Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm Scott Rank, host of the podcast History
Speaker 1: on plot Now. It really is a dream come true
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Speaker 1: r e a k e r dot com. Get paid
Speaker 1: to talk about the things you love. The Laundronouts a
Speaker 1: potentially untrue tale based on actual events. A young boy
Speaker 1: is shoved into a washing machine and vanishes. His friends
Speaker 1: try to rescue him, only to discover a magical world
Speaker 1: beyond the machine. Season one stars Ed Asner and Me,
Speaker 1: John Cameron, Mitchell, Fine j D. Belzel and bring him
Speaker 1: back home safely. Listen to The Laundronouts on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where where you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Hi, I'm Anita Hill. You probably know me
Speaker 1: or think you do. I've learned firsthand about our country shortcomings,
Speaker 1: and despite it all, I still believe we can solve
Speaker 1: society's biggest problems. My new podcast, Getting Eva is about
Speaker 1: equality and what it takes to get there. Listen to
Speaker 1: Getting Eva on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast. I have to say
Speaker 1: that when I learned that this was one person, I
Speaker 1: was a little flabbergasted. I really was, because these artists, yes,
Speaker 1: they're all around the same period, but their styles are very,
Speaker 1: very different, and he did a good job. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are other fakes in art history, and as I
Speaker 1: used to like to joke when I gave talks, the
Speaker 1: best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know
Speaker 1: they don't even know or suspect that their fakes. By
Speaker 1: two thousand two, an unlikely trio of con artists had
Speaker 1: grown rich from their forgery Schemepra Rosalez had worked her
Speaker 1: charms and unearthed a dazzling collection of abstract Expressionist paintings
Speaker 1: destined for Ann Friedman to acquire for the Knodler Gallery,
Speaker 1: and convinced herself that the works were genuine. She was
Speaker 1: desperate to squeeze every dollar of profit she could from
Speaker 1: the mysterious works works that had no provenance, and had
Speaker 1: bought the paintings for unthinkably low prices and sold them
Speaker 1: at sky high markups. The profit margin was so high
Speaker 1: that the Knodler had come to rely on the mr
Speaker 1: X Junior Collection for its very survival. Meanwhile, the fraudsters
Speaker 1: were living the American dream. Carlos Bergantino's The Ideas man
Speaker 1: Patient Kuon the artist and Glepa Rosalez, the resourceful salesperson,
Speaker 1: had executed a scheme that was paying enormous dividends. Along
Speaker 1: with rising profits, however, came increased risk. By two thousand two,
Speaker 1: Jack and Fan Levy had spent upwards a four point
Speaker 1: three million dollars acquiring master works from Knodler. The biggest
Speaker 1: prize was a two million dollar Jackson pollock, identified simply
Speaker 1: as untitled ninety nine. It had a greenish cast and
Speaker 1: measured twelve by eighteen inches. It was small for a pollock,
Speaker 1: but impressive all the same. Before the sale could be finalized, however,
Speaker 1: Jack Levy insisted that the pollock be vetted by Eye
Speaker 1: Far the International Foundation for Art rest Church. Up to
Speaker 1: this point, none of the works brought in by Glafira
Speaker 1: Rosalee had been subjected to forensic scrutiny, and Friedman was
Speaker 1: so convinced of the works authenticity that she readily agreed
Speaker 1: to the Leavi's terms. The work was already owned by
Speaker 1: Jack Levey, so Noodler was not quote the client or
Speaker 1: the person who submitted the work to eye FAR. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of misunderstanding in the field about that. I
Speaker 1: am Sharon Flesher. I'm executive director of the International Foundation
Speaker 1: for Art Research, which is much better known under the
Speaker 1: acronym by FAR. By far as experts provide a thorough
Speaker 1: and impartial analysis of visual works of art through provenance
Speaker 1: research and forensic testing. I FAR is also well known
Speaker 1: for their pioneering work and art theft, having created the
Speaker 1: first database of stolen art. I spoke with Sharon in
Speaker 1: her corner office overlooking the New York Public Library. I FAR,
Speaker 1: now a fifty year old institution, works with researchers and
Speaker 1: forensics experts to help authenticate artwork submitted from all over
Speaker 1: the world. Jack Levy purchased his pollock from the Knodler
Speaker 1: with no inkling that it might be fake. Signing up
Speaker 1: for an eye FAR analysis was a mere legal nicety,
Speaker 1: or so he thought, despite the many pollocks that came
Speaker 1: through I Far. Sharon too had no doubts that the
Speaker 1: Levy pollock would prove to be right maas initial assumption was,
Speaker 1: of course, this would be great, We're going to find
Speaker 1: a new pollock, because it would never entered my mind
Speaker 1: that a work that wouldn't be good would have been
Speaker 1: sold through the no legality. Sharon was unaware of the
Speaker 1: deal Jack Levy had struck with Ann Friedman and Knodler,
Speaker 1: but to her, having the sale of the pollock be
Speaker 1: contingent upon I Far determination of authenticity made a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. My logic said to me that someone who
Speaker 1: purchases a seventh figure work from a reputable gallery, if
Speaker 1: the work turns out not to be what that person
Speaker 1: hopes and expects it to be, that they will turn
Speaker 1: right around to the gallery and try to get their
Speaker 1: money back. Usually, when a buyer asks a gallery for
Speaker 1: their money back, the gallery writes them a check instantly,
Speaker 1: as a matter of course, reputations, after all, are at stake.
Speaker 1: But what if the gallery insists the painting Israel and
Speaker 1: refuses to give the buyer their money back. Acting on
Speaker 1: her gut, Sharon took an extra measure to protect herself
Speaker 1: and I Far I insisted that the node Le Gallery
Speaker 1: sign an agreement saying they would not sue because there
Speaker 1: would be nothing protecting us. Because if we didn't come
Speaker 1: up with the positive review, I assumed we would. I
Speaker 1: could just see exactly what would happen. It would be returned,
Speaker 1: you'd get 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 Levy 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 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 nothing. And I actually personally called
Speaker 1: Anne I Knew and and Culture 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 research 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 researched 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, the 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 Osorio. This was it. The Osorio story
Speaker 1: conjured up by Gaelphrozalice had now made its way through
Speaker 1: Ann Friedman to Sharon and I Far. Alfonso Osario had died,
Speaker 1: but his longtime partner Ted Dragon was still alive. So
Speaker 1: I contacted Dragon simply to find out, after he lived
Speaker 1: with Osario from many years, could he provide information? Is
Speaker 1: he familiar with this work? Is he aware of Osorio
Speaker 1: ever having dealt with it? And what was Ted Dragon's reaction?
Speaker 1: He had never seen the work. He didn't think there
Speaker 1: was any connection whatsoever to Osario, because had there been,
Speaker 1: given his intimate relationship with Osario over so many years
Speaker 1: and particularly at that period, that he would have known
Speaker 1: if there was a connection. And we did other research
Speaker 1: as well, and we could find nothing to substantiate the
Speaker 1: Osario connection. The Osorio provenance was crumbling under scrutiny from
Speaker 1: I Far. The whole notion of Osorio serving as a
Speaker 1: middleman between dealers and artists want nowhere. But what about
Speaker 1: the painting itself. This particular work was canvas mountain on masonite,
Speaker 1: which is a type of fiberboard. Paula did have canvases
Speaker 1: mounted on masonite. In this case, it was mounted on
Speaker 1: the rough side of the masonite. Most of the ones
Speaker 1: of his that were mounted were mounted on the smooth
Speaker 1: side of the masonite, but he also painted directly on masonite.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you that one of the specialists to
Speaker 1: examine this work immediately was upset. They felt that it
Speaker 1: was mounted on that mason I just so that we
Speaker 1: couldn't see the back of the canvas. That's why they're
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, to hide this. I put here
Speaker 1: on the cover of a detail of the painting. Sharon
Speaker 1: was showing me the cover of one of i far
Speaker 1: publications from two thousand sixteen, titled Hindsight Lessons from the
Speaker 1: Notler Rosalee Affair. On the cover are two rectangular photos
Speaker 1: of Jackson Pollock's signatures on paintings. Red arrows indicate that
Speaker 1: one is an actual Pollock, the other a fake. The
Speaker 1: photos are zoomed in to show the detail of the
Speaker 1: signature itself and the canvas. Here's the signature Jackson Pollock
Speaker 1: forty nine. That's signed on that painting. And this is
Speaker 1: the bottom you can see here, here's the canvas, and
Speaker 1: here's the masonite. When Pollock did it. First of all,
Speaker 1: he did it on the other side of the masonite,
Speaker 1: on the smooth side, and he put some sizing on it.
Speaker 1: And over the fifty year period from nine to two thousand,
Speaker 1: the masonite with his sizing had aged and colored completely
Speaker 1: differently than the masonite in this work. How interesting. Wow,
Speaker 1: So you really had there was maybe a first red flag,
Speaker 1: for sure. It was more than the first red flag.
Speaker 1: We already had some red flags, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: not just the provenance any connection whatsoever to Pollock. Are
Speaker 1: their photo archives that show this work in the background.
Speaker 1: Are their letters that mention a work that fits this description?
Speaker 1: We did all of that. These were the kind of
Speaker 1: telltale details that led I far to issue its shocking opinion.
Speaker 1: We said we cannot accept the work as a work
Speaker 1: by Jackson Pollock. It is the same as saying I'm
Speaker 1: writing a catalog raison A and I'm not including your
Speaker 1: work in the catalog raisin A. We've couched our words
Speaker 1: because we couldn't hammer that nail in the coffin. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Anne was pretty ticked, was she not? Did she not
Speaker 1: speak publicly and disparage by Far And she certainly spoke
Speaker 1: privately and disparaged us to people, because it got back
Speaker 1: to me all the time years later when she felt
Speaker 1: free to talk about the Levy Pollock and I far
Speaker 1: As rejection of it, and would blithely say, quote, there
Speaker 1: was a recent history of bad feelings between I Far
Speaker 1: and Knodler unquote Hi far as experts were biased and
Speaker 1: implied that was why I far had nixed the painting,
Speaker 1: where I felt she impugned our integrity by saying there
Speaker 1: was a history of bad feelings. Therefore she wanted to
Speaker 1: dismiss what we said. First of all, there was no
Speaker 1: history of bad feelings that I knew of, and certainly
Speaker 1: not during my tenure, and I had already been here
Speaker 1: a few years. But more importantly, to assert that even
Speaker 1: if there were bad feelings, it might change our report.
Speaker 1: I was incredulous that anyone would make such a statement
Speaker 1: because we only exist becau cause of our good name
Speaker 1: and our reputation for integrity. We're not going to sully
Speaker 1: it and I'm not going to let anyone else sully
Speaker 1: it with Far's final judgment on the Levee pollic in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, and took the painting back very discreetly.
Speaker 1: She returned the two million dollars to Jack Levy contractually
Speaker 1: she had no choice. Shortly after the sale was refunded
Speaker 1: and called a Canadian collector, David Mervish, with news that
Speaker 1: she had a wonderful deal for him and 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 Untitled.
Speaker 1: The gallery would buy a partial share, as would Mervish.
Speaker 1: Certainly they would sell the painting at some point for
Speaker 1: a fortune. Mervish agreed, and Untitled nineteen forty nine was
Speaker 1: duly put aside for that future day. Its eye Far
Speaker 1: status kept quiet, but the damage was done. As Anne
Speaker 1: later said in Vanity Fair, quote, it was a backfire
Speaker 1: because Ted Dragon went crazy. Ossorio would never have hidden
Speaker 1: anything from me unquote. That cast a pall over the
Speaker 1: painting and the whole story of Osorio as middleman for
Speaker 1: mister and missus. X Anne asked Glyphya, could mister and
Speaker 1: missus X have been wrong had they or their son
Speaker 1: confused Osorio with someone else? Glyphya promised to address the
Speaker 1: issue and then came back with a change in the story.
Speaker 1: More in a minute. What grows in the forest? Trees? Sure? No?
Speaker 1: What else? Girls in the forest? Our imagination, a sense
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Speaker 1: As it turned out and was right, Oh, Sorio had
Speaker 1: been in the mix, but only marginally, Sofia said. The
Speaker 1: dealer who had handled most of those paintings for Mr.
Speaker 1: And Mrs X was actually an art handler named David Herbert.
Speaker 1: She was so sorry for any confusion. This is one
Speaker 1: of those IFFI moments in the story where you raised
Speaker 1: out one but two eyebrows and think, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how were you not suspicious when the entire backstory suddenly shifted.
Speaker 1: That's author Maria Kanakova. Again. It shows a few things
Speaker 1: the part of the con artists, obviously, it shows great
Speaker 1: ingenuity and once again listening because Anne inadvertently told them
Speaker 1: what to say, because she said, these are the holes,
Speaker 1: these are the things that people are suspicious of. And
Speaker 1: she even had suggestions, right, maybe was it? This? Was
Speaker 1: it that? So she threw out things that they could
Speaker 1: then use once again the con artists here, your job
Speaker 1: is to listen and to figure out, Okay, what do
Speaker 1: I need to change, what are they reacting to, what's working,
Speaker 1: what's not working? David Herbert working wonderful. Let's keep him
Speaker 1: in and try to figure out, you know, how, how
Speaker 1: we can change the story to the elements that aren't working,
Speaker 1: to fill in the parts of the narrative that are
Speaker 1: causing us problems. Now. The other element, of course, is
Speaker 1: if you're an how in the world do you not
Speaker 1: see this. One of the things that I've argued over
Speaker 1: and over again is that it's impossible to judge from
Speaker 1: the outside, because from the outside your objective. From the inside,
Speaker 1: once you're already in the middle of it, once you're
Speaker 1: already emotionally involved, your objectivity is gone. It's really difficult.
Speaker 1: It takes a very specific, strong person who probably would
Speaker 1: not have gotten into the situation to begin with, to
Speaker 1: be able to see clearly in the heat of the moment,
Speaker 1: and most people just cannot do that. I think that
Speaker 1: she was already so deep in the con that it
Speaker 1: didn't strike her as weird. It just struck her as
Speaker 1: we're getting more information. It's on an need to know basis,
Speaker 1: as I need to know more. They tell me more.
Speaker 1: Whereas for us, when we're looking at this, we're shaking
Speaker 1: our heads and thinking wait, no, no, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: 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 choice. 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: Heimi Andrade, since Herbert had been Andrade's best friend for decades.
Speaker 1: Also convenient, David Herbert had died just seven years prior,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, 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 Clyfeara's story
Speaker 1: of Mister and Missus X. From what Anne now understood,
Speaker 1: David Herbert had been more than a middleman between downtown
Speaker 1: artists and mister X, setting up sales and taking commissions.
Speaker 1: Herbert had been mister X's lover during long periods in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties in New York. Once again, for Anne,
Speaker 1: 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, Janie 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 ninety 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 artists. That that that was the problem.
Speaker 1: That's Carol Janis, one of Sydney Janis's two sons, who
Speaker 1: worked in the gallery with his father for years. One
Speaker 1: of the artists who came down the hall from Betty
Speaker 1: Parsons was Jackson Pollock. Carol's father liked Pollock's work. He
Speaker 1: was also sympathetic to the struggles that came with being
Speaker 1: an artist. He bought a little painting from him during
Speaker 1: that year forty four. He told me that he bought
Speaker 1: it because poll was so poor that he just felt
Speaker 1: that he should buy something to Betty Parsons lifelong fury.
Speaker 1: Pollock would move to the Sydney Janis Gallery for the
Speaker 1: remainder of his career. Mark Rothko came down the hole too.
Speaker 1: After issuing a modest plea. He told Sydney Janis that
Speaker 1: he had to earn seventy dollars a year to support
Speaker 1: his family. Could the Janis Gallery promise him that much?
Speaker 1: Janis thought it was possible. In the first year he
Speaker 1: made and that was big money in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: over thousand dollars. Today, most downtown artists survived on a
Speaker 1: lot less, some so strapped that they sold paintings out
Speaker 1: of the back door, as it were, privately without the
Speaker 1: involvement of their dealer. That was how David Herbert played
Speaker 1: into the story. Herbert was no figment of Ann Friedman's imagination.
Speaker 1: He was an art insider who at different times in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties worked for both Betty Parsons and Carol's father,
Speaker 1: Sidney Janice. Herbert. Brought clients to various artists studios, introduced
Speaker 1: those clients to the artists, and handled the occasional back
Speaker 1: door selling of paintings to help them scrape by in
Speaker 1: tough times. He was about five nine. I think he
Speaker 1: had a little mustache. Worked with Betty for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, I suppose partly as an arm handler and
Speaker 1: partly to taught the clients coming in. He was not
Speaker 1: very successful with Betty, but Betty came over and somehow
Speaker 1: talked my dad into giving him a job, which he
Speaker 1: did give him. He was also gregarious and liked to
Speaker 1: talk to the clients. Everybody started to do was to
Speaker 1: take clients to artist studios and tried to sell them
Speaker 1: works out of the studios. At first, Sydney Jannis didn't mind.
Speaker 1: It was something he was doing and as long as
Speaker 1: he was doing it with any of the hundreds of
Speaker 1: artists in New York who were not with the gallery
Speaker 1: and didn't say anything. Unfortunately, David Herbert's eagerness to help
Speaker 1: these far flung artists and perhaps to profit from them
Speaker 1: led to a bad end. All recalls Herbert handling money
Speaker 1: for one very important artist who was in fact a
Speaker 1: Janis artist, Willem Dacooning, gave to dead and asked him
Speaker 1: for an advance for his studio. He had gave him
Speaker 1: what he asked for, fifty thou dollars. Then the next
Speaker 1: year he came and he asked again for none of
Speaker 1: fifty and then that was quite a lot in those days.
Speaker 1: They told him that he wouldn't lend into him, so
Speaker 1: that meant cooning at the start, selling out of his
Speaker 1: studio because he needed the money to pay for the gallery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the handling that directly because he loved the cooning
Speaker 1: and Decooning love of the gallery. And now they were
Speaker 1: at Aspacaules. He was selling out of his studio but
Speaker 1: not giving the gallery its commission, and David Herbert was
Speaker 1: in the thick of it, paying Daconing for works the
Speaker 1: painter was selling for money he desperately needed. Herbert had
Speaker 1: to go about Mannie well, he let him go immediately.
Speaker 1: It was easy to imagine how Anne Friedman could have
Speaker 1: believed the story of a feckless art handler who bowed
Speaker 1: and sold works on his own. By the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties, almost everyone in the art world knew of
Speaker 1: David Herbert. He remained a droll character from the same
Speaker 1: Demi Mond as Alfonso Ossorio and Haim Andrade. Painter Bill
Speaker 1: Draper would give two day parties, as one dealer says,
Speaker 1: and Herbert would be there along with his dear friends
Speaker 1: Jime Andrade and Richard brown Baker. There too would be
Speaker 1: brook Aster, Mayor John Lindsay, an art Maven Marian Javits.
Speaker 1: It was an indulgent and freer time. By then, Herbert
Speaker 1: had begun to struggle. He threw in with the distinguished
Speaker 1: dealer Richard Fiken for a short lived venture no managerial
Speaker 1: skills at Piken later grumbled. Despite his lack of funds,
Speaker 1: Herbert never lost his sense of humor. He would come
Speaker 1: into the Knoedler and pretend he was a collector. It
Speaker 1: calls a Knodler staffer. Herbert would say, I'm furious that
Speaker 1: Kndler has not delivered my art for three months. I've
Speaker 1: been calling. I've paid for it already unquote. He was funny,
Speaker 1: says the staffer. By the time David Herbert died, he'd
Speaker 1: become almost a destitute. He had a very hard last
Speaker 1: couple of years, recalls a friend from his gallery. He
Speaker 1: was basically living on friends and really had no retirement money.
Speaker 1: As long as David Herbert was alive, these paintings weren't
Speaker 1: going to come out. And Friedman said in vanity fair quote,
Speaker 1: the fear was that if the paintings came out while
Speaker 1: Herbert was alive, Herbert might have been extremely upset and
Speaker 1: he might have revealed the identity of the owner. There's
Speaker 1: no question that the paintings would have been paid for
Speaker 1: with cash, taxes not paid, assets not declared, and you
Speaker 1: can go to jail for that end quote. So sure
Speaker 1: was Anne about the newly modified back story that she
Speaker 1: even gave a new name to the paintings coming from
Speaker 1: Glafira Rosalis. The paintings, she said, now constituted that David
Speaker 1: Herbert collection. Once David Herbert passed away, and said, that's
Speaker 1: when Mr x Jr. Felt he could release these paintings.
Speaker 1: More than one k Nodler staffer saw a victim in retrospect,
Speaker 1: him Andrade. Perhaps Andrade had told Anne stories of his
Speaker 1: old friend David Herbert. Maybe he had acknowledged that Herbert
Speaker 1: might have sold some of these paintings on the Slyde. Still,
Speaker 1: if he had colluded with Anne and Glyphia, where was
Speaker 1: the profit in it for him? Himie did not profit
Speaker 1: from it. He never got a commission, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: on him, says an ex Ndler staffer. He was horrified
Speaker 1: by all that happened. The staffer adds, I feel very
Speaker 1: sorry for him. He's a gentleman of the older kind.
Speaker 1: And now all and Ratty had was a ghostly cobweb
Speaker 1: department filled with South American art next door to the
Speaker 1: gallery he loved so much. As for David Herbert, he
Speaker 1: too seemed a victim, even if a posthumous one. It's
Speaker 1: very easy to put something on him because he's not
Speaker 1: around to dispute it, said Herbert's friend from the gallery.
Speaker 1: What should have been early red flags at the Knoedler Gallery,
Speaker 1: those early Deep and Corn drawings, that brilliant Rothko and
Speaker 1: now the returned Levy Pollock instead remained art world secrets.
Speaker 1: For now. None of them stirred any attention because sales
Speaker 1: of the works remained confidential. As it turned out, the
Speaker 1: Levy Pollock that I far had judged to be not
Speaker 1: a legitimate work, was actually one of several to Apollox
Speaker 1: that Ann Friedman would eventually snatch up from a Rosales
Speaker 1: more art fraud in a minute, Look for your children's
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Speaker 1: the forest dot org, brought to you by the United
Speaker 1: States Forest Service and the ad Council. Hei there. I'm
Speaker 1: Scott Rank, host of the podcast History Unplugged, and if
Speaker 1: you're dreaming of being a full time podcaster someday, you
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Speaker 1: love with Spreaker. From I Heart. From Cavalry Audio, the
Speaker 1: studio that brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Goes,
Speaker 1: comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Wods.
Speaker 1: The local sheriff believes there may be more than one killery.
Speaker 1: It's been four days since those bodies were found and
Speaker 1: there's no arrest as it this morning. They were afraid
Speaker 1: he's face it out in that area, what if they
Speaker 1: come back or whatever. It scared me to death, like
Speaker 1: it scared me. I was very, very intimidating to live here.
Speaker 1: Crazy to think you go to sleep one night, maybe
Speaker 1: snuggling with your loved one, and never wake up, or
Speaker 1: maybe you wake up in a struggle for your life,
Speaker 1: which you lose. Joint host David Radamant as he explores
Speaker 1: one fateful night when evil descended upon small town, Ohio
Speaker 1: killed eight members of an Ohio family in a pre
Speaker 1: planned execution. The family was targeted, most of them targeted
Speaker 1: while they were sleeping. Follow the Pink Moon murders on
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, no one knew the true story of
Speaker 1: the Knodler Galleries finances. Later, when the galleries money manager
Speaker 1: testified at trial, he would say that the paintings of
Speaker 1: the David Herbert collection were not merely helpful to the
Speaker 1: galleries bottom line, they were essential. Without those sales, the
Speaker 1: k Noodler would have been losing big money by two
Speaker 1: thousand four, Thanks to a paintings the Ndler was at
Speaker 1: least getting by Joe Stephens, the noted is long serving
Speaker 1: art handler since the true state of the gallery, when
Speaker 1: he was abruptly fired after nearly forty five years on
Speaker 1: the job. My heart and soul was in that place.
Speaker 1: I loved work in there, and I was good at it.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I wanted to kill her. I hated
Speaker 1: her guts and I don't hate anybody, but she made
Speaker 1: life miserable for me and the girls by keeping him there. Everything.
Speaker 1: She walked three blocks and she's home. I think she
Speaker 1: knew that. I knew things were going on. That's probably
Speaker 1: why I got dumped. I don't know for sure. Can
Speaker 1: we put it that way as your suspicion? And was
Speaker 1: now squarely focused on selling works from the David Herbert collection,
Speaker 1: and that was becoming a very dangerous enterprise. By two
Speaker 1: thousand five, the contemporary art market had soared thanks to
Speaker 1: a fivefold increase in new billionaires since the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: And the billionaires loved contemporary art. They loved the status
Speaker 1: it conferred to. Most of all, they loved the profits
Speaker 1: many contemporary artists were generating. The new meme was art
Speaker 1: as an asset. The market was now more than a
Speaker 1: place to buy and sell art, It was a lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Wealthy collectors jetted to art fares around the world, greeting
Speaker 1: each other like old friends. They attended glittering parties held
Speaker 1: by the biggest and most powerful dealers at the Venice
Speaker 1: Bionale at Art Basel in Switzerland and at the Freeze
Speaker 1: Fairs in London, l A and New York. Entree to
Speaker 1: the club didn't require old money or expertise in art,
Speaker 1: not anymore. All you needed to join the club with
Speaker 1: money and a willingness to spend it. Art has become
Speaker 1: the status symbol, as dealer Gavin Brown put it, the
Speaker 1: lingua franca of the wealthy. At some point in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, Clafira and Carlos attempted to open their
Speaker 1: own gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Speaker 1: It was aloft on nineteen Street. Carlos called it King's
Speaker 1: Fine Art. Records suggest he staged exactly one opening a
Speaker 1: trio of Cuban American artists who went Nowherefra found the
Speaker 1: gallery ridiculous. You know, he was a show off, and
Speaker 1: he wants to presume that he was a businessman. Of course,
Speaker 1: did you work with him at that gallery or no?
Speaker 1: They will not really like I said so occasionally in
Speaker 1: and and she was the one who was putting it together.
Speaker 1: The Chelsea Loft that Carlos opened was a bush league
Speaker 1: effort to join the art market in earnest serious dealers.
Speaker 1: Those who, for starters, dealt in authentic art were in
Speaker 1: a whole other world, one that Carlos and could only
Speaker 1: dream of. By now, the best abstract expressionist works were
Speaker 1: all but impossible to acquire unless she were willing to
Speaker 1: pay stratospheric prices. Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin would become
Speaker 1: famous for buying a Dacooning and a Pollock in a
Speaker 1: package deal for five hundred million dollars. With all this frenzy,
Speaker 1: the contemporary art market rose from roughly twenty billion in
Speaker 1: two thousand to sixty three billion in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: In the midst of this hyperactive market, Anne had begun
Speaker 1: publicly showcasing works from the David Abert collection. The mecca
Speaker 1: for New York art dealers was the annual Armory Show,
Speaker 1: hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America or a
Speaker 1: d a a. The Park Avenue Armory is a vast,
Speaker 1: high vaulted space that once sheltered Union military troops and
Speaker 1: their horses. Any dealer worth their salt was compelled to
Speaker 1: rent a booth at the Armory Show, seemingly confident that
Speaker 1: her latest works from the David Herbert collection were genuine,
Speaker 1: and began displaying the paintings at each A D A
Speaker 1: A show. Every time we got a painting from Glafira,
Speaker 1: we'd hang it in the Knoedler's booth at the Armory,
Speaker 1: and later told Vanity Fair had anyone found anything wrong,
Speaker 1: she noted, believe me, I would have been told take
Speaker 1: that down off the wall. She would never take more
Speaker 1: than one of those to the Armory Show, notes one
Speaker 1: ex staffer. It might be flanked by a great Milton
Speaker 1: Avery landscape, or maybe a Robert Motherwell. So it was
Speaker 1: surrounded by the Creme de la creme with impeccable provenance.
Speaker 1: It wasn't some po dunk Pollock. Another ex staffer rolls
Speaker 1: his eyes at that there was either a Pollock or
Speaker 1: a Newman on display at the Nodler booth. The staff
Speaker 1: are recalls of one year's display. People began whispering, you
Speaker 1: have to go look, but don't say anything. Everyone knew
Speaker 1: it was fake. Everyone was laughing about it. But as
Speaker 1: Patricia Cohen of The New York Times notes, they were
Speaker 1: all instructed by lawyers not to say anything, why the
Speaker 1: fear of being sued. As those brilliant but baffling works
Speaker 1: kept popping up, Freedman's fellow dealers made a blood sport
Speaker 1: and speculating about which, if any, of the paintings in
Speaker 1: the David Herbert collection were real, and why did Ann
Speaker 1: Freedman keep promoting pictures one after another that had no
Speaker 1: provenance As one Armory show followed another, and believed that
Speaker 1: her paintings were acquiring provenance, I simply being exhibited. Dealers
Speaker 1: found that absurd bullshit, that it's a building block towards authentication.
Speaker 1: One dealer snorted, she kept trotting out this ship at
Speaker 1: the Armory shows. I saw the Barnet Newman there, the
Speaker 1: Rothco there, the Pollock there. All were fake, the dealer
Speaker 1: muttered to his colleagues. Yet Anne seemed oblivious to their inauthenticity.
Speaker 1: The dealer said, if you don't have an eye, and
Speaker 1: you don't have the ability to discern differences in an
Speaker 1: artist's work, you're lost. I don't care how much secondary
Speaker 1: research you do, and left those Armory shows with a
Speaker 1: sense of exultation. Her masterpieces had survived another gauntlet, A
Speaker 1: few of her rival dealers even through her a word
Speaker 1: of affirmation, a vague word or two, but enough for
Speaker 1: Anne to go on the Levy. Pollock declared all but fake.
Speaker 1: By e far had incensed Anne worse, and it jeopardized
Speaker 1: the business she'd worked so hard to keep afloat. The
Speaker 1: Nodler needed a miracle. Magically, Fra would conjure up at
Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock painting so brilliant that no one would cast
Speaker 1: doubt on its authenticity, one that would ultimately command the
Speaker 1: highest price ever paid for a work. Emerging from patient
Speaker 1: Kwan's garage in Queens must have been January two thou twenty,
Speaker 1: and he started talking to me about the Nodler case.
Speaker 1: He was running a tuxedo so as I was a
Speaker 1: big formal wedding, and I said, well, somebody told me
Speaker 1: that Pierre Le Grande was a really stupid person. I said,
Speaker 1: I think that buying a painting for Man Friedman, he
Speaker 1: must be a real dumb shit. He got screwed for
Speaker 1: seventeen million dollars. And he looked at me and he said,
Speaker 1: on Pierre le grand the seventeen million dollar Jackson Pollock,
Speaker 1: that's next time on art Fraud Love laughs at a King.
Speaker 1: Things don't be the thing on the Street of Dreams,
Speaker 1: Dreams broken into can't be made like new on the
Speaker 1: Street of Dreams. Art Fraud is brought to you by
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner, myself, and Michael Shnayerson.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Brandon Morgan and Zach McNeice. Zach also
Speaker 1: edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay Hoffman is our managing producer.
Speaker 1: Our writer is Michael Schneerson. H Hi, this is Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: After years of being interviewed, I'm looking forward to doing
Speaker 1: the interviewing. Please join me on Who Am I Telling
Speaker 1: You This for conversations with some of the most fascinating
Speaker 1: people I know. We'll share stories and talk about ideas
Speaker 1: that deserve more attention and why we should be hopeful
Speaker 1: and optimistic about our future. Listen to Why Am I
Speaker 1: Telling You This on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. From Cavalry Audio, the
Speaker 1: studio that brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls,
Speaker 1: comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon murders.
Speaker 1: The local sheriff believes there may be more than killer.
Speaker 1: They were afraid he's face it out in that area.
Speaker 1: The family was targeted, most of them targeted while they
Speaker 1: were sleeping. Who could commit such horrible crimes and why
Speaker 1: follow the Pink Moon murders On the I Heart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, look for
Speaker 1: your children's eyes and you will discover the true magic
Speaker 1: of a forest. Find a forest near you and start
Speaker 1: exploring it. Discover the forest dot org. Brought to you
Speaker 1: by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council