Knoedler fake trial begins (ctd.)
February 7 2016
Picture: Illustrated Courtroom
The first few days of testimony at the Knoedler fake trial have swung a lamp over some of the most deplorable aspects of the art market. Mr and Mrs De Soles are suing Ann Freedman, director of the now closed Knoedler gallery, for selling them a fake Rothko. The picture is admitted to be a fake, but the Knoedler defence is that the De Soles should have checked it out themselves. In other words, tough cheese. The Knoedler defence has gotten off to a shaky start, however, with numerous experts who were cited by Knoedler as endorsing the painting's attribution in fact saying they did not. It looks like Knoedler was behaving in an extraordinary way, and you have to wonder how they did not realise the suspiciously cheap, previously unknown works were not fake.
But for me the my eye was most drawn to this snippet reported in Art News:
The total sale price [of the 'Rothko'] was, in fact, $8.5 million, according to an invoice presented as evidence. Kelly, who purchased the painting on the De Soles’ behalf, said on Thursday that he negotiated with Freedman a $200,000 discount—and, as he told the jury, he kept $100,000 of that discount for himself as his commission after telling the De Soles that Freedman only offered them a $100,000 discount. “I could have kept the $200,000,” he said.
This fellow James Kelly should be deeply ashamed of himself. Asked to negotiate the purchase of a painting on behalf of the De Soles, he decided to pocket half the proferred discount himself. That's a disgusting thing to do, but I guess he's not the first person to have done it. Kelly runs an art gallery in Santa Fe.
There have been a number of eye-opening revelations about the Knoedler modus operandi. My favourite was the fact that they asked technical investigator James Martin of Orion Analytical to make massive changes to his report on one fake painting, in effect falsifying his own results. Of course, Martin rightly told them where to go.
See the top 5 aspects of the case so far here on ArtNet News.
