Journal
Notes on art forgery, provenance and authentication.
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How Forgeries Actually Get Caught
A single pigment in a sketch on the back of a canvas helped bring down Wolfgang Beltracchi. Titanium white, Bakelite and phthalocyanine blue show how materials can contradict even the most convincing provenance.
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The Gurlitt Trove: When Art History Loses Its Paper Trail
A 2012 tax investigation uncovered an estate of about 1,600 artworks linked to Hitler's dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. Years later, researchers had confirmed 14 as Nazi-looted art, while roughly 1,000 still had unresolved histories.
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Forged Documents, Not Paintings: The Hitler Diaries
Stern paid 9.3 million Deutsche Marks for 60 volumes of Hitler’s secret diaries, and three document examiners vouched for them. Within two weeks, the paper, binding and ink proved they could not have been written during the war.
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Peter Doig: The Painter Who Had to Prove He Didn’t Paint It
A $100 painting sparked a multimillion-dollar lawsuit when Peter Doig denied creating it. The case exposed the risks of mistaken attribution, weak provenance, and claims that outlast the available evidence.
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Why the Warhol Board and Basquiat Committee Shut Down
The Warhol board spent $7 million defending a single rejection. Within a few years, the committees for Warhol, Basquiat, Haring and Lichtenstein had all stepped back — and collectors were left to weigh the evidence themselves.