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romans-artblog · 1 year ago

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EXPLORING THE ETHICS AND FINANCE OF ART AUTHENTICATION: WHAT ARE THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF SELLING A COPY?

In the last decade, the art market has experienced something of a boom. In 2017, Christie’s auction house sold Da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ (shown in fig. 1) for an eye-watering $450,312,500 (after buyer’s premium), becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at a public auction – beating the previously held record of around $300,000,000 for Willem de Kooning’s ‘Interchange’ in 2015. The sale has exacerbated the profitability of trade in the art market, and therefore illustrates how some unscrupulous dealers may be driven to sell forgeries as authentic artworks. For example, in 2011, the Knoedler art gallery of New York became embroiled in one of the biggest art scandals in modern history. Having been the oldest operating art gallery in the United States, conducting business between 1846 and 2011, it was forced to close its doors when it was discovered that they were selling forgeries to customers for millions of US dollars [Bowley, Cohen & Rashbaum, 2013]. The paintings they sold as forgeries were purchased from an intermediary who provided little information on the seller and no paperwork to prove provenance, and yet the gallery sold the paintings as authentic anyway. One such painting sold by the gallery was purchased from the seller for $950,000 and was sold for $15,000,000 –a nearly 1500% rate of profit. Customers were purchasing artworks for millions of dollars that were ultimately worth a fraction of the cost. The case has stressed the importance of proving the provenance and scientific identification of a painting, but it also raises the questions of just how an artwork is authenticated and subsequently valued, as well as questioning whether an artwork should be devalued if it is discovered to be a forgery even if the artwork is entirely original and of the same technical skill as the artist the forger has claimed it to be by – if an artwork is devalued once it is discovered to be a forgery does this mean that the true value of the piece lies in the name of the artist who created it, as opposed to the creativity and skill used to make it? In this essay I would like to discuss these questions, but most importantly I would like to discuss how ethical it is to sell an artwork that has a strong chance of being a forgery as a definitive authentication. Using contextual analysis and behavioural economic theory, as well as wider examination, I will explore how it is ethically dubious to sell an artwork in the name of an artist for profitable gain, as well as explaining why these artworks should be devalued once discovered.

To understand why (most) forgeries are devalued once the artwork is discovered to be fraudulent, it is important to understand how art is appraised in the first place, as well as the process followed to determine the authenticity of a painting. Artistic quality and the artist’s name are two crucial factors to a valuation, but in reality, art appraisal is much more complex than these two elements alone. While not always relevant, the topic of an artwork can play a significant role in the valuation of it – over time opinions and tastes vary, so a piece that was not desirable a few decades before may become quite popular. There are of course anomalies, however it would be naïve to think that the art market is exempt from the law of demand [David, Oosterlinck, & Szafarz, 2013]. For example, the pre-Raphaelite desire to return to the artistic values of the early renaissance, or simply just the artworks created in the Italian quattrocento, led to a revival in the interest in renaissance art, bringing the art and style to the forefront of the western conscious nearly 400 years later. Up until this point collectors of Italian renaissance work were not uncommon but often viewed by others within the art world as having outdated taste [Bullen, Brewster, & Jacobs, 1998]. On a similar note, some artworks will have more contextual value to certain groups of people or individuals than others, and therefore may be worth more to them from a monetary standpoint. Preservation of an artwork can also significantly impact its financial worth – a piece that has extensive damage or has been poorly conserved would in most circumstances be worth a fraction of what it would be in perfect condition. There is then of course the appraisal factor of authenticity, which also has multiple facets, but for the sake of this essay shall be simplified to three elements: art historical evaluation, forensic analysis, and provenance. Further to this, it is also important to note that the discussion of artwork throughout this essay becomes reliant on the commoditisation of art, in which art becomes a material bought and sold by collectors and dealers to gain a profit, rather than an object purchased for cultural enrichment. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in their series of manuscripts ‘The German Ideology’ that “in a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities”, stating that the division of labour in society results in people being forced to commoditise the artworks that they create and sell them in order to survive, but should labour be divided equally and fairly, there would be no need for ‘artists’ as people would be able to create their own art for pleasure. Should a marxist approach be applied to the creation of art, the art market would not exist as people would be adequately trained to create any art piece that they desired rather than purchasing it from others. The art discussed in this essay has been removed from a setting of creation for enjoyment and becomes an object for the elite to purchase as a status symbol and for-profit gain.

One of the finest examples of an artwork’s authenticity being called into question, and therefore raising questions of its valuation, is an ongoing one - that of the previously mentioned Salvator Mundi by the renaissance master Leonardo Da Vinci, shown in figure 1. The painting sold for just over $450 million in 2017, despite being bought from previous owners for less than $10,000 in 2005. The astronomical price, and apparent price inflation, of the painting raised many eyebrows, but now the authenticity, and how ethical the handling of the endorsement of the artwork was, is being questioned by scholars [Hope, 2020]. The auction house Christie’s provides an extensive provenance for the painting, which is readily available on their website, however Hope argues that there is a lack of evidence to infallibly prove the paintings' authenticity with this alone – Christie’s own website has a notable amount of ‘possibly’s and ‘probably’s when stating the painting’s course through history into the current owner’s hands, suggesting that even they themselves have doubts of the painting’s legitimacy. While it is common for artworks to have gaps in the records of ownership, the ones noted here are substantial.

And yet, the painting was still approved by the British National Gallery to be included in their 2011 exhibition ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’, with Hope making mention in his article of the Gallery’s role in the subsequent record-breaking sale. The artwork was not originally included in the Gallery’s press release but was added at a later date and included in the exhibition guide [Carelli, 2019]. The exhibition guide states that the artwork is categorically a newly discovered Da Vinci piece but fails to make mention of the authentication process underwent by the painting, or the opinion held by many experts in the field that Da Vinci painted at the very most no more than 20% of the painting [Ekuland, Higgins, & Jackson, 2020]. Further to this, the Gallery’s statement upon the addition of the artwork to the collection was as follows: “It will be presented as the work of Leonardo, and this will obviously be an important opportunity to test this new attribution by direct comparison with works universally accepted as Leonardo’s.” It could be argued that if the national gallery were able to prove that the artwork is a definitive Da Vinci, it would not be necessary to test the painting alongside those that had already been attributed to the artist, so the inclusion of this line in their press release suggests that, once again, they themselves are uncertain that the painting truly is authentic. There appears to be an element of cognitive bias involved, specifically confirmation bias, in which the experts who have appraised the artwork wanted the painting to be a Da Vinci and thus have assessed it as such; the inclusion of a newly approved piece by the renaissance master, the first identified in over 100 years, would have understandably bolstered the Gallery’s already Goliathan exhibition on both a national and international scale. This is not to say that the authenticators have deliberately misidentified the painting, but rather the effect of the confirmation bias at work, and the dealers honestly believe that the artwork is genuine despite evidence that proves otherwise. It would be easy to assume that experts involved would not be so willing to authenticate a painting when there seems to be ample documentation to the contrary, however, as with any certification process, there is always a margin for human error, and it would not be entirely implausible to think that this has been the case here, especially with so much to gain for everyone involved from the painting being positively identified.

Once the painting was sold in 2017, it was reported that it would go on display in the Louvre Abu Dhabi in a highly-anticipated 2019 exhibition, and yet, the painting has not been seen since its sale [Harford, 2019]. There are multiple theories as to its current whereabouts, with the generally accepted one being that it’s being stored on a yacht belonging to the paintings apparent owner Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. With the claims of inauthenticity that have dogged the painting since the sale, it is not entirely surprising that the Crown Prince has been reluctant to display the artwork, having spent nearly half a billion US dollars on a painting that may be a fake. It could be argued that the seller, and perhaps even the National Gallery, have deliberately engineered the situation to make the artwork appear as authentic as possible – however the authenticity of a painting can almost virtually never be confirmed with absolute certainty, and such is a risk that the buyer takes when purchasing, especially when dealing in such large sums of money.

An issue that needs to be raised when discussing this topic is acknowledging at what point a copy starts being a forgery. Over the millennia, many artists trained as apprentices in bottegas, creating sketches of Ancient sculptures, before moving onto the replication of a master’s paintings, and then ultimately working with live models from which they could finally create their own original artworks. The emulations of previously crafted artworks were clearly not created with the malicious intent to profit from another artist’s work, but rather almost complimentary, with the point being that these pieces were so great that there is something to learn from them. There are also the cases of artworks that have taken obvious reference from other pieces, such as the very well known case of Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ and Manet’s ‘Olympia’, shown in figures 2 and 3 respectively. There is a very clear comparison to be drawn between the paintings, with Manet directly referencing Titian. However, despite the obvious visual parallels, the symbolism within each of the individual artworks creates completely different narratives. From the dog at the foot to the wedding dress being pulled out of a chest at the rear of the image, Titian’s painting tells the story of a bride-to-be who will always remain loyal to her husband. Manet, on the other hand, shows Olympia, a prostitute looking her next client directly in the eye while her maid hands her a bouquet – a gift from her ‘suitor’. Although Manet has unmistakably alluded to Titian’s masterpiece, the art community would by and large agree that the impressionist has not simply created a copy of the renaissance masters work, but created a commentary on it.

A similar concept in a more contemporary setting, in 2018 the Simon Lee Gallery in New York held the exhibition ‘Fake as More’, which invited the viewer to examine selected artworks and view how the creation of art over time has become a repetitive process – in their own words, the artworks are “each in varying states of repetition, replication, copy and self-copy”. The exhibition included Sturtevant’s ‘Warhol Licorice Marilyn’, shown in figure 4. Practising across multiple mediums, the artist created replications of her contemporaries’ pieces – although ‘Warhol Licorice Marilyn’ was created in 2004, the artist was active at the time that Warhol created his screen-print using the same image of the actress Marilyn Monroe in 1967, an image which he had used multiple times previously when creating a series of diptychs, shown in figure 5. Sturtevant became the spearhead of appropriation art in the 1980s, although the artist herself did not align her practice with the movement [Sotheby’s, 2022]. She argued that her artwork was an effort of replication and not appropriation – differentiated by motive, Sturtevant’s work was created to encourage the viewer to think about the production of art itself, whereas appropriation art is made purely to copy a piece as closely as possible. In this particular piece by Sturtevant, she has meticulously followed the same steps that Warhol would have when creating his original piece, even going so far as to use the exact same reference image, as mentioned earlier. The resulting piece does have some notable differences, such as the original having more definitive detail in the hair as well as different colours being used for the majority of the work, and yet ‘Marilyn Licorice Warhol’ clearly emulates the original, and could easily be mistaken as a creation of Warhol’s hand. Warhol was not unaware of Sturtevant, and even gave her one of his pieces from his ‘Flowers’ series for her to study and attempt to replicate. Interestingly, Sturtevant has chosen to create a work of Warhol’s that is similar to a wider series of pieces that he made in 1984, ‘Details of Renaissance Paintings’. In this series, Warhol chose select renaissance images and focused on a particular area within them to create a bright print, exploring the details of a small portion of the painting – an example of one of these, his rendition of Sandro Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’, can be seen in figure 6. Andy Warhol has become one of the faces of pop-art, his Campbell soup cans and Marilyn prints becoming synonymous with the movement, using his works to discuss the presence of consumerism in the cultural DNA of the United States [Warhol, 1977]. This particular series, ‘Details of Renaissance Paintings’, relies on the production of previously created artworks, and while not entirely the same, the screen print that he created of Monroe used an image that had been taken as a publicity shot for the actress’s 1953 film Niagara; in this instance the artist has used imagery by another person to create a new piece – once again showing how the creation of art is constantly in a state of copying, perfectly encapsulating the exact purpose of the ‘Fake as More’ exhibition. All of the artworks previously mentioned from Titian’s to Warhol’s ‘Venus’s feature this recurring theme of copying, and yet they are all considered individual artworks within their own right. The key notion here is that the creator acknowledges that the art leads back to a previous alternative artwork. They are not being sold as entirely brand new imagery, but intentionally referencing something else. The value of these artworks do to rely on the actual resemblance to the artwork it is referencing, but how well the viewer can make link back to the reference. When looking at ‘Olympia’, the viewer is supposed to make the link to ‘Venus of Urbino’ - the creation of art is simply a never ending cycle of reproduction.

As mentioned earlier, a key component of an artwork’s importance can lie within its contextual value. A painting may have particular societal significance which may be more valuable, both monetarily and socially, to certain groups. When a copy becomes a forgery, it loses educational worth. In 1946, the Dutch painter Han Van Meegeren was accused of collaborating with nazis during the Second World War when a supposed Vermeer that was known to have previously been in his possession was found in the belongings of Hermann Goering – when the artist was accused, he shockingly admitted that the work was not in fact a painting by the Dutch golden age painter, but was rather a forgery made by himself [Hauben, 1967]. Meegeren had started his career as a legitimate artist in 1914, having studied architecture at university before quitting to study art and gaining some popularity, but his work was soon criticised by his peers for his lack of originality as the art world shifted towards more modern tastes such as cubism and surrealism. Wanting to prove a point, Meegeren set about creating an original artwork in the name of Vermeer; it took him 6 years to perfect his technique – including the purchase of real 17th century canvases that he would reuse as well as baking a painting once he had finished applying the paint - but once he had, the painting was not only accepted by experts in the field, but was renowned as one of the finest works by the Dutch master. At this point, Meegeren could have admitted to the ruse that was designed to force his contemporaries to acknowledge his artistic capabilities, however upon seeing how profitable creating an artwork and selling it as a master’s could be, he quickly descended down a path of forgery, creating a further unknown amount of paintings and amassing great wealth. When he was caught making deals with Nazi generals, he was once again faced with 2 options: either allow himself to be charged with consorting with the enemy, or confess to years of selling fakes as authentics. Clearly, the artist decided that the latter was the lesser offence. While it is of course obvious that the artist would not want to be associated with Nazi Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, his willingness to admit to forgery over selling Dutch cultural capital to leaders of the German regime provides something of a benchmark to the morals of selling fakes. Meegeren was convicted of selling forgeries in 1947 and sentenced to a year in prison, a sentence which he did not serve as he died of a heart attack before he could be transferred to the prison, so, at least in the eyes of the law, there was clearly a lack of ethics held by the artist in some way, and yet he still chose to confess to forgery and subsequently serve a year in prison over association with Nazis and the selling of Dutch heritage artefacts to an enemy.

Overall, it is clear that there are always moral implications when both creating and selling and artwork that copies another, whether the copying is intentional. Through the research that I have conducted however, I would argue that the replication of artworks can sometimes be ethical, dependent on the artists intent. For example, as discussed previously, Sturtevant would deliberately create artworks that resembled other artists, and yet her artwork was not created to deceive the audience, but rather to actively encourage the viewer to examine how an artwork is produced, and therefore how they engage with it. Sturtevant even had permission from Warhol to recreate some of his works, with the latter famously stating “I don’t know. Ask Elaine.” when asked about the production techniques used in his creative process [Christie’s, 2022]. Sturtevant’s work is about artistic expression and not consumer deception. I also believe that these pieces should not be devalued in comparison to the artworks that they are referencing, as they are individual artworks in their own right that simply reference other pieces – if they had been created with the intent to deceive, I would then argue that they should be devalued, as they would lack contextual value. Han Van Meegeren intentionally created forgeries with the intent of deceiving others, and yet still preferred to have been known as a forger who victimised Nazis rather than a Nazi sympathiser. In cases so extreme as, supposedly, Da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’, I believe that while the promotion of the artwork encouraged the public to wholeheartedly believe that the painting was unequivocally authenticated, Da Vinci was prolific for not completing artworks, and with so few in public domain after 500 years, there is only so much that the experts can do to prove its authenticity, and therefore the purchaser must acknowledge the risks that they are taking when buying the artwork for such a grand amount. As mentioned earlier, most of the artworks discussed within this essay have been removed from the Marxist theory of art production, and while originally may have been created for the artists own enjoyment, they ultimately have become part of a wider market that now exploits the product of artwork [Marx & Engels, 1845-47]. Should the artworks be returned to the environment of creation for leisure, the risks of purchase would cease to exist as art would no longer have any monetary value and, once again, the buyer could simply produce the artwork themselves. Perhaps the most important question to ask is not how ethical is the sale of copied artworks, but rather, how ethical is the consumption of art as a commodity at all?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amineddoleh, L., (2015) Purchasing Art in a Market Full of Forgeries: Risks and Legal Remedies for Buyers. International Journal of Cultural Property, 22(2-3), pp.419-435.

Bowley, G., Cohen, P. and Rashbaum, W., (2013) Dealer at Center of Art Scandal Arrested on Tax Charges (Published 2013). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/arts/design/dealer-at-center-of-art-scandal-arrested-on-tax-charges.html

Bullen, J.B., Brewster, B. and Jacobs, L., (1998) The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism. Oxford University Press.

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Hauben, R., (1967) Han van Meegeren: A Study of Forgery. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 31(3), pp. 164.

Hope, C., (2021) Charles Hope · A Peece of Christ: Did Leonardo paint it? · LRB 22 December 2019. [online] London Review of Books. Available at: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n01/charles-hope/a-peece-of-christ

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