IZO

Igor and Tatyana Preobrazhenski (IZO, earlier) have had their sentences reduced to five years each for their fake paintings scam (ITAR-TASS).

Counterfeit coins from China (CoinWorld):

Jinghuashei says that his coin factory is probably the largest of its type in China. It produces in excess of 100,000 fake coins per month for Chinese coin types alone.

He says he is currently only selling about 1,000 counterfeit U.S. coins per month, mostly on eBay. His primary motivation for servicing this comparatively small volume business is that he is making contacts with people he hopes will come to China to buy counterfeit coins on a wholesale basis.

Jinghuashei also claims a sales volume of several thousand counterfeit coins per month in world coin types.

New technology for diagnosing fakes: spectroscopy of the surface materials; computer measurement of the canvas weave; brushstroke analysis (Art Radar Asia).

Lengthy discussion of Faberge, or not, sales on Ebay (Alexander Palace).

John Varoli has sent a precis of his Russian-related articles in the November Art Newspaper; not all available online; see below the cut. I was interested in this about the Melnikov Garage:

"The relationship is very straightforward,'' said Erica Bolton, GCCC spokesperson. "The Museum of Tolerance will be housed on the 1st floor and GCCC will be on the ground floor. So they will not interfere with each other.''

40% of pictures valued at $100-200,000 on the market in Russia are fakes, according to Art Consulting, and up to 80% of cheaper antiques (Oreanda, in Russian).

A stroll around the Antiques Salon, at which, apparently, the quantity of fakes exceeds "conceivable boundaries" (marina_yudenich, in Russian):

In the end I have to say – without any joy, in fact with sadness – that I stand by my words of five years ago: there are no proper antique dealers left, but instead of them we have distinguished-looking silver-haired black-market traders who in the 1970s sold jeans. And chewing gum.

Kabakov fakes problem is just growing (John Varoli/Bloomberg):

Emilia [Kabakov] said the "best fakes story'' was when a Moscow dealer asked her to authenticate an alleged Kabakov drawing from a private collection, but which proved to be a fake.

"I told him I'll destroy it,'' said Emilia. "But this man begged on the phone: `Please don't, it belongs to a criminal group; I'll call you back.' In 15 minutes he called back, `They said, let Emilia destroy it, we'll make a new one.'''

The T-shirt (zazzle.com) (thanks, MK).

UPDATE: more T-shirts: Putin (Cafepress); NOBAMA (Cafepress); and Palin again (Cafepress) (thanks, MK).

The Santori Temposan museum in Japan has cancelled at the last moment a show of Russian avant-garde art from the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art because, in the opinion of experts, the exhibition contains seven fakes (gazeta.ru, in Russian). This scandal has been brewing for a little while, and it appears that more than one Japanese museum is unhappy (IZO, earlier). There is in fact, considerable scepticism in the Moscow art world about the authenticity of avant-garde works bought - all comparatively recently - for the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art.

A Japanese museum has removed three paintings claimed to be by Mark Chagall from display (ABC News):

The Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo was informed by the Paris-based Marc Chagall Committee that the three works were not genuine because the painting techniques were dubious, museum spokesman Masao Kotani said.

Mr Kotani said the paintings - Portrait Of A Woman (1908), Family (1911-1912) and Fiddler (1917) - were lent by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which insisted the paintings were real.

"We are going to leave it to the two of them to discuss the paintings' authenticity," Mr Kotani said.

Mrs and Mr Preobrazhenski have received sentences of nine and eight years respectively for selling fake paintings from their Russian Collection gallery in Moscow (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

A look at the market in fakes, in connection with the Preobrazhenski affair (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, in Russian):

Not long ago, in Ukraine, in the Kiev-Pecherskaya Monastery, an underground laboratory for the mass production of ancient artifacts was discovered. It was equipped with technology more advanced than that of the laboratories of Ukrainian detectives.

I also liked this:

There's a popular joke among art historians:
"Do you give a guarantee that the picture is genuine?"
"Of course. It's guaranteed for two years."

The case of Igor and Tatyana Preobrazhenski, antique dealers charged with selling fake C19 paintings, is being heard in Moscow. One of the main characters in the affair, Dmitri Kubiinikov ("Dima Byk" - Dima the Bull), who, it is claimed, bought old Scandinavian paintings and altered them to create plausible Russian-school works, is still being sought (Open Space, in Russian).

The forgers are now well-and-truly in among the non-conformists. The work below, for example, attributed to Viktor Pivovarov, has just been withdrawn from the Macdougall sale after research showed that it was a fake. Of course, many nonconformist artists are still with us, which provides a buffer of sorts, but after they die can we expect the market to be inundated, and thus spoilt, by the fakers with their false provenances? As far as the artists who have died are concerned, the problem is already with us. Who believes all the Rukhins in circulation, for example?

A comment from Dr Basner on the Times article linked to below:

I've found a substantial mistake (or misunderstanding of the very plot of our technology) in the Times' publication.

The last paragraph:  Some forgers, such as Robert Thwaites, who was caught forging 19th-century paintings in 2004, use paints and canvasses from the relevant period, which would enable them to circumvent isotope analysis. "You would have to look at other factors," Ms Kimbell said. "Provenance is the most important, although this can and has been faked too."

He could not use the old paints since the oil from the 19th c. has already been polymerized (...) and it is impossible to PAINT with it! He could use old pigments (or dry old paint) but HE NEEDED TO ADD FRESH OIL IN THEM  (otherwise he could not paint), - and in this case we expose the traces of Cs and Sr. !!!

We have already done all the necessary tests with the original old paint (from the tube). It was "pure", but dry, you cannot use it for painting. But if smbd wants to use it - he has to add either oil, or turpentine. We did this - and this substance had already the traces of Cs and Sr.

John Varoli's original article in The Art Newspaper, which is sans mistake, may be read below the cut (thanks, JV).

A new method in the battle against fakes, developed by Dr Elena Basner, formerly of the Russian Museum, relies on the presence or absence in the pigment-binding oils of isotopes released by nuclear explosions in 1945 and later (Times).

Dr Basner, who is a consultant to a Swedish auction house, plans to use the technique to test the authenticity of Russian avant-garde works dating from 1900 to 1930. “The number of avant garde fakes out there is unbelievable, probably more than the number of genuine works,” she said.

“Collectors and dealers do not want to come to us. They are afraid the market will resist this technology. There are many people who have an interest in keeping fakes in circulation.”

UPDATE: this news was first broken by John Varoli in The Art Newspaper.

Ilya Glazunov has announced that lot 415, A View Of The Kremlin, at Sotheby's upcoming Russian sale, is not by him: "it is appalling and compromises my reputation as an artist." However, Sotheby's Russian boss Mikhail Kamensky insists it is by Glazunov (Kommersant, in Russian; via galerist, in Russian [who adds that Kamensky has "proof" that the painting is by Glazunov]). What will be the result of all this? Probably that the price will go up ;)

It's nice when someone agrees with you; even nicer when it's a portion of the professional art world. A friend calls to quote me this from the most recent issue of The Art Newspaper about the top-lot Kuindzhi at Sotheby's NY last month:

Before the sale, the work's authenticity had been questioned by collectors and dealers, none of whom wanted to go on the record. Sotheby's dismissed this: "We feel these rumours are spread by some dealers in order to scare bidders away and keep prices low," said one top auction house official.

Well, that's a bit far-fetched from Sotheby's: in fact, it suggests they inhabit a parallel universe in which values are inverted. Who are these dealers who want to "keep prices low"???!%$£@!! And it doesn't address the fact that the work sold plainly differs from the illustration of, purportedly, the same work in an early C20 Kuindzhi book that Sotheby's chose to reproduce in its catalogue. A couple of snapshots from Sotheby's catalogue below: on the left, the old book illustration, on the right, the painting that was sold by Sotheby's. Even at the tiny resolution I offer them here on IZO, they plainly differ. Look for example at the markings on the tree-trunks: it's like a game of spot the difference for pre-schoolers. I'm told by someone who viewed the old book itself that the differences really are substantial.

It's hard for me to see how Sotheby's can assert that the work illustrated in the old book and the work they sold are one and the same. It's possible, of course, that it underwent substantial all-over restoration at some point; in which case, one might expect Sotheby's to point that out. But I didn't get the impression, on viewing it in Moscow, that it had been restored. If the old book illustration does indeed represent the third version of this painting by Kuindzhi (the other two being in museums), then, logically, Sotheby's work would be something else: a fourth version, perhaps, painted, I suggest, on a very off-day? Or...? UPDATE: the report in The Art Newspaper is by John Varoli.

A look at the controversy over C19 fakes (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

A report on aspects of the Moscow scene: Volker Diehl Gallery, fakes and the Lena Hades affair (all covered on IZO) (Valentin Diaconov/Artinfo).

Top lot at the sales at Sotheby's in New York on 15 April was Arkhip Kuindzhi's Birch-Grove. I saw this work at the Moscow preview; it was strangely underwhelming in its execution, all the more so because Kuindzhi is such a sumptuous painter. To me it looked like a copy by another hand, and I even wrote to Sotheby's to that effect. However, that was merely one person's opinion; the provenance as given seemed excellent; and one assumes Sotheby's were absolutely sure of the work before putting it on the block.

The auction houses regard a 70% selling rate as a good result, so the 52% for the contemporary section was no doubt a disappointment; but this is a highly unpredictable market and Sotheby's in New York (as, too, in London) deserves credit for trying to expand the roster of living artists saleable at auction. Good prices were achieved for outstanding works by Kabakov and Rabin, and a Rukhin fetched a record (for him) $265,000; but an overpriced Tselkov went nowhere (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

In general, lots that sold on 15 April were doing so within or around estimate, unlike the Faberge icon on 16 April (John Varoli/Bloomberg). In the secondary market, as indeed in contemporary art (I'm thinking of the major events of 2007-8: Kulik's Veryu show and Osmolovski's Kandinsky-prize-winning bread icons), what rules now is a somewhat nebulous "spirituality":

"Religious artworks are more popular now with Russian and Ukrainian collectors,'' said Alexander Tabalov, a Ukrainian food- processing tycoon and art collector. "Rich people in our country are thinking more about spirituality.''

So far, Rossvyazokrankultura has accredited about 400 experts to give expert opinions about works of art; for its part, the International Confederation of Antique and Art-dealers will announce a list of some twenty experts at the antiques' salon on Saturday (RIA Novosti, in Russian). To my mind, twenty is more reassuring than 400.

At the presentation of the fourth volume in a series of books detailing fake paintings on the Russian market (IZO, passim), it was announced that the scandal of wrong authentications by the Tretyakov Gallery (IZO, passim) will be investigated by a commission of Rossvyazokhrankultura (Lenta.ru, in Russian). Earlier, it seemed that the TG itself would make the investigation. At the same event, the deputy head of Rossvyazokhrankultura, Anatoli Vilkov, said that legislation would be amended to make it easier to prosecute art dealers for selling fakes (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

An article about an antique-faking scam in England, the fakes to be traced back, apparently, to one Dennis Buggins:

Buggins recently “loaded up” an old desk in Russian-style fittings, including gilded brasswork and new veneer. The desk has recently been offered for sale for £525,000 and described in [prominent London antiquer dealer John] Hobbs’s promotional literature as a “highly important mahogany desk” probably built in 1790 by the Russian cabinet-maker Christian Meyer.

I have no idea if anyone has been sourcing Russian furniture from John Hobbs (or any of Mr Buggins's other clients), but if so, they might like to peruse the article (Jon Ungoed-Thomas & Christopher Owen/Sunday Times).

Following the publication of the third volume of fake art on the Russian market, the Tretyakov Gallery has managed to establish nearly a hundred instances in which it erroneously confirmed the authenticity (i.e. authorship) of submitted artworks. It has also found another 120 instances in which it failed to confirm a work's authenticity but it was sold as authentic anyway (Lenta.ru, in Russian). As far as I can tell, this confession by the TG concerns only those fakes that have been published in the three volumes, so one presumes there are more errors, so far unrevealed.

The new (third) volume of purported fakes mentioned here a couple of days ago contains a foreword in the form of an interview with top collector Peter Aven (Kommersant, in Russian, with full details):

"We should not be shy of naming names," says Aven. "Take the Tretyakov Gallery experts [X1] and [X2]. Few people trust them. There are people like the art historian [X3], a genuinely professional and knowledgeable person who has consciously chosen to sell fakes. When I walk around the antique salon at the Central House of the Artist some sellers turn their pictures to the wall because I know many of them well. But afterwards they are again hung and impudently offered for sale. And when you tell them something's a fake, they answer insolently that they have a document for their Lentulov, Mashkov or Konchalovsky, although they are 100% forgeries."

The third volume illustrating purported fake paintings on the Russian market, assembled and published by RosSvyazOkhranKultura, will be launched tonight at the Triumph Gallery (tvkultura.com, in Russian).

The Times has a piece on the tidal wave of Russian art forgeries.

Catherine Boncenne, a descendant of Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967), one of Russia’s foremost women artists, said that in the past two months alone she had been alerted to ten fakes. When doubts were raised about a “Serebriakova” image of a seminude woman, it was withdrawn from a Paris sale – only to crop up again in Morocco, where it sold last month for €180,000 (£134,000).

The buyer might have considered point 5 in my entry from 2006. To extend it a bit: when you get a work worth (if real) a small fortune at an out-of-the-way auction, you have to ask yourself why.

News round-up

Commentary on the Russian market for luxury goods and high fashion in Kathemerini.

A little more on the case against the Preobrazhenskis, reported earlier. PS, The venerable (founded in the thirties) weekly Moscow News, where this report is, is due to be shut down by its owners in January next year; can't recall where I read it though.

Russki Zhurnal (in Russian; pdf) has an interview with bookshop-owner Boris Kupriyanov, facing a sentence of up to two years for the distribution of "pornography": novels (in Russian translation, I think) such as Lidia Lunch's Paradoxia, Pierre Bordage's L'Evangile du Serpent and Virginie Despentes's Baise Moi. Describing a campaign against his shop which he describes as "terror", Kupriyanov  suggests that books selling "intellectual literature" may cease to exist in Moscow.

Prospective England soccer manager has collection that includes Kandinsky and Chagall (The Guardian).

A report celebrating a show in Kiev that marks the 250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts includes the statistic that 400 artists worked on the interior of the resurrected Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (Kievskii Telegraf, in Russian). PS here are some historic photos of the original's destruction.

Fakes

The case, dating from last year, involving Western C19 painting passed of as Russian, in which antique dealers Tatyana and Igor Preobrazhenski are accused, had its first hearing in Moscow today (VM, in Russian). The article repeats the rumour that one of the fake works was given to President Putin.

Meanwhile, Rossvyazokhrankultura has published another catalogue of fakes and stolen paintings (Interfaks-Zapad, in Russian). In an echo of the Preobrazhenski case, many of the wrong'uns are minor works with fake major signatures, which greatly inflated their prices.

Stozharov today

At a small auction yesterday I bumped into Sasha Stozharov, son of the great Vladimir. He told me that most of his time these days is spent trying to stem the flood of fakes of his father's work. He has a database with several dozen examples and fields enquiries from all over the world. I've been offered a couple in the last year or so: one by a very grand antique dealer who excused himself by saying he didn't know what he was doing when it came to Stozharov; and the other by a shabby guy in a dingy basement who said, when I expressed an interest in the artist that he would have one "soon". Soon was about a month: the time it took to paint and dry.

Out with the new?

Christies have pulled lot 108, purportedly a valuable work by Lyubov Popova, from their April 18 NY auction. Presumably they weren't convinced of its authenticity.

Non-conformists will conform

Walking past Sotheby's in Bond Street yesterday I saw someone bundling a pile of Russian non-conformist paintings into a black cab. The young lady had probably been showing them to Joanna Vickery with a view to inclusion in the upcoming Russian contemporary sale. There was something unceremonious about the handling of these unwrapped and yet, in theory, valuable pieces and I was struck by scepticism. It dawned on me all of a sudden that, the world of Russian art being what it is, the non-conformist market must as a matter of course already be under siege by the fakers. The most-faked artists will be those auction-house high-flyers who are no longer alive to comment on their own purported works, so, as a minimum: Rukhin (I saw fake Rukhins in Moscow a few weeks ago), Krasnopevtsev, Sitnikov.

SovCom results

Lenta.ru looks at the results of SovCom's auction of 23rd December, under the heading Prices of Soviet painting have stabilised; Kommersant also reported on the results (both in Russian). The conclusion drawn in these Russian articles - that the market has ceased to rise because works were failing to better or even achieve the prices they would have made last year (for example, Deineka's image of boys running out of the water went for $100,000, whereas a lacklustre still-life reached $250,000 last year) - is not compelling. There's the question of quality, which journalists can't be expected to ponder; and doubts about the authenticity of any of the works would have been enough to keep prices down. As a rule of thumb, when a work at a reputable public auction fetches significantly less than the market price, the reason is often that most potential buyers are suspicious of the attribution or other claims made for it. One can see the same pattern of surprisingly low prices for some lots at Sotheby's and Christies' auctions in London and New York.

No more authentication?

According to gif.ru (in Russian), state museums have been forbidden to provide authentication of works in private hands. Apparently the instruction is a reaction to the multiple cases of fakes sold with authenticating documents frpom the Tretyakov Gallery and other organisations. However, this is (a) a necessary service and (b) an earner for museums and their staff, so I wonder how long, or how well, the ban will be enforced.

Russian fakes

Kim Murphy at the LA Times puts the business of Russian art fakes into a broader Russian context:

Of course, it's not the real thing. But in Russia, this is a distinction that easily can drift into irrelevance. If there is a world capital of audacious fabrication, it must be Moscow, where fake is never a four-letter word.

Actually, I don't buy that. I wouldn't want to be the person to sell a fake to some of the collectors in Moscow.

$50,000,000 fake?

Is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Duccio a fake? If so, it's claimed it's an old, nineteenth-century fake: by virtue of its age, more likely to fool the eye and scientific tests.

Old copies are also a problem of sorts in Soviet art. The major works of Stalinist Socialist Realism were reproduced by copyists for dissemination around the country. The best copyists, working from the originals to produce the master-copies (etalony) from which further copies were made, were often very skilled. Their etalony, today, are pretty-near indistinguishable from versions by the artist, and some etalony to my knowledge have indeed been sold and bought as original works.

The main copyists' studio in Moscow was sited near Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Most of the etalony of Soviet-era works produced by this studio were bought by Vladimir Ovcharenko of Ridzhina Gallery. He exhibited some of them during his period of enthusiasm for Socialist Realism in the 1990s (for clarity: there is no suggestion that Ovcharenko has ever exhibited etalony as  works by the original artists). To complicate things: sometimes the original artist also produced the etalon for the copyists, in which case one has an authentic author's version or even variant.

On a visit to Kirgizia in 1992 I met an elderly painter who told me it was he, as a copyist, and not the original artist, Semyon Chuikov, who painted the version of the famous painting A Daughter Of Soviet Kirgizia currently in the Kirgiz national museum. I have no way of verifying the truth of what he told me, but it is entirely plausible to my mind.

Faking it

A brief stroll around a few Moscow galleries and antique shops reveals hopeful attributions (e.g. "Yu P", for Yuri Pimenov, inscribed on a painting clearly not by him) and downright fakes (a Byalynitski-Birulya that was probably painted yesterday). To my eye, and sometimes to my certain knowledge, the London auctions also feature fakes or misattributed works. How do you determine a fake? Not always easy, but here are some signs that, I find, may be present when a fake is offered:

1. The painting isn't very good: it's the sort of thing that, were it not for the claimed authorship, you wouldn't look twice at: the average faker is not as good an artist as those he imitates (there may be exceptions to this rule, I suppose).
2. The price is too low: remember, the faker just wants to sell: if the market price of a Tatlin oil on canvas is $1,000,000+, he's happy to sell for a fraction of that since the whole thing, no matter how sophisticated, only cost him a few grand, max: he appeals to the buyer's greed.
3. There is no proveable provenance earlier than the last few years: the people are all in another country/dead, or it is claimed the work was illicitly removed from a Russian museum (this idea is a variant on the Nigerian email scams).
4. There are signs of newness in the actual product: obviously a top-class faker will avoid this, but it's surprising how many don't. I won't go into detail, but someone with a logical mind will spot some of the errors here quite easily.
5. It's not being offered by Sotheby's or Christies: they aren't infallible, as we all know, but they have the most to lose. S or C are the obvious place to sell a masterpiece, so ask yourself, why aren't they selling this one? Be prepared for all sorts of stories, such as the vendor is "a very private person" and prefers a private treaty sale. How "private" do you have to be to prefer $200,000 to a potential $2,000,000 at auction, if your piece is genuine?

The following are NOT infallible signs of authenticity:

1. A signature. Remember, a signature means absolutely nothing: it can be added. Ditto old labels, inventory numbers on the back.
2. Expertise from an esteemed institution or expert confirming authenticity: these things can be bought, individuals can be pressured, or hoodwinked.
3. Pigment or other scientific tests: any fool faker should avoid using materials whose first use post-dates the presumed date of creation; and in any case many lab reports are simply voodoo bunkum.
4. A catalogue entry or illustration showing a similar work/preparatory drawing etc. As a friend of mine specialising in Suprematism tells me, the fakers are scouring the old catalogues, the Costaki collection etc. and "lost" works by the Russian avant-garde are appearing.
5. The work comes, it is claimed, from a famous collection or is being offered by a very respectable gentleman or lady: even the Great and the Good of the art world make mistakes/need money/get greedy.

Genuine early works by painters of the 1920s - Deineka, Pimenov etc. - sometimes appear, but they are either well-documented in the old literature or have a cast-iron provenance, usually both. I would say that any hitherto-unknown, apparently significant work by the first generation of avant-gardists is 99.9999% certain to be a fake. Look at it, get over it, remember who offered it to you.

Think Pieces

The collector of non-contemporary Russian art encounters significant obstacles. Of prime concern is the problem of authenticity. The secondary market in Russian art is awash with fakes. However, this state of affairs is not limited to Russia, and in other markets the situation may be similar or even more challenging. On a trip to Cuba few years ago I discovered a superb 1940s abstract painting by a top artist of the time. I called Sotheby's in New York about it, only to discover that - whether or not the work I was looking at was authentic - the market itself had been ruined by fakes and the Havana asking price was more than it would fetch at auction. Money was tight and I didn't buy it, which of course I now regret (I did however acquire a gorgeous and rare piece of Cuban Socialist Realism, a scene in a fruit-juice bottling factory, painted in 1974 by Artists' Union head Adigio Benitez, seen below before conservation).

And the further back in history we go, the worse it gets, perhaps. In the Daily Telegraph, Richard Dorment explains that in fact only three out of 80-odd works in the British Museum's current show of Michelangelo drawings is indisputably authentic.

A further challenge to the collector is the question of the State's attitude to its heritage: strict rules make the export of older works a difficult matter. In Spiked, London professor David Lowenthal offers a trenchant extended opinion about why restrictions on the free flow of art are a bad, not to say pointless, exercise.

Fakes - the lowdown

An article in the St Pete Times goes into detail about the mass of fakes that have flooded the C19 Russian market. The article seems to derive largely from a Russian-language-only interview with expert Vladimir Petrov entitled "Professional Vandalism" that appeared in the Moscow art trade press publication Antikvarnaya Gazeta (Antiques Gazette) at the end of 2005. Petrov's decision to speak up about the problem of fakes, including the confession of mistakes by himself, is most courageous, considering the murky powers involved and the threats he himself has received. The problem first surfaced in the Western press even earlier, when a purported Shishkin being offered in a Sotheby's catalogue was exposed as a fake in 2004: at that time I commented in the Guardian newspaper that I had qualms about Sotheby's competence. Since then the auction houses have presumably sharpened up their act, but at London auctions the problem persisted in 2005.