Artist exposes fake at auction in China
October 20 2011
Picture: China Daily
One of China's hottest contemporary artists, Zhang Xiaogang, has exposed a fake of his work that was about to be sold at auction. From China Daily:
The portrait of a young girl was among the modern and contemporary artworks that Beijing Tranthy International Auction Co Ltd had gathered for its autumn auction.
On Tuesday, a Sina micro blogger asked Zhang to authenticate the painting. He replied on the website: "It's a bad fake at first sight. Poorly done. How dare someone put it up for auction." [...]
Tranthy Auction has withdrawn the piece Zhang identified as fake from the auction and apologized to him. A source with Tranthy who refused to be named said that on June 2 the painting sold for 1.8 million yuan (then almost $278,000) at Beijing Yinqianshan International Auction House.
I suspect this happens all the time. I'm often told that one of the reasons people prefer to buy contemporay art instead of old masters is that they can be certain about the attribution. But these days that just isn't the case. There are fakes everywhere (and of course, some might say that many of these contemporary works aren't hard to fake). The added problem in China is that the country's auction houses are exempted, by law, from giving any guarantee or authentification of the works they sell.
Finally, I love the defence put up by one of the auctioneers:
He went on to challenge the painter: "Does Zhang remember clearly how many paintings he has done through his life?"
