 1: had no choice. Shortly after the sale, was refunded and
Speaker 1: called a Canadian collector, David Mervish, with news that she
Speaker 1: had a wonderful deal for him. Anne was absolutely sure.
Speaker 1: She said that I Far had been wrong and that
Speaker 1: the painting was legitimate to back up her claim, and
Speaker 1: suggested that she herself by a one third interest in
Speaker 1: Untitled nineteen forty nine. The gallery would buy a partial share,
Speaker 1: as would Mervish. Certainly they would sell the painting at
Speaker 1: some point for a fortune. Mervish agreed, and Untitled nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine was duly put aside for that future day.
Speaker 1: It's I Far status kept quiet, but the damage was done.
Speaker 1: As Anne later said in Vanity Fair, quote, it was
Speaker 1: a backfire because Ted Dragon went crazy. Osorio would never
Speaker 1: have hidden anything from me unquote. That cast a paul
Speaker 1: over the painting and the whole story of Osorio as
Speaker 1: middleman for mister and Missus X. Anne asked Glypha, could
Speaker 1: mister and Missus X have been wrong had they or
Speaker 1: their son confused Osorio with someone else? Glafira promised to
Speaker 1: address the issue and then came back with a change
Speaker 1: in the story more in a minute, As it turned out,
Speaker 1: and was right. Osorio had been in the mix, but
Speaker 1: only marginally, Sofia said. The dealer who had handled most
Speaker 1: of those paintings for Mr and Mrs X was actually
Speaker 1: an art handler named David Herbert. She was so sorry
Speaker 1: for any confusion. This is one of those iffy moments
Speaker 1: in the story where you raised out one but two
Speaker 1: eyebrows and think, wait a minute, how were you not
Speaker 1: suspicious when the entire backstory suddenly shifted. That's author Maria Kannakova. Again.
Speaker 1: It shows a few things the part of the con artists, obviously,
Speaker 1: it shows rate ingenuity and once again listening because Anne
Speaker 1: inadvertently told them what to say, because she said, these
Speaker 1: are the holes, these are the things that people are
Speaker 1: suspicious of. And she even had suggestions, right, maybe was
Speaker 1: it this? Was it that? So she threw out things
Speaker 1: that they could then use. Once again, the con artists here,
Speaker 1: your job is to listen and to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I need to change? What are they reacting to,
Speaker 1: what's working, what's not working? David Herbert working wonderful. Let's
Speaker 1: keep him in and try to figure out, you know how,
Speaker 1: how we can change the story to the elements that
Speaker 1: aren't working, to fill in the parts of the narrative
Speaker 1: that are causing us problems. Now, the other element, of course,
Speaker 1: is if you're an how in the world do you
Speaker 1: not see this. One of the things that I've argued
Speaker 1: over and over again is that it's impossible to judge
Speaker 1: from the outside, because from the outside your objective. From
Speaker 1: the inside, once you're already in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: once you're already emotionally involved, your objectivity is gone. It's
Speaker 1: really difficult. It takes a very specific, strong person who
Speaker 1: probably would not have gotten into the situation to begin with,
Speaker 1: to be able to see clearly in the heat of
Speaker 1: the moment, and most people just cannot do that. I
Speaker 1: think that she was already so deep in the con
Speaker 1: that it didn't strike her as weird. It just struck her.
Speaker 1: As we're getting more information, it's on a need to
Speaker 1: know basis, as I need to know more, they tell
Speaker 1: me more. Whereas for us, when we're looking at this,
Speaker 1: we're shaking our heads and thinking, wait, no, no, you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to change the story. If you're and you're thinking, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, great, wonderful. David Herbert, Now, the key
Speaker 1: figure in the back story was a brilliant race He
Speaker 1: was a real person whose modest life and times fit
Speaker 1: the larger story a dealer many in the art world
Speaker 1: had known. Almost certainly, Anne had heard about Herbert through
Speaker 1: Haimi Andrade, since Herbert had been Andrada his best friend
Speaker 1: for decades. Also convenient, David Herbert had died just seven
Speaker 1: years prior. In his executor none other than Heimi Andrade.
Speaker 1: Into Andrade's hands went all of Herbert's files upon his death.
Speaker 1: Possibly those files contained bits that might embellish gafa's story
Speaker 1: of mister and Mrs X. From what Anne now understood,
Speaker 1: David Herbert had been more than a middleman between downtown
Speaker 1: artists and Mr X, setting up sales and taking commissions.
Speaker 1: Herbert had been Mr X's lover during long periods in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties in New York. Once again, for Ann,
Speaker 1: and the result was the opportunity to access newly discovered masterpieces.
Speaker 1: One key link between David Herbert and the art world
Speaker 1: he inhabited was the legendary dealer Sydney Janis. After a
Speaker 1: humble start in the garment industry, Janis had made his
Speaker 1: fortune by inventing a two pocket men's Oxford shirt. His
Speaker 1: true passion however, was contemporary art that led him to
Speaker 1: become a dealer, eventually representing many of the mid century greats.
Speaker 1: In eight he opened a fifth floor gallery on Street,
Speaker 1: down the hall from another emerging and important dealer, Betty Parsons.
Speaker 1: Much to parsons indignation, by nineteen fifty two, some of
Speaker 1: her top artists had left her stable and moved down
Speaker 1: the hall to Sydney Janis. She was more of an
Speaker 1: artist than a dealer. She couldn't quite sell any of
Speaker 1: the works of the artist. That was the problem. That's
Speaker 1: Carol Janis, one of Sydney Janis's two sons, who worked
Speaker 1: in the gallery with his father for years. One of
Speaker 1: the artists who came down the hall from Betty Parsons
Speaker 1: was Jackson Pollock. Carol's father liked Pollock's work. He was
Speaker 1: also sympathetic to the struggles that came with being an artist.
Speaker 1: He bought a little painting from him during that year four.
Speaker 1: He told me that he bought it because Pollock was
Speaker 1: so poor that he just felt that he should buy something.
Speaker 1: To Betty Parsons lifelong fury. Pollock would move to the
Speaker 1: Sydney Janis Gallery for the remainder of his career. Mark
Speaker 1: Rothko came down the hole too. After issuing a modest plea,
Speaker 1: he told Sydney Janie that he had to earn seventy
Speaker 1: dollars a year to support his family. Could the Janis
Speaker 1: Gallery promise him that much? Janis thought it was possible.
Speaker 1: In the first year he made fifteen fans and wow,
Speaker 1: he that was big money in nineteen fifty two, over
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Today, most downtown artists survived on a lot less,
Speaker 1: some so strapped that they sold paintings out of the
Speaker 1: back door, as it were, privately, without the involvement of
Speaker 1: their dealer. That was how David Herbert played into the story.
Speaker 1: Herbert was no figment of Ann Friedman's imagination. He was
Speaker 1: an art insider who, at different times in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties worked for both Betty Parsons and Carol's father, Sidney Janice.
Speaker 1: Herbert brought clients to various artists studios, introduced those clients
Speaker 1: to the artists, and handled the occasional back door selling
Speaker 1: of paintings to help them scrape by in tough times.
Speaker 1: He was about five nine. I think he had a
Speaker 1: little mustache. He worked with Betty for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: I suppose partly as ann handler and partly to talk
Speaker 1: the clients coming in. He was not very successful with Penny,
Speaker 1: but Betty came over and somehow take my dad into
Speaker 1: giving him a job, which he did give him. He
Speaker 1: was also gregarious and liked to talk to the clients.
Speaker 1: Everybody started to do was to take clients to artists
Speaker 1: studios and tried to sell them works out of the studios.
Speaker 1: At first, Sydney Jannis didn't mind. It was something he
Speaker 1: was doing and as long as he was doing it
Speaker 1: with any of the hundreds of artists in New York
Speaker 1: who were not with the gallery and didn't say anything. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: David Herbert's eagerness to help these far flung artists and
Speaker 1: perhaps to profit from them, led to a bad end.
Speaker 1: Carol recalls Herbert handling money for one very important artist
Speaker 1: who was in fact a Jenna artist, Willem de Kooning.
Speaker 1: Gave to then and they asked him for an advance
Speaker 1: for his studio. He had gave him what he asked for,
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, and then the next year he came and
Speaker 1: he asked again for not a fifty and then that
Speaker 1: was quite a lot in those days. They told him no,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't lend into him. So that meant cooning at
Speaker 1: the start, selling out of his studio because he needed
Speaker 1: the money to pay for the gallery. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: handle that directly because he loved the coon, and the
Speaker 1: ning loves the gallery. And now they were at as
Speaker 1: because he was selling out of his studio but not
Speaker 1: giving the gallery of commission, and David Herbert was in
Speaker 1: the thick of it, paying the cooning for works the
Speaker 1: painter was selling for money he desperately needed. Herbert had
Speaker 1: to go. So one my dad found out about Mattie Well,
Speaker 1: he let him go of imediately. It was easy to
Speaker 1: imagine how Anne Friedman could have believed the story of
Speaker 1: a feckless art handler who bought and sold works on
Speaker 1: his own. By the nineteen seventies and eighties, almost everyone
Speaker 1: in the art world knew of David Herbert. He remained
Speaker 1: a droll character from the same Demi mond As, Alfonso
Speaker 1: Asorio and Jim Andrade. Painter Bill Draper would give two
Speaker 1: day parties, as one dealer says, and Herbert would be
Speaker 1: there along with his dear friends him Andrade and Richard
Speaker 1: brown Baker. There too would be brook Aster, Mayor John Lindsay,
Speaker 1: and art Maven Marian Javits. It was an indulgent and
Speaker 1: freer time. By then, Herbert had begun to struggle. He
Speaker 1: threw in with the distinguished dealer Richard Faken for a
Speaker 1: short lived venture no managerial skills at all. Fiken later grumbled.
Speaker 1: Despite his lack of funds, her Bert never lost his
Speaker 1: sense of humor. He would come into the Knoedler and
Speaker 1: pretend he was a collector. It calls a Knodler staffer.
Speaker 1: Herbert would say, I'm furious that Kndler has not delivered
Speaker 1: my art for three months. I've been calling. I've paid
Speaker 1: for it already unquote. He was funny, says the staffer.
Speaker 1: By the time David Herbert died, he'd become almost a destitute.
Speaker 1: He had a very hard last couple of years, recalls
Speaker 1: a friend from his gallery. He was basically living on
Speaker 1: friends and really had no retirement money. As long as
Speaker 1: David Herbert was alive, these paintings weren't going to come out,
Speaker 1: and Friedman said in vanity fair quote. The fear was
Speaker 1: that if the paintings came out, while Herbert was alive,
Speaker 1: Herbert might have been extremely upset and he might have
Speaker 1: revealed the identity of the owner. There's no question that
Speaker 1: the paintings would have been paid for with cash. Tax
Speaker 1: is not paid, assets not declared, and you can go
Speaker 1: to jail for that end quote. So sure was Anne
Speaker 1: about the newly modified back story that she even gave
Speaker 1: a new name to the paintings coming from Glypia Rosalis.
Speaker 1: The paintings, she said, now constituted the David Herbert collection
Speaker 1: once David Herbert passed away, and said, that's when Mr
Speaker 1: x Jr. Felt he could release these paintings. More than
Speaker 1: one Knodler staffer saw a victim in retrospect, him Andrade.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Andrade had told Anne stories of his old friend
Speaker 1: David Herbert. Maybe he had acknowledged that Herbert might have
Speaker 1: sold some of these paintings on the slide. Still, if
Speaker 1: he had colluded with Anne and Glyphia, where was the
Speaker 1: profit in it for him? Himie did not profit from it.
Speaker 1: He never got a commission, so there's nothing on him,
Speaker 1: says an ex Nodler staffer. He was horrified by all
Speaker 1: that happened. The staffer adds, I you're very sorry for him.
Speaker 1: He's a gentleman of the older kind. And now all
Speaker 1: and Ratty had was a ghostly cobweb department filled with
Speaker 1: South American art next door to the gallery he loved
Speaker 1: so much. As for David Herbert, he too seemed a victim,
Speaker 1: even if a posthumous one. It's very easy to put
Speaker 1: something on him, because he's not around to dispute it,
Speaker 1: said Herbert's friend from the gallery. What should have been
Speaker 1: early red flags at the Knoedler Gallery, those early deep
Speaker 1: and Corn drawings, that brilliant Rothko and now the returned
Speaker 1: Levy Pollock instead remained art world secrets. For now, none
Speaker 1: of them stirred any attention because sales of the works
Speaker 1: remained confidential. As it turned out, the Levy Pollock that
Speaker 1: I far had judged to be not a legitimate work
Speaker 1: was actually one of several Pollocks that Ann Friedman would
Speaker 1: eventually snatch up from Gfia Rosales more art fraud in
Speaker 1: a minute, No one knew the true story of the
Speaker 1: Knodler Galleries finances. Later, when the galleries money manager testified
Speaker 1: at trial, he would say that the paintings of the
Speaker 1: David Herbert collection were not merely helpful to the galleries
Speaker 1: bottom line. They were essential. Without those sales, the k
Speaker 1: Nobler would have been losing big money. By two thousand four,
Speaker 1: thanks to his paintings, the Kndler was at least getting by.
Speaker 1: Joe Stephens, the Notler's long serving art handler, sensed the
Speaker 1: true state of the gallery when he was abruptly fired
Speaker 1: after nearly forty five years on the job. My heart
Speaker 1: and soul was in that place. I'd love to work
Speaker 1: in there, and I was good at it. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kill her. I hated hug Guts and
Speaker 1: I don't hate anybody, but she made life miserable for
Speaker 1: me and the girls by keeping him there. Everything. She
Speaker 1: walked three blocks and she's home. I think she knew that.
Speaker 1: I knew things were going on. That's probably why I
Speaker 1: got dumped. I don't know for sure. Can we put
Speaker 1: it that way as your suspicion? And was now squarely
Speaker 1: focused on selling works from the David Herbert collection, and
Speaker 1: that was becoming a very dangerous enterprise. By two thousand five,
Speaker 1: the contemporary art market had soared thanks to a fivefold
Speaker 1: increase in new billionaires since the nineteen eighties, and the
Speaker 1: billionaires loved contemporary art. They loved the status it conferred to.
Speaker 1: Most of all, they loved the profits many contemporary artists
Speaker 1: were general rating. The new meme was art as an asset.
Speaker 1: The market was now more than a place to buy
Speaker 1: and sell art. It was a lifestyle. Wealthy collectors jetted
Speaker 1: to art fares around the world, greeting each other like
Speaker 1: old friends. They attended glittering parties held by the biggest
Speaker 1: and most powerful dealers at the Venice Bionale at Art
Speaker 1: Basel in Switzerland, and at the Freeze Fairs in London,
Speaker 1: l A and New York. Entree to the club didn't
Speaker 1: require old money or expertise in art, not anymore. All
Speaker 1: you needed to join the club with money and a
Speaker 1: willingness to spend it. Art has become the status symbol,
Speaker 1: as dealer Gavin Brown put it, the lingua franca of
Speaker 1: the wealthy. At some point in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: Cfra and Carlos attempted to open their own gallery in
Speaker 1: the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. It was aloft
Speaker 1: on Nineteenth Street. Carlos called it King's Fine Art. Records
Speaker 1: suggest he staged exactly one opening a trio of Cuban
Speaker 1: American artists who went nowhere found the gallery ridiculous. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a show off, and he wants to presume
Speaker 1: that he was a businessman. Of course, did you work
Speaker 1: with him at that gallery or now? It? Well, not really,
Speaker 1: like I said, It was occasionally in and he was
Speaker 1: the one who was putting it together. The Chelsea Loft
Speaker 1: that Carlos opened was a bush league effort to join
Speaker 1: the art market in earnest serious dealers. Those who, for
Speaker 1: starters dealt in authentic art were in a whole other world,
Speaker 1: one that Carlos and could only dream of. By now,
Speaker 1: the best abstract expressionist works were all but impossible to
Speaker 1: acquire unless she were willing to pay stratospheric prices. Hedge
Speaker 1: fund manager Ken Griffin would become famous for buying a
Speaker 1: dacooning and a pollock in a package deal for five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. With all this frenzy, the contemporary art
Speaker 1: market rose from roughly twenty billion in two thousand to
Speaker 1: sixty three billion in two thousand eight. In the midst
Speaker 1: of this hyperactive market, Anne had begun publicly showcasing works
Speaker 1: from the David Herbert collection. The mecca for New York
Speaker 1: art dealers was the annual Armory Show, hosted by the
Speaker 1: Art Dealers Association of America or a d a A.
Speaker 1: The Park Avenue Armory is a vast, high vaulted space
Speaker 1: that once sheltered Union military troops and their horses. Any
Speaker 1: dealer worth their salt was compelled to rent a booth
Speaker 1: at the Armory Show, seemingly confident that her latest works
Speaker 1: from the David Herbert collection were genuine, and began displaying
Speaker 1: the paintings at each a d a a Show. Every
Speaker 1: time we got a painting from Glyphira, we'd hang it
Speaker 1: in the Knodler's booth at the Armory, and later told
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair had anyone found anything wrong, she noted, believe me,
Speaker 1: I would have been told take that down off the wall.
Speaker 1: She would never take more than one of those to
Speaker 1: the Armory Show, notes one ex staffer. It might be
Speaker 1: flanked by a great Milton Avery landscape, or maybe a
Speaker 1: Robert Motherwell, so it was surrounded by the creme de
Speaker 1: la creme with impeccable provenance. It wasn't some po dunk Pollock.
Speaker 1: Another ex staffer rolls his eyes at that there was
Speaker 1: either a Pollock or a Newman on display at the
Speaker 1: Kndler booth. The staffer recalls of one year's display. People
Speaker 1: began whispering, you have to go look, but don't say anything.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew it was fake. Everyone was laughing about it,
Speaker 1: But as Patricia Cohen of The New York Times notes,
Speaker 1: they were all instructed by lawyers not to say anything.
Speaker 1: Why the fear of being sued. As those brilliant but
Speaker 1: baffling works kept popping up, Freedman's fellow dealers made a
Speaker 1: blood sport and speculating about which, if any, of the
Speaker 1: paintings in the David Herbert collection were real, and why
Speaker 1: did Anne Freeman keep promoting pictures one after another that
Speaker 1: had no provenance, as one Armory show followed another, and
Speaker 1: believe that her paintings were acquiring provenance by simply being exhibited.
Speaker 1: Dealers found that absurd bullshit, that it's a building block
Speaker 1: toward authentication. One dealer snorted, she kept trotting out this
Speaker 1: ship at the Armory shows. I saw the Barnet Newman there,
Speaker 1: the roth Coo there, the Pollock there. All were fake,
Speaker 1: the dealer muttered to his colleagues. Yet Anne seemed oblivious
Speaker 1: to their inauthenticity. The dealer said, if you don't have
Speaker 1: an eye, and you don't have the ability to discern
Speaker 1: differences in an artist's work, you're lost. I don't care
Speaker 1: how much secondary research you do, and left those Armory
Speaker 1: shows with a sense of exultation. Her masterpieces had survived
Speaker 1: another gauntlet. A few of her rival dealers even through
Speaker 1: her a word of affirmation, a vague word or two,
Speaker 1: but enough for Ann to go on the Levy Pollock
Speaker 1: declared all but fake by e far had incensed Anne
Speaker 1: worse and had jeopardized the business she'd worked so hard
Speaker 1: to keep afloat The Nodler needed a miracle. Magically, GPA
Speaker 1: would conjure up a Jackson Pollock painting so brilliant that
Speaker 1: no one would cast doubt on its authenticity, one that
Speaker 1: would ultimately command the highest price ever paid for a work.
Speaker 1: Emerging from Patient Kwan's garage in Queens must have been
Speaker 1: January two twenty and he started talking to me about
Speaker 1: the Nobler case. He was warning a tuxedo so as
Speaker 1: I was a big formal wedding, and I and well,
Speaker 1: somebody told me that Pierre Legrange was a really stupid person.
Speaker 1: I said, I think that buying a painting for Man Friedman,
Speaker 1: he must be a real dumb shit. He got screwed
Speaker 1: for seventeen million dollars. And he looked at me and
Speaker 1: he said, on Pierre Le Grand, the seventeen million dollar
Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock. That's next time on Art Fraud, Love Last
Speaker 1: at a King HEGs, don't be the thing on the
Speaker 1: Street of Dreams, Dreams broken into can't be made like
Speaker 1: new on the Street of Dreams. Art Fraud is brought
Speaker 1: to you by my Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner, myself,
Speaker 1: and Michael sn Ayerson. 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. Howard Writer is Michael Schneyerson.