When fraud touches art

What is truth, what is fiction? It's a question philosophers have contemplated for centuries, a subject writers, journalists and even psychologists ponder every day. For art experts, weeding through the fakes to find the authentic works can at times demand the hard-nosed precision befitting the medical forensics of a criminal investigation.

Courts and investigators in Germany and France are now applying such diligence in getting to the heart of a forgery scandal that is rocking the international art world.

According to German news website Spiegel Online, renowned German art historian and former director of Paris' Centre Pompidou Werner Spies is being sued in France for damages to a company after its purchase of an allegedly forged painting from a Paris gallery in 2004.

A recognized Max Ernst expert, Spies had confirmed the authenticity of "Tremblement de terre" as having been painted by the Surrealist art extraordinaire.

Making a mark

"Max Ernst had a dramatic impact on the 20th century, not just in art, but in many aspects of society," said Beate Elsen, a 20th-century art expert at the Würth Museums in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, which houses a Max Ernst collection.

"He developed new artistic techniques like the collage, explored the subconscious like no artist before him and was a master Surrealist who later influenced filmmakers such as David Lynch," she pointed out in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

That reputation helped the "Tremblement de terre" painting change hands several times over the past decade before being sold for $1.1 million at Sotheby's in New York.

Landing a Max Ernst is an art collector's dream, said Elsen, adding that "he was one of the most creative, imaginative painters in history."

In a more shocking case, the counterfeit "La Forêt (2)" - also authenticated by Spies as a Max Ernst original - snagged 4.9 million euros ($7 million) on the international art market. New York publishing giant Daniel Filipacchi, a leading collector of Surrealist art, bought the painting.

These are two of at least 14 paintings touted as German expressionist and Max Ernst originals, which are meanwhile assumed to be forgeries. At the end of May, the Cologne prosecutor's office brought charges against German artist Wolfgang B., as well as three others, for their alleged involvement in the sale of the forged paintings. The case could come to trial this summer, Spiegel Online reported.

The sale and resale of these counterfeits may have resulted in losses of around 34 million euros ($49 million) in the art community, authorities have estimated.

A fabricated story

Beginning in the 1990s, Wolfgang B., his wife, her sister, and another accomplice known as Otto S. apparently began tempting art collectors with a story that some 50 paintings which had gone missing during the Nazi regime had resurfaced. The story went that the paintings were inherited by Wolfgang B.'s wife and her sister. The sisters' grandfather, art lover and industrialist Werner Jägers, had supposedly acquired the works from a prominent pre-war Jewish art dealer, Alfred Flechtheim, in Cologne. Otto S., had a similar story.

Prosecutors believe that Wolfgang B. painted the forgeries. His wife and her sister apparently passed them off to auction houses as originals by artists such as Max Ernst, Max Pechstein, Fernand Léger and Heinrich Campendonk. The women included a few genuine paintings among the fakes, so as not to arouse suspicion.

The foursome had apparently selected paintings to forge which were known to have been lost over a century again, but of which photographs and descriptions existed in catalogues and other records. Art lovers and collectors were ecstatic in Germany, with several museums buying up the "long-lost" works.

An incorrect label on the back of one of the forgeries, however, triggered suspicions of a racket about three years ago, prompting investigations. Ralph Jentsch, an expert on art dealer Flechtheim, could show that the labels on the forgeries did not match those Flechtheim actually used.

According to Spiegel, authorities at Berlin's State Office of Criminal Investigation view Spies as merely a witness in the "La Forêt (2)" case. What is clear is that the list of people duped by the art cons is long, and includes a range of prominent dealers and auctions houses across the country and the world.

Shockwaves

Investigators are to analyze nearly all of the 50 paintings involved in the "Jägers Collection" forgery scandal. Laboratory tests have revealed that some of the pigments used for painting the canvases were not available at the time of the originals' creation, in the first part of the 20th century.

But as shocking as these discoveries are, Elsen - whose own group of museums has two artworks affected by this forgery scandal, but which she cannot discuss as investigations are ongoing - said that the art world will recover.

"All this criminal energy in the art world is harrowing, but it can't destroy art," she said. "Everything will settle down again at some point. After all, there have been Michelangelo artworks that have been suspected of being fakes as well."

Author: Louisa Schaefer

Editor: Kate Bowen