Over the past year or so there has been a decent amount of press coverage, and with that concern in the appraisal community and art community about authentication.
Xilliary Twill of Art Asset Management Group sent me a good article recently published in the Economist on art authentication and surrounding legal issues.
The Economist reports
Source: The Economist
Such antics dismay dealers. Sales typically increase, sometimes dramatically, upon publication of a catalogue raisonné because buyers like knowing which pieces the artist’s estate or other authorities have declared genuine. If a good new catalogue raisonné of Modigliani drawings were published, sales worldwide would rise by about a fifth, reckons Christophe Van de Weghe, a New York art dealer.
The fear of lawsuits makes experts whisper and dodge. For instance, the catalogue raisonné of Isamu Noguchi, a Japanese-American sculptor, won’t be a real catalogue raisonné, says the project’s manager, Shaina Larrivee. To reduce liability, she says, it will be published as an online-only, ever-modifiable work-in-progress. It’s harder to sue “a constantly moving target”, as another expert puts it. Ms Larrivee says that the foundation will keep quiet if it sees an apparently fake Noguchi on sale.
Other digital-only catalogues raisonnés are on their way. This is a startling development. Many collectors will spend far less on an artwork that can be removed from a catalogue raisonné with a keystroke.
How will the art market adapt? China offers a clue. Art expertise in China often carries little weight because authenticators are thought to be in cahoots with a dealer or seller, says Shin-Yi Yang, a curator in Beijing. So living artists make more money, since they can personally assure buyers that a picture is not a fake, he says.
A year ago the Courtauld Institute of Art in London prepared an academic debate on issues related to the authentication of about 600 drawings attributed to Francis Bacon, a British artist who died in 1992. The debate was cancelled a week before it was to have taken place on January 25th 2012, due to the “possibility of legal action”, the institute said. The irony will not be lost on those who consider art to be freedom of expression incarnate
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