Sometimes making painting is like counter fitting money. The New York Times reporter Bett Sokol has been doing some amazing investigative reporting about the apparant Jean-Michel Basquiat forgeries on exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA).
Basquiat died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988. His art work has skyrocketed in value since then. A canvas by the painter was recently auctioned for $85 million.
The FBI is now investigating the 25 painting on exhibit at OMA. The 25 works are supposed to have been “discovered” in a Los Angeles storage unit in 2012. The unit was owned by the now deceased MASH screenwriter Thad Mumford who the owners claim purchased the works for $5000. The owners say they met Mumford for lunch and that he gave them a poem on printer paper to commemorate the sale. The problem with this is that Mumford was a techno phoebe who never used printer paper, preferring analog pencil or pen on a legal pad. De Groft included the poem in the museum’s exhibition as proof of the paintings’ authenticity. The story relies on the initials JMB written with thick oil stick below the poem. Those 3 letters they claim would be very hard to forge. “The poem is almost like a receipt, it refers to the works, it refers to the inscriptions in the works, it refers to the time,” OMA museum director Aaron De Groft said in an interview. In an interview I saw of the artist back in the 1980s, Basquiat was asked about the words used on a particular canvas. The artist was annoyed and refused to explain what the words that he scrawled and crossed of in the painting were meant to convey.
The back story establishing the paintings’ origins rests largely on the word of Mangin and Force, who have both served time in prison for felony drug trafficking. Mangan was part of a criminal ring that forged documents and illegally issued more than five million shares of bogus stock, earning him over $8 million in illicit proceeds. Mangan was convicted, and his 1999 sentencing included a lifetime ban on working in the securities trade. O’Donnell also has a criminal record, having pleaded no contest to violating campaign finance laws in 2006.
The Times found a designer who had previously worked for Federal Express. He identified the FedEx typeface on a piece of cardboard Basquiat was said to have painted on as one that was not designed until 1994, six years after the artist’s death.
De Groft is staking his reputation on the paintings being genuine, he cited statements from art world experts commissioned by the owners William Force and Lee Mangin and Pierce O’Donnell. who are trying to sell the works. If authentic, the Basquiat paintings would be worth about $100 million, according to Putnam Fine Art and Antique Appraisals, which assessed them for the owners. Exhibiting paintings at a museum can often enhance the legitimacy of works without more established provenance.
University of Maryland associate professor of art, Jordana Moore Saggese was paid $25,000 to authenticate the works on cardboard. Pages where removed from her report where she clearly stated that nine of the 25 paintings could not be attributed to Basquiat. The owners pushed back on her findings which is unheard of and unethical.
In a subpoena to OMA dated July 27, 2021, the F.B.I. demanded “any and all” communications between the museum’s employees and the owners of the artworks “purported to be by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat,” including correspondence with experts regarding the artwork. Museum staff have been told they would be fired if they spoke to media.
Colette Loll, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University pointed out the unethical motives of the owners and museum, “The lack of any real scientific analysis on methods and materials speaks volumes.” In another tweet, she added, “Handwriting analysis and poems don’t authenticate artworks.”
