The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World

by Anthony M. Amore

  It was to be a profitable sale for the works. But it would also prove too good to be true. First, Salander told Earl that Punchcard Flutter was sold for $2,125,000—$125,000 less than agreed upon. Then he told Earl that although the paintings had been released to the buyers, no payment had been received. In the end, Earl never received payment for the works. Eventually, he learned that 96 of his father’s works had been sold without Salander informing him, and that other pieces may have been “lost.”

  It was a devastating blow for Earl Davis, who considered Salander a friend and confidant whom he truly loved. But Salander’s corrupt dealing with his friend was hardly his only indiscretion. Instead, it was just one anecdote in a massive Ponzi scheme involving paintings that would leave the jaws of art power brokers agape, not only for its scope but for Salander’s willingness to victimize those who considered him a close, trusted friend.

  Like Earl Davis, John and Neelon Crawford were the children of a famous artist, the painter and photographer Ralston Crawford. Crawford’s work was so respected by Salander that his gallery hosted an exhibition of his paintings in 2001 called Ralston Crawford: A Retrospective. The show’s catalog described Crawford as a “major American artist,” and the show exhibited his range, including not just his Abstract pictures, but some of his Precisionist works as well, including Overseas Highway (1939), which was based on the road leading from Key West, Florida, to the mainland. In 2007, Crawford’s sons also asked for an inventory of their father’s works, which had been entrusted to Salander. Unhappy with a lack of response from the art dealer, the men took more immediate action than had Earl Davis. John Crawford, himself an artist, jumped into his old Dodge pickup truck and drove it into the city. He walked into Salander-O’Reilly Gallery and took all of his father’s paintings he could find, packed them into the truck, and left. Meanwhile, his brother Neelon was also being ignored by Salander. Made aware that some of his father’s works were about to be sold, Neelon called the New York Police Department. He was directed to Detective Mark Fishstein, who, as part of his work on the Major Case Squad, serves as the NYPD’s top art cop. Fishstein is one of only a handful of city police officers in the United States with expertise in art theft, forgery, and fraud, and he made a short phone call to Salander in which he minced no words. Salander, apparently aware of Fishstein’s skill as an investigator, sent off the paintings to Neelon Crawford by the end of the week.26

  Salander didn’t limit his fraud to just pilfering from artists’ estates that had been entrusted to him by selling works without notifying or properly compensating his clients. He also preyed on collectors who had come to consider him more than just a kindred spirit; for some, he was like part of the family.

  In 2004, Dr. Alexander Pearlman passed away at the age of 91. A lifelong lover of art, he would visit galleries in Manhattan weekly with his daughters and take in the work of a wide array of artists. After frequent trips to Salander’s galleries, Pearlman, a physician from Queens, formed such a close bond with Salander that the two would regularly embrace upon meeting. The sometimes gruff Salander attended Pearlman’s funeral and cried over the loss of his friend.

  Throughout their lives, the doctor’s daughters were protective of the art collection their father had assembled. It had become so valuable that his daughter Dr. Ellyn Shander remembers being instructed to tell her friends that the paintings were the work of her father in order to keep secret the fact that the artworks—including paintings by Modigliani, Manet, Cézanne, and Picasso—were worth about $2 million. As Pearlman approached the end of his life, he and his daughters discussed the future of his collection. His plan was clear and sensible: the paintings would be entrusted to his close friend Larry Salander for safekeeping.

  After the funeral, Salander saw to it that each and every painting was properly inventoried, crated, and shipped to his establishment. Shander’s mind was at ease; that is, until she heard word in 2007 of problems at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. She made the trip into the city to see Salander in person, and instead of being greeted by the caring friend she had come to know, she was met with a refusal to see her. She was escorted from the gallery by a security guard. She would later learn that much of the precious collection had been sold, and the works that had not became embroiled in legal proceedings.27

  Not even his celebrity friends were safe from Salander’s scams. Robert DeNiro had entrusted Salander with his late father’s paintings, with an agreement on a 50–50 split on any sales. Salander had hosted exhibitions of Robert DeNiro Sr.’s works and the painter had chosen Salander as his dealer. The younger DeNiro would recall that Salander gave him “the impression he liked my father’s art, he was enthusiastic.”28 While he may have liked it, Salander and his associate Leigh Morse sold $77,000 of it to San Francisco’s Hackett-Freedman Gallery in 2007 without sharing the proceeds with DeNiro as agreed. Morse, a dealer in Salander’s employ, was found to have wired money from the sale into her own personal bank account. Ultimately, DeNiro was able to retrieve the paintings at some expense after complex legal wrangling in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.29 Morse was convicted of scheming to defraud in April 2011.30

  When it came to John McEnroe, Salander had an entirely different scam at work. This one involved selling one piece of art to multiple buyers. In 2004, the dealer convinced his good friend McEnroe to invest $2 million to buy half the interest in two paintings, Pirates I and Pirates II, by the Armenian American Abstract Expressionist artist Arshile Gorky. Salander told McEnroe that he would then flip the paintings and split the proceeds with the tennis great. But Salander only followed through on part of that plan. First, he sold the same half-interest in the paintings that he sold to McEnroe to another investor, a banker named Morton Bender. And then Salander boldly took the fraud a step further, selling Pirates II to yet another buyer and pocketing the $2.5 million proceeds. Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau put it well when he summed up the scheme: “Why sell it once when you can sell it three times?”31 Ironically, Salander had once been quoted as saying that “art is the human attempt to make one plus one equal more than two.”32 Clearly, he had taken his own philosophy too literally.

  While it appears that Salander’s frauds were motivated at least in part by the debts he accumulated while trying to become the father of Renaissance art in the gallery world, he also fleeced the group that was formed to finance his purchases of that dream collection. Renaissance Art Investors was one of the biggest investors in Salander-O’Reilly Galleries and paid out $42 million for about 328 works of art from the Renaissance. RAI then consigned the works back to Salander to be marketed and sold. Yet RAI soon learned that Salander had misrepresented nearly all aspects of the investment, including the cost and source of the artwork. Salander told the investors he was buying the works from private dealers and estates primarily in Europe, when in fact many of the works were obtained from public auction houses in Europe and the United States. He also failed to report or turn over millions in proceeds from the RAI artworks. And finally, in order to cover his fraud, Salander provided RAI with forged and falsified documents ranging from invoices to inventories.33

  News of Salander’s scams spread quickly as more of his clients became aware that their artistic assets might be in jeopardy. Nevertheless, he remained defiant. When Maurice Katz learned that Salander had sold one of his paintings for $125,000 and didn’t pay Katz as agreed, Katz contacted the Maine Antique Digest, a major industry journal read by a large number of important collectors. He also spread the word that he had been cheated by the art dealer. Salander contacted Katz directly by e-mail and was apoplectic. “[You] have referred to me as a ‘crook’ among other things in conversation with a senior officer at my bank. This person and others will testify to your slanderous remarks and your balance due in your Maurer of $15,000 will seem like a pittance to the damages that that will have been caused to my business and for which I will ask for damages as well as the amount of loss actually inc
urred as a result of your out of bounds, unfounded and outrageous remarks . . . You have made it more difficult to put food in the stomachs of my children and I am extremely angry about it.” Ever portraying himself as the common man, he added, “If you were enough of a person it would be much more rewarding for me and less expensive for you if we settled this matter the way men did in the old days (although it would be much more painful).”34

  When he became aware of the scheme perpetrated by Salander, RAI’s head, Donald Schupak, was a force to be reckoned with—and he was not one to be bullied. In 2007, with Salander’s dream Caravaggio exhibition on the horizon and a steady stream of stories about trouble at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in the media, Schupak kicked into action. Working to stop the exhibition from happening, he and his attorney filed a motion in the New York State Supreme Court to limit Salander’s control. He even sent a private security firm to videotape all activity at the gallery and to search people as they left.35

  With lawsuits mounting, negative press attention snowballing, and doubts about Salander’s actions and judgment at their high point, Clovis Whitfield, the man who had Caravaggio’s Apollo the Lute Player—the cornerstone of Salander’s plans—was pushed to the brink. In a scene out of a Hollywood movie, Whitfield went to Salander-O’Reilly Gallery on the afternoon of the Caravaggio exhibition and informed Salander that he was pulling his prized painting from the gallery. Salander’s exhibition—and his dreams—were dashed.

  All of this activity caught the watchful eye of district attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office, and on March 26, 2009, he announced the arrest of Larry Salander and a 100-count indictment for stealing $88 million from a bank, art owners, and investors—many of whom were friends and longtime associates—from 1994 through 2007. In all, the district attorney’s office stated that Salander had defrauded 26 victims, stealing from them essentially in two ways: first, he sold artwork he didn’t own and kept the proceeds; and second, he lured clients to invest in fraudulent opportunities. It was discovered that in one case he had sold half interest in one painting to seven people. And through the court battles and prosecution that would ensue, the enormous debts that Salander had accumulated become public. They included a $15 million mortgage on his Manhattan brownstone after racking up nearly $500,000 in costs for a series of unpaid home renovations; a $1.2 million personal loan; $1.7 million in back rent due on his original gallery (which he was forced to close not long after opening the palatial gallery on East 71st Street); and nearly $55 million due for paintings and investments, including the Stuart Davis and RAI paintings.36

  From a criminal prosecution perspective, the D.A.’s office had a mountain of evidence against Salander, and he, like so many scammers, knew he faced an opponent he could not beat. In 2010, with new district attorney Cyrus Vance in office, Salander pleaded guilty to stealing over $120 million from investors and art owners. Photos of Salander were splashed across newspapers and the internet, depicting a ruffled, beaten man. In his long statement to the court, Salander stated, “I’ve lost my life, my business and my reputation.” He sobbed as he apologized to his victims and his family and added, “I’m utterly and completely disgraced.”37 The court, however, was in no mood for his contrition. Judge Michael Obus hit Salander with the maximum sentence allowable under his plea deal: 18 years in jail, with the opportunity for parole after six served. But that wasn’t all Salander faced: he is also responsible for $114.9 million in restitution, and was embroiled in dozens of civil lawsuits as well as complex bankruptcy proceedings. Summing up the Salander affair, Manhattan assistant district attorney Kenn Kern said, “Lawrence Salander is a pathologically self-absorbed con man who betrays friends, investors, heirs and living artists.” He added that Salander was engaged in “a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.”38

  Incredibly, RAI head Donald Schupak had also been personally impacted by Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Schupak’s then 94-year-old mother and blind sister were left penniless by Madoff’s audacious fraud.39

  Rather than rescuing souls, Salander left widespread devastation in his wake. Making matters even messier, a bankruptcy ruling out of federal court in New York related to the case caused yet more consternation for an owner when it was decided that a painting owned by a private interest but in possession of Salander-O’Reilly could be sold by the bankrupt gallery to pay creditors. But the hurt extended far beyond just finances. Decades-long friends were shocked, even crushed, by Salander’s betrayal, in what many have called New York’s biggest-ever art fraud. Onlookers were left astounded that one man could turn on those who considered him not just a friend but a trusted member of their extended family. And he left many wondering how they could have been so wrong about a person. Perhaps the answer is in the words of Dr. Ellyn Shander: “He is a sly, manipulative sociopath, a con man with no soul.”40

  Four

  The Trusting Artist

  On a February afternoon in 2011 in Washington, D.C., Jasper Johns sat still in his chair on the dais in the East Room of the White House alongside notables such as poet Maya Angelou, basketball legend Bill Russell, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett. Barack Obama had just placed the Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of one of his predecessors, George Herbert Walker Bush, to thunderous and sustained applause, when the emcee called Johns to the fore. The artist, smartly dressed in a dark suit and matching polka-dotted tie, rose from his seat and stood next to the blue podium bearing the presidential seal as Obama stood behind him holding the white-enamel, star-shaped medal that would soon be presented to him. Johns—the first painter or sculptor to be awarded the medal in 34 years—smiled as the emcee read aloud: “Bold and iconic, the work of Jasper Johns has left lasting impressions on countless Americans. With nontraditional materials and methods, he has explored themes of identity, perception, and patriotism. By asking us to reexamine the familiar, his work has sparked the minds of creative thinkers around the world. Jasper Johns’ innovative creations helped shape the pop, minimal and conceptual art movements, and the United States honors him for his profound influence on generations of artists.”1

  The awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Johns was certainly apt. His influence, especially on American artists, is profound, and his body of work is widely respected. And the reference to his exploration of the theme of patriotism was especially significant. In 1954, he painted his first American flag, and the star-spangled banner became the image with which the artist has become most commonly connected. “One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag,” he recalls, “and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.” He came home with three canvases, plywood for mounting them, newspaper that he cut into strips, and encaustic paint. This choice in pigment gives the painting a texture that, coupled with the barely discernible strips of newsprint, begs for closer inspection by the viewer.2

  The painting was completed at a time in Johns’s career during which he was experimenting with universally recognizable symbols: flags, targets, numbers, and letters.3 As Museum of Modern Art curator Anne Umland pointed out, the subject matter was not a statement of blind patriotism or allegiance, but it did carry political overtones: “Underneath the pigment are strips of collaged newspapers. And when you really begin to look at these you can see that there are dates that are recognizable [and] they allow us to locate this painting, this flag, this timeless symbol of our nation within a very particular context, the 1950s in America, which is right in the midst of the McCarthy era and the beginning of the Cold War, when symbols such as the flag would have had a very particular and potent valence.”4 Johns’s own comment on the work supports Umland’s theory. He has said of the painting’s creation, “Well, it certainly wasn’t out of patriotism. It was about something you see from out of the side of your eye and you recognize it as what it is without really seeing it. It is the thing itself, but there’s also something else there.
” However, he remains somewhat coy about the true meaning of the work. “I don’t think I want to describe it. . . . It’s probably shifted its meaning over time.”5 Perhaps most fittingly, the Whitney Museum of American Art describes it as a work that “flatters or honors the nation without genuflection.”6 The price tag for the work is undeniably high: a version of Flag offered at auction by Christie’s in the fall of 2014 was listed with an estimate of $15–$20 million, or about $100,000 per square inch.7

  Another Flag—this time a sculpture made in 1960 by Johns—led to an earlier connection between the artist and the White House in the 1960s, when gallery owner Leo Castelli, who gave Johns his first one-man show, brought then president John F. Kennedy the bronze on Independence Day. From Johns’s view, the gesture wasn’t consistent with his vision. “I thought it was the tackiest thing I’d ever seen,” Johns recalled.8 The misstep by Castelli did not damage the relationship between the pair. In fact, they would go on to forge a decades-long association.

  Clearly, Jasper Johns’s connection to art depicting the American flag is as indelible as Edgar Degas’s connection to ballerinas or Andy Warhol’s to cans of Campbell’s Soup. And regardless of the message of the painting, the image of the most iconic president of the twentieth century posing with one of his sculptures certainly did not hurt the value and importance of Flag.

  The original 1960 sculpted metal version of Flag was given by Johns to his partner Robert Rauschenberg upon completion.9 Then, in the early 1960s, Johns had bronze sculptures of the work made by taking a mold of the surface of his painting, pouring plaster into the mold, and then removing the plaster, leaving him with a positive of the painting’s surface. He gave the positive of the surface to a foundry where a process called sand casting was used to make copies. Johns had the foundry create four bronze sculptures of Flag.