The $34M art forgery dealer

This is so delicious.  I just love this whole story.   She continued selling paintings for 15 years and never met the two sellers, both who supposedly were using a little-known dealer with a mysterious past.   Freedman's defense in the interview is that others thought they were genuine.   That's like a securities dealer never questioning what's inside a package of loans, claiming everybody else thought the repackaged loans were legit.

But I should be careful.  She's already suing another dealer for defamation.


Freedman Mounts Her Defense
(from ArtMarketMonitor.com)

Speaking with Daily Intelligencer last month, Freedman listed some markers that led her to believe that the paintings were genuine. “They were very credible in so many respects,” says Freedman. “I had the best conservation studio examine them. One of the Rothkos had a Sgroi stretcher. He made the stretchers for Rothko. They clearly had the right materials. I got a consensus. Some of the paintings were featured on museum walls,” she continued. “The Rothko went to the Beyeler [Foundation], and the Newman went to Guggenheim Bilbao for the tenth anniversary exhibition. The most knowledgeable in the art establishment gave me no reason to doubt the paintings.”

Experts seem to have been convinced, by and large, that the individualistic quality of the Abstract Expressionist paintings Rosales obtained could only have been achieved by the artists themselves. “The fact is that the entire Eastern establishment believed in them. I saw the paintings,” said Stephen Polcari, a scholar of Abstract Expressionism and author of Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience. “And they were very good. You wouldn’t think twice about them for a second. Ann did everything she could possibly do.”

Her defense might be shaky but for one artist to do these forgeries is pretty impressive.   They look real to me!   But I'd like to think an art dealer isn't so easily fooled and would start to wonder how Rosales is finding these mystery sellers. 

Fake Motherwell, sold for $350,000

Fake Pollock, sold for $16,000,000

Fake Rothko, sold for $17,000,000