Stories of fakers in art never stop surprising one. Recently, I came across a work being sold for a six-figure price. The back of the canvas was treated with linseed and dust and the front fairly glowed with fresh colour. The work was dated 1987. I have works in my collection that date back to the 1960s and they do not reflect such a degree of discolouring. The artist?s signature too, seemed to have found the darkest area to be tacked on to. The work was an obvious fake.
The provenance was Kolkata. It is a city that is well-known for its faking industry just as it has versatile technicians capable of being at home with any kind of technique. More than that, it was a Kolkata artist that gave the global auction houses cause to blush when he declared that certain works that sold as those of Nandalal Bose were actually his.
If the auction houses can be fooled, then who can remain secure? Normally, restorers, perhaps, are the best judges of a work as they remove layers of varnish from it, studying layer after layer of an artist?s work, right down to the priming of a canvas. But in the present state of affairs nothing seems to be foolproof.
Artists themselves are often not above authenticating good fakes if presented by a gallery-owner who they depend on. On the other hand, they are equally capable of declaring of works of theirs sold for a song or gifted away in their youth, fakes. These works are then discarded cheaply by their owners to kindly middlemen who are always willing to help out as they know exactly how to sell them and to have them authenticated once more.
Still, aberrations apart, one?s best bet probably is to restrict buying to living artists alone and get a note of authentication from them. In fact, in today?s conditions, it seems that even this is not enough, for I hear there are even art impresarios who arrange art camps, get works from artists, then have them copied by other artists and sell at considerably higher prices.
If one can do this with living artists, what would happen to the works of the dead? A well-known woman artist has actually taken one such impresario to court. But it does not seem to have stopped his activity.
Then there is the problem of well-known artists using assistants to get their work done, often giving the assistant a signed work or two as a payment.
And there is at least one case in which the artist actually asked for such a work to be withdrawn from a global auction on the grounds it was a fake. The assistant then challenged the whole series publicly. What does the buyer do in such a case?
Not much, I imagine. For in the last resort an artist?s word has to be relied upon, at least while he or she is alive. An artist who indulges in atelier production or happily signs a pupil?s good work in appreciation, does enormous damage to his or her future.
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Nandalal Bose: Untitled – Watercolor on paper signed and dated in Bengali (1942) |
For not only is a proper historical assessment of such work not possible, but also the uneven quality of such an artist?s body of work never allows it to become the sort of investment it should be.
Unless of course, painstaking scholarship of the sort we do not really have today, sifts the fakes, copies and works made by assistants from those of the artists concerned themselves.
What does a collector do in this state of affairs? One can, of course, restrict one?s buying to living artists with a note of authentication (or a signed photograph) to go with the work. Secondly, cross-checking with gallery records (where they exist) ought to help authenticate a work. Then there is the question of provenance.
A buyer must insist on knowing where a work has come from. A concrete history of who all have owned a particular work of art is as good an authentication as any. This is often accompanied by a number of visual cross references like auction catalogues, articles and the like.
One thing is certain. A collector paying a six-figure price ought really to do the adequate amount of homework before buying a work. If one does not take this minimum precaution, then one can end up with whole collections of fakes, copies and the like, something many Indian maharajas did as they bought shop-loads of art in bulk.
I have no objection to bulk-buying. But then I do believe that sifting through loads of junk to pick up a work or two takes far more time than choosing a work carefully and then buying it.
Also, good collectors ought to study the material evidence like the age and state of a canvas and the pigment, the brush-work, the quality of composition, drawing and so on. This will provide very sound evidence as to the age of a work if not its authenticity. Then some understanding of an artist?s stylistic development will help in providing the rest of the evidence needed to ensure authenticity.
I have stated more than once, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. And the best proof against picking up fakes is to be a cautious buyer.
And in my experience, cautious buying never lets one down. Also, in today?s conditions when the stock market is reviving, the art market is bound to sag a little. So cautious buying is good investment at the same time.