The rave reviews and millions of dollars Rotes Bild mit Pferden earned, however, could not overcome scientific analysis. Wolfgang’s biggest mistake—using titanium dioxide white—caused his undoing. Incredibly, the tube of paint that he used on the painting did not mention that it contained this post-Campendonk pigment in the list of ingredients on the label. Like the painting and artist, it was not exactly what it was purported to be. Armed with both scientific and expert analysis debunking the authenticity of Rotes Bild mit Pferden, Firmenich delivered the bad news to Trasteco. They immediately took action, hiring a Berlin lawyer to sue Lempertz to annul the sale. The lawyer also filed a criminal complaint over the sale of the painting, naming Helene’s sister in the complaint. The German authorities then began listening in on her phone calls, and subsequently became aware of the scheme and the people behind it.
Meanwhile, Ralph Jentsch set about identifying other paintings featuring the faux Flechtheim label, and he quickly identified 15 paintings with the phony stickers. The elaborate Beltracchi scheme was now suddenly and quickly falling apart. Eastaugh and Nadolny set about examining another six works that were brought to them at Art Access & Research in London. All the paintings analyzed by the pair contained one or more pigments that were inconsistent with their alleged dates of creation.
On the evening of August 27, 2010, as part of the biggest operation that the German art fraud unit ever conducted, Wolfgang and Helene were arrested while on their way to dinner in Freiberg. Though theirs were not violent crimes, the pair was separated and placed in solitary confinement. Life for the bon vivant Beltracchis had now taken a hard turn. Helene was diagnosed with breast cancer and the pair rarely saw each other or their children. Wolfgang spent his 14 months of pretrial detention with what he described as “real criminals: murderers, child molesters, people convicted of manslaughter.”36 And the news of their wide-ranging frauds set the art world on its head. Paintings whose provenance included the Jägers Collection popped up across Europe and the United States. Steve Martin’s name emerged in the press as having once been the duped owner of a forged Campendonk, Landschaft mit Pferden. Martin told the New York Times, “The fakers were quite clever in that they gave it a long provenance and they faked labels, and it came out of a collection that mingled legitimate pictures with faked pictures.” While he was not exactly correct—the Jägers Collection did not, in fact, contain authentic works—Martin was realistic about the problem of forgeries in the art world, adding that this was not the first time he had been tricked by a forger: “Each time you become more and more cautious.”37 Even the renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was found to have displayed a Beltracchi on its walls. Werner Spies, the Ernst expert who incorrectly identified Beltracchis as Ernsts, contemplated suicide.38 He would later be sued by one of the buyers who claimed they purchased an Ernst based on his authentication. The negative attention and liability has had a chilling effect on authenticators around the world, who have become fearful of making mistakes like Spies and suffering the same fate.
As experts examined works determined to be Wolfgang’s forgeries, some other tell-tale signs of his work were uncovered. For instance, Eastaugh and Nadolny found that the works contained an “obviously fake patina . . . visible only as scattered deposits, not a coherent layer”; anomalies concerning the paintings’ “stretcher/strainer bars, and the various stamps and labels applied to them”; inconsistencies in the age of the nails used on the canvases and stretchers; a “disjuncture . . . between paint and ground due to the processing of the priming of the old canvas”; and “a range of physical anomalies related to the removal of the paint from an old canvas.”39 So while the forgeries were very convincing to so-called experts, they were no match for scientific analysis.
These findings, however, were made only because of the problems detected with pigments during the initial examination of the painting Rotes Bild mit Pferden. It’s very difficult to know if these other inconsistencies would ever have emerged had Wolfgang not been done in by titanium dioxide white. As Eastaugh would later write, “The toughest call though is the first one, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining why it took so long to recognize the first Beltracchi fake and so little time to identify many more.”40 Eastaugh has also stated that “it is also rare to see a whole group together, so an individual anomaly may not be read as significant. There were though plenty of other material use anomalies that would probably have been picked up sooner or later.”41 In other words, in the opinion of a renowned expert on the matter, it was likely only a matter of time before the Jägers Collection would have been exposed.
The trial of the Beltracchis was held in Room 7 of the Cologne District Court before Judge William Kremer. At the outset, it appeared the trial would last for more than a month, with 168 witnesses scheduled to appear over 40 court sessions. But after just 9 days, a deal was struck: Wolfgang, Helene, her sister, and Schulte-Kellinghaus would receive shorter sentences than the prosecutors originally sought in return for full confessions from all. The German courts decided it was not in the best interests of the public to spend a lot of money prosecuting the forgery ring, much to the chagrin of the German police involved in the investigation. On October 27, 2011, Judge Kremer declared all four guilty and sentenced Wolfgang to six years in prison. Helene, who was frail but in recovery from her breast cancer, received a four-year sentence. Though the trial was short, Wolfgang’s charming personality was on full display in the courtroom, and the press ate it up. “The media—and this I find upsetting—has not been critical. Huge amounts of taxpayers’ money has been wasted bringing this criminal to justice,” said Dr. Nadolny. “He confused the record on some artists, defrauded people and abused trust.”42 Nevertheless, he sat at the defendant’s table eating candies and smiling at onlookers, and both he and Helene appeared comfortable and unafraid, affectionate with each other and even making jokes. At the conclusion of the proceedings, Wolfgang declared himself appreciative of the “fairness and good spirit” of the trial and “that everyone smiled so often.”43
Not everyone was taken with the merry fraudsters, though. One onlooker, an auctioneer who had handled a Beltracchi, said, “I wish they’d applied sharia law at his trial.”44 “This was a man who . . . made his money from stealing,” art dealer Michael Haas told a German news outlet. “Yet in the press and even in the courtroom, this is treated as something comedic. That’s just too much.”45
The sentences handed down by the court were based on just 14 of Wolfgang’s forgeries, which sold for nearly $22 million. This limited number was presented to the court for two reasons. First, many of Wolfgang’s frauds were perpetrated outside of the statute of limitations. According to Spiegel, “Old criminal police investigations in Berlin suggest that Beltracchi had passed on at least 15 forgeries by the 1980s.”46 Second, it wasn’t until after the charges and trial that more of his paintings came to light. Ultimately, German police would release a growing list of forgeries that reached 60 by 2014, and art historians believe there may be as many as 300 Beltracchi forgeries in circulation.47
Wolfgang has said that he has created works by about 50 artists. And he has the ego to match his obvious charm. In fact, his hubris may have been the essential part of his success. After all, taking on the challenge of not just copying but dreaming up works by history’s most successful artists takes confidence. James Martin, a conservator and scientist who has examined hundreds of paintings, says of his forgeries, “His fakes are among the best fakes I’ve seen in my career. Very convincing. Very well done.”48 In numerous interviews, Wolfgang has claimed that there is no artist, except for Bellini, whose works he could not forge. Whether all this is true or not is open to some skepticism. When told of this claim, Eastaugh replied, “I supposed he could try copying any artist; whether it would pass any form of scrutiny is another matter.” Nadolny was more direct. “It’s easy to claim after the fact. He’s never passed off a successful Rembrandt or a Tit
ian . . . I think most likely, he’s just bragging. He stuck to a very specific type of art work—expressionists and modern.”49 In any event, copying the Old Masters was not for him. “He knew his limits and did his homework: he stuck to a very specific type of art work—lesser known expressionist and modern painters, those that have not been subject to much technical study, which were easier to obtain ‘authentication’ for than say a Van Gogh or a Monet.”50
The Beltracchis served their sentences in a sort of home confinement called “open prison,” in which Wolfgang could spend the day with Helene, painting and working on projects such as an autobiography titled Self Portrait and a German-language documentary. The courts have ordered him to pay half of his income to recompense damages. And the paintings he produces nowadays are signed “Beltracchi” (and can earn as much as $46,000).51 He has also launched “The Beltracchi Project,” in which he paints over pictures taken by photographer Manfred Esser. But his own creations cannot compare to the paintings he completed by emulating the great Modernists. What people want are his forgeries. Even the owner of the $7 million Max Ernst forgery decided to keep it, calling it one of the best Ernst paintings he’s ever seen.52
A final nagging question remains concerning Wolfgang Beltracchi, and that involves his motivation. Both he and his wife have said on a number of occasions that their enormous scam was not motivated strictly by money. But when asked why he didn’t merely paint his imagining of a Campendonk over his own signature, he is frank and honest: “Because then I don’t get 600,000 euros from the painting.”53 And there can be no doubt that he and Helene loved the lavish living that the fortune they amassed afforded them. But at the same time, it is also clear that Wolfgang enjoyed the game, the challenge of showing up those who are celebrated as art experts. “I am too good for them. That’s their problem. And the problem is they think they can look at the painting and say ‘that’s this or that.’ And therefore I have shown them a mirror, you know.”54
But Wolfgang was not, in fact, too good for Eastaugh. As he and Nadolny showed, Wolfgang’s success was as much the result of authenticators and buyers who wanted to believe they had found a masterpiece as it was a matter of his artistic acumen and criminal cunning. Had those who were so willing to pay astronomical amounts for new finds been just as eager to seek authentication from technical experts, Wolfgang never would have been able to earn the vast sums of money he and Helene so happily spent living the high life. According to Eastaugh and Nadolny, “The technical means employed by Beltracchi were . . . conventional from a forger’s standpoint.” Wolfgang was merely a “talented copyist” whose only “vaguely unique” approach was his “willingness to engage with the problems of historical materials, a skill which he honed towards the end of his career.”55 Nadolny says, “Rather than allowing him to recreate a Max Ernst for the fiftieth time, why didn’t anyone ever say ‘OK then, make us a Da Vinci’? Now that would be interesting to see.”56 What truly set him apart were the willing dupes who enthusiastically parted with millions of dollars based on the myth of the Jägers Collection, forgetful of the ancient admonition caveat emptor.
Two
The Broker
The massive fraud that was the Jägers Collection left the art world more than a little embarrassed over the relative ease with which two self-described hippies were able to con some of the most esteemed dealers, collectors, authenticators, and auction houses in the world. With nothing more than a clever backstory as provenance and a talented yet devilish artist at the easel, the Beltracchis set in motion tens of millions of dollars in deals and devastated reputations. It would seem that all of the major players in the field would have reexamined their practices and cast a cautious—if not doubtful—eye on high-value art coming on scene, especially that said to be from a previously unknown collection mysteriously hidden from the world for decades.
But such was not the case.
Manhattan’s Knoedler & Company was one of the oldest commercial art galleries in the United States, having operated in New York for 165 years. Situated in a stately, early-twentieth-century townhouse on East 70th Street—on the same block as the Frick Collection—Knoedler clients read like a who’s who of American wealth, including the Rockefellers, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Mellons. In a headline, the New York Times called it a “gallery that helped create the American art world.”1 It’s hard to imagine a more venerated gallery or an institution with better access to the best minds in the field of art authentication. It’s harder still to believe that on the heels of the lessons that should have been learned by dealers large and small across the world from the Beltracchi affair, Knoedler would almost immediately thereafter fall victim to an American version of the Jägers Collection: the so-called David Herbert Collection.
David Herbert’s connections to the artists who were purported to have created the art in his “collection” were solid. Unlike Werner Jägers, Herbert’s chosen avocation was in the world of artists and art galleries, and his credentials were excellent. As a young man, Herbert spent the better part of a decade working with two influential and legendary art dealers: Betty Parsons and Sidney Janis. Parsons and Janis shared not only the fourth floor of 15 East 57th Street in Manhattan, they also shared connections to some of the most important artists and collectors of the day, including major figures in the Abstract Expressionist movement like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. Thanks to his work with giants in the New York art gallery scene, Herbert gained a great deal of experience working with these and other artists. In fact, during his time working with Janis, he established a reputation as a leading salesman of New York School artists, selling Pollock’s Arabesque and Franz Kline’s Wanamaker Block to major collector Richard Brown Baker.2
After his work with Parsons and Janis, Herbert set out on his own as an independent dealer in 1959. He would eventually become what has been described as a significant force in helping to launch the careers of a number of artists, including Ellsworth Kelly.3 Most famously, it was Herbert who introduced a then unknown Andy Warhol to Irving Blum and Walter Hopps, founders of the renowned Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Though he closed his own gallery in 1962, Herbert remained very active as a private dealer, traveling throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America.4 In 1963, Herbert took on a protégé of his own, a young émigré to the United States from Colombia named Jaime Andrade. Soon, the pair would be hosting informal exhibitions at Andrade’s Manhattan apartment. A lifelong relationship was formed, and Andrade developed into a respected gallery figure in his own right, working with a number of famous collectors while also cultivating a personal interest in contemporary Spanish and Latin American art. In 1967, Andrade went to work at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery and later followed Rubin to Knoedler & Company. It would be the start of another enduring relationship, and he remained at Knoedler for 40 years as a senior associate.5
In the mid-1990s, Andrade introduced his boss, Knoedler president Ann Freedman, a tall, thin woman with striking gray curls, to a woman he described as “a very good friend,” Glafira Rosales, an art dealer who ran a small operation with her live-in boyfriend Carlos Bergantiños.6 Given Andrade’s connections to the Latin American and Spanish art communities, it probably came as no surprise to Freedman that Andrade would know Rosales, who is of Mexican descent, and Bergantiños, a native of Spain. The pair made a particularly good team for dealing in art: Rosales, a convincing and impeccably dressed middle-aged woman with long, dark hair and rimless glasses, and Bergantiños, a man with an eye for artistic talent.
In 1981, a Chinese painter named Pei-Shen Qian came to the United States from China with a student visa to study at the Art Students League in New York City. Before coming to America, Qian’s early years as an art student in China were not unlike those of fellow forger Wolfgang Beltracchi in Germany. The works he produced in school were so good that his teachers doubted their authenticity, accusing him of tracing his drawings from
originals. He persevered despite his teachers’ skepticism and went on to become a professional artist, albeit producing the mundane: during China’s Cultural Revolution, he was directed by the government to produce portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong for use in schools and factories.7 Though it was honest work, it was hardly the sort of creative outlet dreamed of by many aspiring artists.
Years later, after the Cultural Revolution, a dozen artists in Shanghai—including Qian—staged an exhibition that would come to be credited as playing an important part in a rebirth of sorts for Chinese art, and he received special attention for an abstract piece he produced for the show. When a viewer of the piece told him that he could earn the equivalent of about two years’ pay for that one painting in New York, Qian sought and obtained a student visa.8 He struggled to earn a living in America, however, resorting to work as a construction worker and a janitor for some time to supplement the very modest income he eked out as a painter. His plight was a cause for consternation for Qian, at the time in his mid-40s. As his friend and fellow artist Zhang Hongtu recalled, “He was kind of frustrated because of the language problem, the connection problem. He was not happy.” Another friend described him as “homesick” and “lost.”9 While his modest earnings in New York far exceeded the $42 per month he made in Shanghai, the success and acclaim he had experienced back home were now gone, and Qian found himself reduced to peddling his paintings on the streets of New York City.
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World Page 4
