March 1, 2022 • 45 mins
A wealthy Belgian financier wants his $17 million back after he discovers the truth about the painting and the Knoedler Gallery.
Hosted by Alec Baldwin. Art Fraud is brought to you by iHeart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are Matt DelPiano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Terner, Alec Baldwin and Michael Shnayerson. We’re produced by Branden Morgan and Zach McNees. Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Lindsay Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Shnayerson.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
If you went into the Gucci store and bought a handbag,
you wouldn't ask the salesperson is this a real Gucci?
You know, you would take that as a sort of
given fact. So the fact that Noodler, you know, was
the oldest gallery in the city. It was a hundred
and sixty five years old. It had worked with these
artists in their lifetimes, and if you wanted to buy
(00:21):
an abstract expressionist painting, that's kind of the place you
would go to do that. By the mid two thousand's,
Carlos and Glyphs forgery scheme was raking in enormous profits,
and yet Glyphra was miserable. Later, she told a federal
judge that Carlos beat her frequently, once going so far
(00:44):
as to break her nose. The beatings, she claimed, were
to keep her from bailing out of the family art business.
Quitting wasn't an option. Carlos warned that if she left,
he would kidnap their daughters solely and take her to Spain,
and glyph Era would never see her again. Ironically, GPS
(01:08):
relationship with Ann Friedman was blossoming. Rosalies demanded and received
higher fees from Ndler as the fake paintings continued to
sell for exorbitant prices. Ultimately, Gla would rake in more
than twenty million dollars in her fourteen year forgery career.
(01:30):
With that money came a commensurate lifestyle. In two thousand five,
Carlos and A bought an enormous square foot house in
the North Shore neighborhood of Sam's Point on Long Island's
Gold Coast. The Mediterranean style home came with a two
point three million dollar price tag, quite a property for
(01:51):
a local art dealer and her seemingly unemployed partner. Friends
and neighbors found the home beautiful and impressively furnished, but
not without its quirks. The odd thing about it was
they were paintings everywhere, and not just hung on the
walls either. One time we went over to pick up
the kids, my wife and I were in the house
(02:14):
and we were kind of blown away by the art
that we saw in the house, because, you know, Glaire
always had the appearance of being successful. My name is
Brian Scarlatto's I'm an attorney with Costellans and Fink in
New York City, and I specialized in criminal texts, investigations
and prosecutions. Brian was a family friend of Cfia and
(02:35):
Carlos and Sand's point, their children attended the same school. Later,
when Cpia's legal troubles began, she retained Brian as her attorney.
We knew she had a gallery in New York, but
when we went into the house, you know, we recognized
several pieces that we knew there were war holes. I
believe there was a Picasso, there was a Rothco, and
(02:56):
others like that. And as I said, there was also
very interesting furniture, and there was just so much art
that some of it was leaned up against the wall
because there wasn't enough room to hang it all on
the walls. And you know, my wife and I think
just assumed that they were using their art as storage
for their gallery. But when you go into somebody's house
and you see warholes in a Picasso and a Rothco
(03:18):
and other things that you recognize, it's it's sort of,
you know, overwhelming. You know, it was also casual. I
remember remarking to my wife on the way out that
you know, oh my god, they have this this little dog, Rocky,
who was running around embarking. And I remember saying to
my wife, what if Rocky were to pee on a Picasso.
I mean it just and it seemed like it could happen, because,
(03:39):
as I say, things were just stacked up against the wall.
They were always very elegantly dressed, you know, had nice
cars in a very nice house, and they seemed to
travel the world, and they also knew a lot about art.
And so they were my friends who were the art
dealers and had a gallery. And Friedman was also living
(03:59):
the good life. Ndler was trafficking almost exclusively in the
David Herbert collection of fake Rothko's, de coonings and pollocks.
Anne had a knack for reaching out to buyers that
were exceedingly wealthy but not necessarily well informed. Domenico and
Eleanor de Sole walked into the Knodler in late two
(04:19):
thousand four in search of a Shawn Scully painting. Scully
was a contemporary abstract artist. The De Soules were fond of.
Domenico De Sole was just stepping down as president and
CEO of Gucci and was becoming designer Tom Ford's partner
in a new fashion company. The Desules had an ocean
(04:39):
front home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and needed art
to hang on its walls, and didn't have a Shawn
Scully painting to sell them. She did, however, have an
amazing Mark Rothko, as she had done so many times before,
an enchanted her prospective buyers with the story of the
ex family, David Herbert and the marvelous downtown art world
(05:03):
of the nineteen fifties where artists sold works out of
the back of their studios for cash. The Desoles glowed
with excitement. They had never paid anywhere close to eight
point four million dollars for a painting before, but it
was a Rothco. The very name of the painting, untitled
nineteen fifty six, evoked images of the troubled artist in
(05:26):
his upper east Side carriage house, working late into the night.
Like so many other paintings in the David Herbert collection,
the work was notably smaller than a typical Rothco. Larger
ones went for tens of millions of dollars. Once again,
the painting had no real provenance, nor was it in
the Rothco catalog resume, but Anne said she had no
(05:48):
doubt the magnificent painting they were gazing at, which soar
in value once it was placed in a future supplement
to the catalog resume. The eight point four million dollar
rothco was sold and hung in the Dosoles hilton Head
family home. Eleanor later testified that friends would stop by
just who and a over it. But what was a
(06:14):
roth Cooke compared to a top of the market Pollock.
Ever since Anne had hit a wall with the Leavy Pollock,
she had pressed life for another. By two thousand seven
she had it in hand, a classic drip painting with
a silvery cast. Fully deserving, Anne thought of the seventeen
million dollar price tag she attached to it. Through a
(06:37):
pair of middleman dealers, a transparency of the painting found
its way to a Belgian born financier named Pierre Lagrange.
The Grange was a hedge fund manager, one of the
richest men in London. He was drawn to the Pollock, but,
like Jack Levy, he wanted assurances that the painting was authentic. Fortunately,
(07:00):
Lagrange wasn't asking for an official eye far evaluation of
the painting. He did want to be sure that the
Pollock Krasner Foundation would authenticate the work. This was a
problem for Anne. The Pollock Foundation had stopped authenticating any
new works purporting to be Pollocks. As for the Pollock
Catalog Resume, its last and final supplement, had been released
(07:21):
in nineteen ninety four. Anne had the clout to arrange
a meeting with the Pollock Krausner Foundation lawyers, in part
because one of the lawyers was also her lawyer. She
talked up the painting and stressed the importance of updating
the entire catalog resume to be reprinted in full color.
It was our only shot to have the painting added. Officially,
(07:43):
the lawyers murmured and hummed, but the word authentication never
quite entered the room. Anne had to think fast or
risk losing the biggest sale of her career. On March eighteenth,
two thousand seven, Anne rode to Lagrangees camp and told
them exactly what she thought the English collector wanted to
(08:03):
hear quote. The Pollock Krasner Foundation has stated that they
are intending to update and republish the catalog resume in
full color and also in an online version. Every detail
of the email was a lie. Lagrange and his chief lawyer,
Matthew Johnson found the email less than persuasive. They wanted
(08:25):
reps and warranties, as Donson later put it, which was
to say legally binding language that the painting would be
authenticated and that it would appear in the next catalog.
Resume Friedman turned indignant. Quote. The distrusting and demanding language
in this agreement of sale is not in keeping with
the familiar and widely accepted standards and practices in the
(08:48):
art business, she huffed. In her written response, it veers
far from the spirit and understanding of our original agreement.
I have not been confronted by anything like this in
my thirty four years of experience as an art dealer.
We have given you our word. Our invoice is always
our legal guarantee, and has previously stated if this painting
(09:11):
has proved not to be by the hand of Pollock,
the sale would be canceled, to painting return to Knodler
and the full purchase refunded to you end quote. The
hypocrisy of the letter was breathtaking, but Ann's huffing and
puffing seemed to do the trick. On November six, two
thousand seven, Pierre Lagrange completed his purchase of the silvery Pollock.
(09:36):
The Knodler provided a written guarantee that Lagrange's pollock was
from a quote private collection of the heir to a
collector who had obtained it directly from Jackson Pollock. End quote.
The air insisted on anonymity. With seventeen million dollars rendered,
Pierre Lagrange gave his new painting a place of honor
(09:56):
in his London penthouse, unaware that its true value it
was little more than the canvas it was painted on.
(10:17):
More art fraud in a minute. Around the same time
Pierre Lagrange was acquiring his seven figure Pollock Glafia, Rosalie's
success was perhaps going to her head. An opportunity for
new business came up when her old friend Heimi Andrade
introduced Gfia to an ex notler dealer named Julian Weissman.
(10:40):
Rosale spoke to Weiseman about potentially cutting ties with ann Friedman.
She wanted a new start, she said. As a show
of good faith, she consigned three Robert Motherwell paintings to
Wiseman's gallery, who works were said to be from Motherwell's
Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. The third painting from
the series ultimately sold by Wiseman for six hundred and
(11:02):
fifty thousand dollars to Mark Blondo, director of the Irish
Kalila Gallery. Blondeau like Lagrange wanted authentication and he got it.
Jack Flam and Morgan Spangler, co directors of the Motherwell
Foundation known as the Dadalist, spent hours poring over the
Blonde Motherwell. Its lack of provenance bothered them, but they
(11:24):
felt obligated to authenticate it. The painting was just that good.
Flam and Spangler spent the rest of two thousand seven
finishing Motherwell's catalog resid A. As they did, they noticed
a troubling trend more Spanish elegy paintings without provenance. There
(11:47):
were seven in all, including the one now owned by
the Khalila Gallery. To the foundation's dismay, four of the
seven paintings were being sold by the Knoedler Gallery. Jack
Flam insisted at all seven Spanish elegy paintings be shown
together at the Knoedler and resisted as long as she could,
but ultimately she caved and agreed. The Spanish elegies were spectacular,
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but curiously, they were all signed exactly the same way.
This was strange for a painter who was known to
vary his signature from picture to picture. Three of the
paintings had gone from Gera to Weissman, indicating that Rosalis
had played her side game, likely to ann Friedman's surprise
now and admitted the obvious. All seven paintings had come
(12:37):
from the same source for the moment, she refused to
say who that source. Was Alarmed, the Dadalus Foundation demanded
Knoedler higher, a widely respected forensic art expert named Jamie Martin,
to test two of the disputed Spanish Elegy paintings. Martin
(12:58):
also tested genuine when Motherwell paintings for comparison's sake. What
Jamie Martin would do is he will take a painting
and he will investigate all the aspects of the pain
from the frame to the paints that are used. That's
Jason Hernandez, Assistant District Attorney to New York Second District,
and the course of his criminal investigation, Jason gleaned a
(13:21):
wealth of knowledge about the forensic testing process. He'll take
an incredibly small slice of the paint. He will investigate
the dust that's in the crevices and the cracks of
the paint, and he will determine, you know, what the
composition of those materials are. He will look for what
he calls anomalies, meaning things that shouldn't be there. And
I'll give you a very very simple example. I think
(13:43):
it was the DuPont Corporation at some point patented titanium dioxide,
which really makes whites really white. It was patented sometime
and I don't know the seventies I'm going to call it.
But what that means is that if I present to
you a Pollock painting and it has titanium diox, I
didn't we have a problem because Jackson Pollock was dead
before titanium dioxide was discovered. And Jamie Martin's report was devastating.
(14:14):
He found that a red pigment in one of these
Spanish elegies hadn't existed until years after the paintings were
said to be made. All seven of the Spanish elegies
were immediately scrapped from the upcoming Motherwell catalog Resone. The
Kalila Gallerbay sued the Dadalists. The Dadalist sued Weissman, the dealer.
(14:37):
In the end, all parties settled, with money changing hands
and the Kalila's painting branded on its verso as a forgery.
One day, while Jamie Martin was studying the Spanish elegies,
Jack Flam had a memorable talk with Ann Friedman. She said,
I don't want to get Michael Hammer involved in this.
(14:57):
He's very lititious, Flam later recalled. Despite her wish to
keep the Spanish Elegy debacle off her boss's desk, Friedman
and Hammer had forged an alliance right from the start,
As a lawsuit would later allege, Anne had kept her
boss in the loop on the sales of Rosales's paintings
from the beginning. She sent Hammer short write ups of
(15:19):
every new painting that came in. The writeups detailed how
much the gallery paid Glofere for each picture wholesale and
how much Nodler had sold them for retail to its customers.
And yet years later, Anne felt afraid of Michael Hammer
enough to worry he might sue her. It seemed as
if each partner still kept some secrets from the other.
(15:41):
From the start, Knoedler's owner, Michael Hammer had kept all
but invisible in his spacious office at the gallery. Staffers
rarely saw him, and when they did, it was hard
not to be distracted by his artificial tan and a
wardrobe that could charitably be described as extravagance. Hammers roughly
two dozen vintage cars, some worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,
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only underscore the sense that here was a man of
almost unimaginable wealth, free to do as he wished. By
the fall of two thousand nine, news of the fake
Spanish elegy paintings had reached the Prosecutor's office in the
Second District of New York. Investigators were now sifting through
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and Friedman's seventeen years as head of the Ndler Gallery.
Any hopes and had of keeping Michael Hammer out of
the loop were dashed. Seeing law enforcement walked through the
doors had jolted Hammer to his core. That October, he
terminated and Freedman's employment from the Ndler Gallery. Her feet
(16:51):
barely touched the floor as security guards swept her through
the gallery and out the front doors under the Royal
blue awning and was finished. We'll be back after this.
(17:13):
Back in London, Pierre Lagrange was having trouble of his own.
Just two years after buying his seventeen million dollar pollock,
he was embarking on a divorce. He was advised to
sell his recently acquired pollock and split the proceeds with
his soon to be ex wife Lagrange was shocked to
discover that neither Southnbies nor Christie's would accept the work.
(17:34):
After all, the Pollock had no provenance, and its surfaced
only a few years before. David and Pham, one of
the world's most respected authorities on modern American art, was
just as skeptical when he personally viewed the painting in
Pierre Lagrange's London home. It was the ninth of April
two thousand and eight when I paid a visit and
(17:58):
I saw the whole collection of the and suddenly we
got to the Pollock. Pierre looked at me. I looked
at Pierre's advisor, and I think I said, what do
you think? And I wouldcall very clearly, saying well, that
has a history. And they were hoping for some more words.
(18:20):
But I never said the west was silence. They were
hoping that you would say the painting was right. Yes,
that's exactly what I did not say. La Grange had
the distinct feeling he was being toyed with, and he
(18:40):
was angry. Where was Ann Friedman anyway? News of her
firing hadn't yet made its way to La Grange. The
Knoedler was playing a vanishing game of its own. The
gallery flat out refused to take back Lagrange's Pollock, nor
would it be fund his seventeen million dollars. After all,
the gallery insisted the painting was genuine. Lagrange was seeing
(19:05):
read he wanted his money, and surfaced in November two
with an email meant to lower the temperature. Once again,
she insisted politely but firmly, that Lagrange's Pollock was one
of several newly discovered works that would be added to
a revised Pollock catalog. Resimee Ann's timing couldn't have been worse.
(19:27):
Just one month after her attempt to band aid the
Lagrange situation with yet another lie, Jackson, Pollock expert Eugene
Thaw shocked the art world with a declaration of seismic proportions.
Thaw declared that Legrange's silvery Pollock looked not right to him.
Thaw was in poor health and he wanted to be
(19:47):
sure his judgment was made clear, so in early two
thousand eleven, he repeated his claim in a videotaped Affidavid
the painting looked fake to him, Thal said, AND's email
was immediately and entirely invalidated. It was now February two eleven.
Pierre Lagrange still had no interest in meeting Ann Friedman,
(20:10):
but word was that a grand jury was convening to
consider charges stemming from the fake Spanish elegies, and Anne
was said to be a subject of interest. Lagrange decided
he would meet with her after all, and suggested the
lounge of the Carlisle Hotel with its serpentine rooms of
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overstuffed chairs. Anne arrived early to the Carlyle on a
wintry day and shows a small table in a cozy
lowlit corner. She recognized Lagrange from his long gray hair
and angular face as soon as he walked in, and
stood up to greet him and his attorney, Matthew Donson.
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Pierre Lagrange, I'm Ann Friedman. It's nice to meet you,
she said, don't be so sure, Lagrange seethed in his
eligian accent. Lagrange ordered a cocktail, the lawyer a coke.
I've been looking forward to meeting you and discussing the painting,
and said, cheerfully, let's talk about how I can be helpful.
I want my money, the groans said, his voice rising
(21:15):
with each word. That's all, and tried to stay calm,
She leaned forward a bit. It's hard to predict the market,
she noted. She said they might have to wait a
while before selling the painting, but she and La Grange
would be able to help each other out of this fix,
and said assuredly. That was when Lagrange lashed out quote.
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He started screaming at the top of his lungs. I'm
going to set you on fire. Do you understand that
I'm going to set you on fire? And you will
have no life. It will be over, and it will
hit the press and you will be done. And tried
to reason with the Belgian financier in a calm voice,
(22:01):
as if talking to an unruly child. Taking the painting
back simply wasn't an option. She said all the experts
agreed it was real, and so did she, and said
she offered to take the painting on consignment and try
to sell it to someone else. Lagrange was astounded. Anne's
(22:22):
solution was to find some other sap to unload the
painting on. Not only was that wildly irresponsible, but surely
illegal as well. The two of them would be selling
a painting Lagrange now believed was a fake. If Noodler
didn't immediately return his money and take back the painting.
Lagrange railed, he would destroy her reputation. He was furious.
(22:48):
Lagrange and Johnson stood up. The meeting was clearly over.
Everyone by now at the Carlysle was staring. This was
a real scene, and recounted. The waiter came over and
asked if she is all right. Later, Lagrange would deny
A's account of the meeting. He hadn't raised his voice,
he said. The calamity at the Carlisle merely confirmed Lagrange's
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worst fears. He was sure his Pollock was a fake,
and Friedman persona non grata. At the n Nodler could
do nothing to get him his money back. Lagrange's only
move was to squeeze the reclusive Michael Hammer, Noodler's chairman,
in whatever way he could to recover his seventeen million.
Lagrange had no idea how utterly dependent the gallery was
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on the sales of Ga Feara Rosales's paintings. He did
note with interest that Hammer had put one of the
galleries two adjoining mansions up for sale for more than
a year, The seventeen thousand square foot Italian Renaissance building
at nineteen seventy Street had been quietly shopped around town
for fifty nine point nine million dollars. That is a
(24:00):
high price in a bear market. It remained for sale
until February two thousand eleven, when it sold for thirty
one million dollars, half its original asking price. As it
turned out, the sale came shortly before the disastrous Carlisle
Hotel meeting. Lagrange knew exactly where seventeen million of the
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mansions proceeds should go, but Nodler had no interest in
giving any of that money back to the London hedge funder.
The standoff with Lagrange remained a secret through much of
two thousand eleven as lawyers attempted to resolve the situation.
Then in October came news of the Motherwell Spanish elegy settlement. Hi.
(24:43):
I'm Patricia Cohen, and I'm a reporter for the New
York Times. Patricia's first scoop about the Noodler saga was
dated October eleventh, two thousand eleven. I had no idea
at that point that that story was going to kind
of splode into one of the biggest art frauds of
(25:04):
the last hundred years. I just started digging around, and
even though that story was relatively short, I quickly realized
that there was a much bigger story buried beneath this
with with a lot more questions that came up, and
then I started digging. Cohen's story in the Times prompted
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Lagrange to do something he should have done far earlier.
He called Jamie Martin, the forensic expert who had analyzed
the motherwells, and requested a test on the polit no
auction house would touch. The tests confirmed Lagrange's worst fears.
Various pigments in the painting had not existed in nine
when the painting was supposedly made. It was forensically impossible
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for the work to be legitimate. The report Lagrange received
in late November of two thousand eleven brought full throated
legal action. In a searing letter to Michael Hammer, Lagrange
demanded that Knodler refund his seventeen million dollars in forty
eight hours or face a lawsuit. The letter would ultimately
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be the last straw from Michael Hammer to Lagrange's astonishment.
Hammer responded by closing the Knoedler's brass doors permanently on
November eleven, sixty five years after it first opened for business.
(26:39):
Gafara wasn't actually named, but New York Times readers learned
the name of Ann Friedman and learned too that she
had been accused of selling fake Motherwell's while she was
president of Nodler. Was there a sense of starting to
connect the dots sort of? I remember that day very
well because it was a big scandal. There was an
FBI investigate issue. We were talking about, you know, many
(27:02):
paintings in many millions of dollars, and I knew about
the Pierre Lagrange lawsuit, and so I had basically been
planning within the next week to have this you know,
big expose about this, and then when the gallery closed,
it was like, oh shit, we have to cover this,
(27:24):
but you know, we've got this really other, big story,
but I can't get into all of that yet because
not every single piece had turned down. So essentially I
covered that as a new story, um, giving enough detail
that we knew something was going on, but also not
essentially wanting to kind of expose what we knew was
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going to be part of this really big takedown. Incredibly,
just two days before Noodler closed its doors and two
years since she'd been fired, and placed a very strange
phone call who noted Clifford Steel expert David and Fam,
the same expert who had viewed Pierre Lagrange's fake Pollock
(28:08):
in London, and telephone me on the November twenty eleven.
The game was up. By then, basically we knew that
it was all hopes since things were fakes in a
truly baffling move, and was lobbying an Fham to have
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the burned fragment of a fake Clifford Steel painting added
officially to the Clifford Steel Museum. This was the very
same painting Carlos Bergantino's had burned with a hair dryer
and told GA to say had caught fire in a car.
I was absolutely astonished that Ann wanted me to write
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some kind of a letter about the Clifford Store Museum
accepting this flagmant of the painting, and I told him
point blank is not up to me to do it,
so if anyone is going to do it, it would
have to be approved by director, by the Bold and
so forth. So it was to me um a phone
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call that left me spaceless. Even at the time when
I wrote it, I bore exclamation marks after that note
because of extraordinary On the morning of December two, two
tho high pitched scream could be heard from the bedroom
(29:32):
of a hotel suite in Miami, Florida. The annual Art
Bosl Fair was about to begin, and Domenico and Eleanor
Desole had arrived early to get premium tickets. Eleanor was
scrolling through The New York Times on her iPad when
a story jumped out. Domenico rushed from the shower to
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see what was wrong. Too shocked to speak, Eleanor handed
him the iPad, her hands shaking. Patricia Cohen's first story
in the New York Times had mentioned the Knoedler and
publicly identified Glefara Rosales for the first time, but it
was a short piece and the Disules may not have
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noticed it. That morning's follow up about Pierre Lagrange and
his fake Pollock made the news all too clear. One
of the soules first calls that morning was to Ann
Friedman and swore to the Dosilas that the Lagrange Pollock
described in the New York Times was real. So were
the rest of the works in the David Herbert collection,
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including the Desuls, Rothko, the Dosilas demanded evidence who was
this mysterious Mr x Jr. Through whom all these paintings
had flowed, who was glefi Rosales, for that matter, and
promised she would soon be learning the identity of the
mysterious collector herself. The Soles were incredulous, and had previously
(30:59):
told them she know the collector. As one of the
Dess lawyers later put it, the most basic tenet of
authenticity for the Rothco was a lie. Neither Anne Freedman
nor the n Noodler Gallery knew the true identity of
their supposed client. Among the dozen or so victims who
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began peppering the now defunct k Noodler Gallery with legal
demands for their money back was Francis Beatty. To her
shock and horror, Francis discovered that a Clifford Steel painting
she had purchased from Anne in two thousand was likely
just another fake from the supposed David Herbert collection. Beatty
had loved Clifford Stills paintings from her earliest days. They're
(31:44):
incredibly exciting. They look like sort of lightning or jagged
cliffs in an abstract way. They have enormous electricity and sometimes.
The colors are very I would say, dance intense, and
they have a tremendous sense of movement, very dynamic. Finding
(32:09):
them was a challenge. Clifford stills are rare. You don't
know where in the current universe there's going to be
a Clifford still for sale and one that someone might
let you get your hands on. I mean, they're not
sitting there in people's inventory. I had a colleague who
(32:30):
came in and said to me, could you sell a
great Clifford still, a great early still? And I said,
you bet you I can, And he said, I know
where there is one. There's a beauty, and Ann Friedman
has it. Francis rushed over to the notler. She was stunned.
The painting was perfect, the Jagon mountains, the colors, perfect size.
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I had sold to pictures of this pure so over
a period. It took me, you know, fifteen years to
find the first one, twenty years to find the second one.
But of course it had no provenance. Oh I remember
very specifically because I said, this has no provenance and
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it hasn't been exhibited anywhere. And so Anne wrote me
an email saying that it belonged to a Mexican who
had gotten it directly from Clifford Still and had been
in the same family that entire time to close the
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deal and made an unusual promised to Francis. If we
did the deal, she would reveal the provenance to me.
I showed it to a wonderful restorer, very good friend
of mine, Alan goldrac who had been the restorer who
(34:07):
had unwrapped all the Clifford stills for the Metropolitan Museum's retrospective.
Francis also showed the painting to David an fhem as
much the Clifford still expert as the ultimate connoisseur for
Pollock and Rothcobe. He had liked the picture very much.
Despite the positive affirmations from experts, Francis remained wary. So
(34:30):
I said to Anne, I need a Nodler guarantee, and
you have to guarantee the authenticity of this picture with
Noler behind it, so if the authenticity is questioned, you
return the money to the client. And what did she
(34:52):
say to that? Fine? And I got her to write
a guarantee of authenticity on the Clifford still, and I
gave a copy of it to the client. And at
that point I thought you know what, We're safe if
(35:13):
the worst thing possibly happens and something goes wrong. It
is a Nodler guarantee, and no Ler is the last
place in the world that would renege on any kind
of guarantee. With that baby and two fellow dealers put
(35:36):
their money down about one million dollars. They sold it
for one point one million to the collector who had
pushed for the still in the first place. An entire
decade passed no issues with the painting. Popped up curiously, however,
and failed to keep her side of the bargain with Francis.
(35:56):
She didn't tell me who she got the picture phone.
I probably should have pressed her on that, but I
didn't because I think once I had obtained this Nodler
guarantee in writing, I thought that I had sort of
an impregnable defense. So fast forward to two thousand eleven,
(36:22):
Pierre Lagrange shouts it from the rooftops that he's paid
seventeen million dollars for a fake Pollock. What was your
reaction to that news. I'm not sure I want to
say it on air. I mean, holy moley, um, we
were absolutely stunned. We went and did the forensic testing
(36:48):
I think it had some kind of white in it
that hadn't been invented back then. And also the pigments
were of more recent vintage. God, so at that point
obviously you had to call your customer, who who bought
the painting. We said, we're going to give you back
(37:09):
your money and sue and I think we um We
sent him a check for one million, one thousand, but
he said to us that he thought the picture was
now worth three million and he was going to sue
us for that much money. I mean the suit must
have cost three yo dollars. And then we finally settled.
(37:34):
You settled with Ndler, which, of course, by now was
almost like a dead man walking, right. I mean it
had closed in officially, so you were you were negotiating
with a company that did it even exist. Right. We
were in the same boat as everybody else. Little by little,
lots of people were settling to get something. So we
(37:56):
were out the million dollars. We were out the cost
of the litigation a million four so maybe it was
more like a million plus. Well, that must have haunted
you for a long time. It was a terrible thing
for the profession. I'm the secretary of the Art Dealers
(38:16):
Association of America. And I'm an art historian and I
love the art dealing profession. It's full of wonderful, devoted
experts and people who love art. And this was just
a devastating blow. So it was on everybody's lips, and
(38:39):
it made you feel like you've gone from decades and
decades devoted to doing the right thing and suddenly you
were all like in cahoots with al Capone. Yeah, it
was hugely distressing. What happened to the painting. By the way,
(38:59):
it's because we got the painting back and it was
in our basement and I really wanted to take it out,
take it to, you know, the Clifford Still Museum, and
you know, stand it up and look at other pictures
of that vintage and figure out how why I had
(39:22):
how I had made this mistake. There's no question that
was a fake. But it was so damn good. It
was in the story to Richard Fannigan and Company. And
when we closed, when Richard left that building, I don't
know where it is and I kind of have a
mental note of trying to track it down and find
(39:44):
out where it is. By March two, twelves had a
team of lawyers harnessed up. Domenico Disle was a gentle
family man, but being cond out of eight point four
million dollars set of fire raging in his Italian soul.
(40:06):
He wasn't just set on getting his money back. He
wanted triple damages, a so called WECo penalty for what
amounted to a conspiracy among all of the defendants. A
trio of top art fraud lawyers began inundating the Knodler
with demands for documents. The number of artists, the number
(40:28):
of unknown works that cheap prices, know they're got them
for the incredible markups they sold them for. That's in
the papers we got in the first few months. Those
are just invoices from the nother gallery. I spoke with
the Disols attorneys, Aaron Crowle, Emily royce Baum and Gregory
Clark at their law offices, so we had discovery from
(40:51):
them relatively early on with those documents. So you know,
that's a big part of the case, right from the beginning,
right and also early on, before Jamie Martin had had
the opportunity to examine a number of different works like
he had looked at Pierre Le Grange's work. I think
he had looked at ours. We were telling the judge,
(41:13):
this is like you go to Canal Street and there's
a table. You don't have to one watches fake. They're
all fake. You don't have to test them all to
know that they're all fake. And sure enough, Jamie proved
that it was the same paint for the Pollock, for
the roth Cooe. You know that spread ten years apart.
Over the course of the two years between when we
(41:34):
filed the case and leading guilty. Over the course of
that time, Jamie Martin ultimately had access to eighteen works
out of the fort on the list, and he proved
every single one was a fake. What emerged was what
we showed that trial with the witness testimony, that there
(41:54):
were no experts who authenticated these paintings. For another it
just didn't happen. The lawyers came up with six red
flags clear indicators of a criminal enterprise. The one that
seems to interest people the most is the profits. And
you know, our expert testified that ordinarily in the secondary market,
(42:17):
the dealer will make twenty to thirty percent of a profit.
So they buy for a hundred dollars, they sell for
a hundred thirty dollars, they get to pocket thirty dollars. No,
there was making hundreds from the very beginning, making hundreds
of percent profits, and as the scheme went on, it
multiplied to six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred percent. Now
(42:39):
instead of just a little deep in corn on paper,
you had a pollock, you had a bunch of them,
had a bunch of them, and so you know, and
the profits were a loan, a signal. And I think
this is that hit the jurors the most, that the
profits were a signal that, like, something was wrong here.
But the number of works was wildly off the charts.
(43:05):
By early two thousand thirteen, the lawyers for the Soles
had done enough discovery to feel they had a rock
solid case. Jason Hernandez wasn't so sure, and assistant district
attorney specializing in fraud cases in New York City's Second District,
Hernandez had come to be wary of fraud cases built
(43:26):
on the testimony of experts. That was testimony the defense
could easily counter with experts of their own. After all,
who was to say which expert would be right? Hernandez
knew the case would be an enormous challenge. There were
an unusually large number of prominent people who seemingly were
going to stand by the paintings and say that they
(43:48):
were real. That is uncommon, and I could see right away. Well,
you know, how do you get over that? Because if
the person selling them is showing them to all of
these steam people and they're saying, yep, looks right to me,
looks good to me, that's not a criminal case anymore.
Despite the mountain of lawsuits, only one case would go
(44:11):
to trial. Eleanor and Domenico de Soule versus the defendants
and friedmanfro Rosalee, carlos Bergantino's, Michael Hammer and the NLAR Gallery.
That's next time on art Fraud, Why looks so awflyet
(44:33):
tragic but on a happy face? Smiling can work like magic,
but on a happy face. Take off the gloomy mask, tragedy.
It's not your style. You look so good that you'll
be glad you decided to smile. Art Fraud is brought
(44:54):
to you by I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our
executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner,
myself and Michael Schneyerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan and
Zach McNeice. Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay
Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneyerson.
(45:19):
Blood on a happy face, on a happy face.
If you went into the Gucci store and bought a handbag,
you wouldn't ask the salesperson is this a real Gucci?
You know, you would take that as a sort of
given fact. So the fact that Noodler, you know, was
the oldest gallery in the city. It was a hundred
and sixty five years old. It had worked with these
artists in their lifetimes, and if you wanted to buy
(00:21):
an abstract expressionist painting, that's kind of the place you
would go to do that. By the mid two thousand's,
Carlos and Glyphs forgery scheme was raking in enormous profits,
and yet Glyphra was miserable. Later, she told a federal
judge that Carlos beat her frequently, once going so far
(00:44):
as to break her nose. The beatings, she claimed, were
to keep her from bailing out of the family art business.
Quitting wasn't an option. Carlos warned that if she left,
he would kidnap their daughters solely and take her to Spain,
and glyph Era would never see her again. Ironically, GPS
(01:08):
relationship with Ann Friedman was blossoming. Rosalies demanded and received
higher fees from Ndler as the fake paintings continued to
sell for exorbitant prices. Ultimately, Gla would rake in more
than twenty million dollars in her fourteen year forgery career.
(01:30):
With that money came a commensurate lifestyle. In two thousand five,
Carlos and A bought an enormous square foot house in
the North Shore neighborhood of Sam's Point on Long Island's
Gold Coast. The Mediterranean style home came with a two
point three million dollar price tag, quite a property for
(01:51):
a local art dealer and her seemingly unemployed partner. Friends
and neighbors found the home beautiful and impressively furnished, but
not without its quirks. The odd thing about it was
they were paintings everywhere, and not just hung on the
walls either. One time we went over to pick up
the kids, my wife and I were in the house
(02:14):
and we were kind of blown away by the art
that we saw in the house, because, you know, Glaire
always had the appearance of being successful. My name is
Brian Scarlatto's I'm an attorney with Costellans and Fink in
New York City, and I specialized in criminal texts, investigations
and prosecutions. Brian was a family friend of Cfia and
(02:35):
Carlos and Sand's point, their children attended the same school. Later,
when Cpia's legal troubles began, she retained Brian as her attorney.
We knew she had a gallery in New York, but
when we went into the house, you know, we recognized
several pieces that we knew there were war holes. I
believe there was a Picasso, there was a Rothco, and
(02:56):
others like that. And as I said, there was also
very interesting furniture, and there was just so much art
that some of it was leaned up against the wall
because there wasn't enough room to hang it all on
the walls. And you know, my wife and I think
just assumed that they were using their art as storage
for their gallery. But when you go into somebody's house
and you see warholes in a Picasso and a Rothco
(03:18):
and other things that you recognize, it's it's sort of,
you know, overwhelming. You know, it was also casual. I
remember remarking to my wife on the way out that
you know, oh my god, they have this this little dog, Rocky,
who was running around embarking. And I remember saying to
my wife, what if Rocky were to pee on a Picasso.
I mean it just and it seemed like it could happen, because,
(03:39):
as I say, things were just stacked up against the wall.
They were always very elegantly dressed, you know, had nice
cars in a very nice house, and they seemed to
travel the world, and they also knew a lot about art.
And so they were my friends who were the art
dealers and had a gallery. And Friedman was also living
(03:59):
the good life. Ndler was trafficking almost exclusively in the
David Herbert collection of fake Rothko's, de coonings and pollocks.
Anne had a knack for reaching out to buyers that
were exceedingly wealthy but not necessarily well informed. Domenico and
Eleanor de Sole walked into the Knodler in late two
(04:19):
thousand four in search of a Shawn Scully painting. Scully
was a contemporary abstract artist. The De Soules were fond of.
Domenico De Sole was just stepping down as president and
CEO of Gucci and was becoming designer Tom Ford's partner
in a new fashion company. The Desules had an ocean
(04:39):
front home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and needed art
to hang on its walls, and didn't have a Shawn
Scully painting to sell them. She did, however, have an
amazing Mark Rothko, as she had done so many times before,
an enchanted her prospective buyers with the story of the
ex family, David Herbert and the marvelous downtown art world
(05:03):
of the nineteen fifties where artists sold works out of
the back of their studios for cash. The Desoles glowed
with excitement. They had never paid anywhere close to eight
point four million dollars for a painting before, but it
was a Rothco. The very name of the painting, untitled
nineteen fifty six, evoked images of the troubled artist in
(05:26):
his upper east Side carriage house, working late into the night.
Like so many other paintings in the David Herbert collection,
the work was notably smaller than a typical Rothco. Larger
ones went for tens of millions of dollars. Once again,
the painting had no real provenance, nor was it in
the Rothco catalog resume, but Anne said she had no
(05:48):
doubt the magnificent painting they were gazing at, which soar
in value once it was placed in a future supplement
to the catalog resume. The eight point four million dollar
rothco was sold and hung in the Dosoles hilton Head
family home. Eleanor later testified that friends would stop by
just who and a over it. But what was a
(06:14):
roth Cooke compared to a top of the market Pollock.
Ever since Anne had hit a wall with the Leavy Pollock,
she had pressed life for another. By two thousand seven
she had it in hand, a classic drip painting with
a silvery cast. Fully deserving, Anne thought of the seventeen
million dollar price tag she attached to it. Through a
(06:37):
pair of middleman dealers, a transparency of the painting found
its way to a Belgian born financier named Pierre Lagrange.
The Grange was a hedge fund manager, one of the
richest men in London. He was drawn to the Pollock, but,
like Jack Levy, he wanted assurances that the painting was authentic. Fortunately,
(07:00):
Lagrange wasn't asking for an official eye far evaluation of
the painting. He did want to be sure that the
Pollock Krasner Foundation would authenticate the work. This was a
problem for Anne. The Pollock Foundation had stopped authenticating any
new works purporting to be Pollocks. As for the Pollock
Catalog Resume, its last and final supplement, had been released
(07:21):
in nineteen ninety four. Anne had the clout to arrange
a meeting with the Pollock Krausner Foundation lawyers, in part
because one of the lawyers was also her lawyer. She
talked up the painting and stressed the importance of updating
the entire catalog resume to be reprinted in full color.
It was our only shot to have the painting added. Officially,
(07:43):
the lawyers murmured and hummed, but the word authentication never
quite entered the room. Anne had to think fast or
risk losing the biggest sale of her career. On March eighteenth,
two thousand seven, Anne rode to Lagrangees camp and told
them exactly what she thought the English collector wanted to
(08:03):
hear quote. The Pollock Krasner Foundation has stated that they
are intending to update and republish the catalog resume in
full color and also in an online version. Every detail
of the email was a lie. Lagrange and his chief lawyer,
Matthew Johnson found the email less than persuasive. They wanted
(08:25):
reps and warranties, as Donson later put it, which was
to say legally binding language that the painting would be
authenticated and that it would appear in the next catalog.
Resume Friedman turned indignant. Quote. The distrusting and demanding language
in this agreement of sale is not in keeping with
the familiar and widely accepted standards and practices in the
(08:48):
art business, she huffed. In her written response, it veers
far from the spirit and understanding of our original agreement.
I have not been confronted by anything like this in
my thirty four years of experience as an art dealer.
We have given you our word. Our invoice is always
our legal guarantee, and has previously stated if this painting
(09:11):
has proved not to be by the hand of Pollock,
the sale would be canceled, to painting return to Knodler
and the full purchase refunded to you end quote. The
hypocrisy of the letter was breathtaking, but Ann's huffing and
puffing seemed to do the trick. On November six, two
thousand seven, Pierre Lagrange completed his purchase of the silvery Pollock.
(09:36):
The Knodler provided a written guarantee that Lagrange's pollock was
from a quote private collection of the heir to a
collector who had obtained it directly from Jackson Pollock. End quote.
The air insisted on anonymity. With seventeen million dollars rendered,
Pierre Lagrange gave his new painting a place of honor
(09:56):
in his London penthouse, unaware that its true value it
was little more than the canvas it was painted on.
(10:17):
More art fraud in a minute. Around the same time
Pierre Lagrange was acquiring his seven figure Pollock Glafia, Rosalie's
success was perhaps going to her head. An opportunity for
new business came up when her old friend Heimi Andrade
introduced Gfia to an ex notler dealer named Julian Weissman.
(10:40):
Rosale spoke to Weiseman about potentially cutting ties with ann Friedman.
She wanted a new start, she said. As a show
of good faith, she consigned three Robert Motherwell paintings to
Wiseman's gallery, who works were said to be from Motherwell's
Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. The third painting from
the series ultimately sold by Wiseman for six hundred and
(11:02):
fifty thousand dollars to Mark Blondo, director of the Irish
Kalila Gallery. Blondeau like Lagrange wanted authentication and he got it.
Jack Flam and Morgan Spangler, co directors of the Motherwell
Foundation known as the Dadalist, spent hours poring over the
Blonde Motherwell. Its lack of provenance bothered them, but they
(11:24):
felt obligated to authenticate it. The painting was just that good.
Flam and Spangler spent the rest of two thousand seven
finishing Motherwell's catalog resid A. As they did, they noticed
a troubling trend more Spanish elegy paintings without provenance. There
(11:47):
were seven in all, including the one now owned by
the Khalila Gallery. To the foundation's dismay, four of the
seven paintings were being sold by the Knoedler Gallery. Jack
Flam insisted at all seven Spanish elegy paintings be shown
together at the Knoedler and resisted as long as she could,
but ultimately she caved and agreed. The Spanish elegies were spectacular,
(12:13):
but curiously, they were all signed exactly the same way.
This was strange for a painter who was known to
vary his signature from picture to picture. Three of the
paintings had gone from Gera to Weissman, indicating that Rosalis
had played her side game, likely to ann Friedman's surprise
now and admitted the obvious. All seven paintings had come
(12:37):
from the same source for the moment, she refused to
say who that source. Was Alarmed, the Dadalus Foundation demanded
Knoedler higher, a widely respected forensic art expert named Jamie Martin,
to test two of the disputed Spanish Elegy paintings. Martin
(12:58):
also tested genuine when Motherwell paintings for comparison's sake. What
Jamie Martin would do is he will take a painting
and he will investigate all the aspects of the pain
from the frame to the paints that are used. That's
Jason Hernandez, Assistant District Attorney to New York Second District,
and the course of his criminal investigation, Jason gleaned a
(13:21):
wealth of knowledge about the forensic testing process. He'll take
an incredibly small slice of the paint. He will investigate
the dust that's in the crevices and the cracks of
the paint, and he will determine, you know, what the
composition of those materials are. He will look for what
he calls anomalies, meaning things that shouldn't be there. And
I'll give you a very very simple example. I think
(13:43):
it was the DuPont Corporation at some point patented titanium dioxide,
which really makes whites really white. It was patented sometime
and I don't know the seventies I'm going to call it.
But what that means is that if I present to
you a Pollock painting and it has titanium diox, I
didn't we have a problem because Jackson Pollock was dead
before titanium dioxide was discovered. And Jamie Martin's report was devastating.
(14:14):
He found that a red pigment in one of these
Spanish elegies hadn't existed until years after the paintings were
said to be made. All seven of the Spanish elegies
were immediately scrapped from the upcoming Motherwell catalog Resone. The
Kalila Gallerbay sued the Dadalists. The Dadalist sued Weissman, the dealer.
(14:37):
In the end, all parties settled, with money changing hands
and the Kalila's painting branded on its verso as a forgery.
One day, while Jamie Martin was studying the Spanish elegies,
Jack Flam had a memorable talk with Ann Friedman. She said,
I don't want to get Michael Hammer involved in this.
(14:57):
He's very lititious, Flam later recalled. Despite her wish to
keep the Spanish Elegy debacle off her boss's desk, Friedman
and Hammer had forged an alliance right from the start,
As a lawsuit would later allege, Anne had kept her
boss in the loop on the sales of Rosales's paintings
from the beginning. She sent Hammer short write ups of
(15:19):
every new painting that came in. The writeups detailed how
much the gallery paid Glofere for each picture wholesale and
how much Nodler had sold them for retail to its customers.
And yet years later, Anne felt afraid of Michael Hammer
enough to worry he might sue her. It seemed as
if each partner still kept some secrets from the other.
(15:41):
From the start, Knoedler's owner, Michael Hammer had kept all
but invisible in his spacious office at the gallery. Staffers
rarely saw him, and when they did, it was hard
not to be distracted by his artificial tan and a
wardrobe that could charitably be described as extravagance. Hammers roughly
two dozen vintage cars, some worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,
(16:06):
only underscore the sense that here was a man of
almost unimaginable wealth, free to do as he wished. By
the fall of two thousand nine, news of the fake
Spanish elegy paintings had reached the Prosecutor's office in the
Second District of New York. Investigators were now sifting through
(16:28):
and Friedman's seventeen years as head of the Ndler Gallery.
Any hopes and had of keeping Michael Hammer out of
the loop were dashed. Seeing law enforcement walked through the
doors had jolted Hammer to his core. That October, he
terminated and Freedman's employment from the Ndler Gallery. Her feet
(16:51):
barely touched the floor as security guards swept her through
the gallery and out the front doors under the Royal
blue awning and was finished. We'll be back after this.
(17:13):
Back in London, Pierre Lagrange was having trouble of his own.
Just two years after buying his seventeen million dollar pollock,
he was embarking on a divorce. He was advised to
sell his recently acquired pollock and split the proceeds with
his soon to be ex wife Lagrange was shocked to
discover that neither Southnbies nor Christie's would accept the work.
(17:34):
After all, the Pollock had no provenance, and its surfaced
only a few years before. David and Pham, one of
the world's most respected authorities on modern American art, was
just as skeptical when he personally viewed the painting in
Pierre Lagrange's London home. It was the ninth of April
two thousand and eight when I paid a visit and
(17:58):
I saw the whole collection of the and suddenly we
got to the Pollock. Pierre looked at me. I looked
at Pierre's advisor, and I think I said, what do
you think? And I wouldcall very clearly, saying well, that
has a history. And they were hoping for some more words.
(18:20):
But I never said the west was silence. They were
hoping that you would say the painting was right. Yes,
that's exactly what I did not say. La Grange had
the distinct feeling he was being toyed with, and he
(18:40):
was angry. Where was Ann Friedman anyway? News of her
firing hadn't yet made its way to La Grange. The
Knoedler was playing a vanishing game of its own. The
gallery flat out refused to take back Lagrange's Pollock, nor
would it be fund his seventeen million dollars. After all,
the gallery insisted the painting was genuine. Lagrange was seeing
(19:05):
read he wanted his money, and surfaced in November two
with an email meant to lower the temperature. Once again,
she insisted politely but firmly, that Lagrange's Pollock was one
of several newly discovered works that would be added to
a revised Pollock catalog. Resimee Ann's timing couldn't have been worse.
(19:27):
Just one month after her attempt to band aid the
Lagrange situation with yet another lie, Jackson, Pollock expert Eugene
Thaw shocked the art world with a declaration of seismic proportions.
Thaw declared that Legrange's silvery Pollock looked not right to him.
Thaw was in poor health and he wanted to be
(19:47):
sure his judgment was made clear, so in early two
thousand eleven, he repeated his claim in a videotaped Affidavid
the painting looked fake to him, Thal said, AND's email
was immediately and entirely invalidated. It was now February two eleven.
Pierre Lagrange still had no interest in meeting Ann Friedman,
(20:10):
but word was that a grand jury was convening to
consider charges stemming from the fake Spanish elegies, and Anne
was said to be a subject of interest. Lagrange decided
he would meet with her after all, and suggested the
lounge of the Carlisle Hotel with its serpentine rooms of
(20:31):
overstuffed chairs. Anne arrived early to the Carlyle on a
wintry day and shows a small table in a cozy
lowlit corner. She recognized Lagrange from his long gray hair
and angular face as soon as he walked in, and
stood up to greet him and his attorney, Matthew Donson.
(20:53):
Pierre Lagrange, I'm Ann Friedman. It's nice to meet you,
she said, don't be so sure, Lagrange seethed in his
eligian accent. Lagrange ordered a cocktail, the lawyer a coke.
I've been looking forward to meeting you and discussing the painting,
and said, cheerfully, let's talk about how I can be helpful.
I want my money, the groans said, his voice rising
(21:15):
with each word. That's all, and tried to stay calm,
She leaned forward a bit. It's hard to predict the market,
she noted. She said they might have to wait a
while before selling the painting, but she and La Grange
would be able to help each other out of this fix,
and said assuredly. That was when Lagrange lashed out quote.
(21:39):
He started screaming at the top of his lungs. I'm
going to set you on fire. Do you understand that
I'm going to set you on fire? And you will
have no life. It will be over, and it will
hit the press and you will be done. And tried
to reason with the Belgian financier in a calm voice,
(22:01):
as if talking to an unruly child. Taking the painting
back simply wasn't an option. She said all the experts
agreed it was real, and so did she, and said
she offered to take the painting on consignment and try
to sell it to someone else. Lagrange was astounded. Anne's
(22:22):
solution was to find some other sap to unload the
painting on. Not only was that wildly irresponsible, but surely
illegal as well. The two of them would be selling
a painting Lagrange now believed was a fake. If Noodler
didn't immediately return his money and take back the painting.
Lagrange railed, he would destroy her reputation. He was furious.
(22:48):
Lagrange and Johnson stood up. The meeting was clearly over.
Everyone by now at the Carlysle was staring. This was
a real scene, and recounted. The waiter came over and
asked if she is all right. Later, Lagrange would deny
A's account of the meeting. He hadn't raised his voice,
he said. The calamity at the Carlisle merely confirmed Lagrange's
(23:15):
worst fears. He was sure his Pollock was a fake,
and Friedman persona non grata. At the n Nodler could
do nothing to get him his money back. Lagrange's only
move was to squeeze the reclusive Michael Hammer, Noodler's chairman,
in whatever way he could to recover his seventeen million.
Lagrange had no idea how utterly dependent the gallery was
(23:37):
on the sales of Ga Feara Rosales's paintings. He did
note with interest that Hammer had put one of the
galleries two adjoining mansions up for sale for more than
a year, The seventeen thousand square foot Italian Renaissance building
at nineteen seventy Street had been quietly shopped around town
for fifty nine point nine million dollars. That is a
(24:00):
high price in a bear market. It remained for sale
until February two thousand eleven, when it sold for thirty
one million dollars, half its original asking price. As it
turned out, the sale came shortly before the disastrous Carlisle
Hotel meeting. Lagrange knew exactly where seventeen million of the
(24:20):
mansions proceeds should go, but Nodler had no interest in
giving any of that money back to the London hedge funder.
The standoff with Lagrange remained a secret through much of
two thousand eleven as lawyers attempted to resolve the situation.
Then in October came news of the Motherwell Spanish elegy settlement. Hi.
(24:43):
I'm Patricia Cohen, and I'm a reporter for the New
York Times. Patricia's first scoop about the Noodler saga was
dated October eleventh, two thousand eleven. I had no idea
at that point that that story was going to kind
of splode into one of the biggest art frauds of
(25:04):
the last hundred years. I just started digging around, and
even though that story was relatively short, I quickly realized
that there was a much bigger story buried beneath this
with with a lot more questions that came up, and
then I started digging. Cohen's story in the Times prompted
(25:27):
Lagrange to do something he should have done far earlier.
He called Jamie Martin, the forensic expert who had analyzed
the motherwells, and requested a test on the polit no
auction house would touch. The tests confirmed Lagrange's worst fears.
Various pigments in the painting had not existed in nine
when the painting was supposedly made. It was forensically impossible
(25:51):
for the work to be legitimate. The report Lagrange received
in late November of two thousand eleven brought full throated
legal action. In a searing letter to Michael Hammer, Lagrange
demanded that Knodler refund his seventeen million dollars in forty
eight hours or face a lawsuit. The letter would ultimately
(26:14):
be the last straw from Michael Hammer to Lagrange's astonishment.
Hammer responded by closing the Knoedler's brass doors permanently on
November eleven, sixty five years after it first opened for business.
(26:39):
Gafara wasn't actually named, but New York Times readers learned
the name of Ann Friedman and learned too that she
had been accused of selling fake Motherwell's while she was
president of Nodler. Was there a sense of starting to
connect the dots sort of? I remember that day very
well because it was a big scandal. There was an
FBI investigate issue. We were talking about, you know, many
(27:02):
paintings in many millions of dollars, and I knew about
the Pierre Lagrange lawsuit, and so I had basically been
planning within the next week to have this you know,
big expose about this, and then when the gallery closed,
it was like, oh shit, we have to cover this,
(27:24):
but you know, we've got this really other, big story,
but I can't get into all of that yet because
not every single piece had turned down. So essentially I
covered that as a new story, um, giving enough detail
that we knew something was going on, but also not
essentially wanting to kind of expose what we knew was
(27:46):
going to be part of this really big takedown. Incredibly,
just two days before Noodler closed its doors and two
years since she'd been fired, and placed a very strange
phone call who noted Clifford Steel expert David and Fam,
the same expert who had viewed Pierre Lagrange's fake Pollock
(28:08):
in London, and telephone me on the November twenty eleven.
The game was up. By then, basically we knew that
it was all hopes since things were fakes in a
truly baffling move, and was lobbying an Fham to have
(28:28):
the burned fragment of a fake Clifford Steel painting added
officially to the Clifford Steel Museum. This was the very
same painting Carlos Bergantino's had burned with a hair dryer
and told GA to say had caught fire in a car.
I was absolutely astonished that Ann wanted me to write
(28:50):
some kind of a letter about the Clifford Store Museum
accepting this flagmant of the painting, and I told him
point blank is not up to me to do it,
so if anyone is going to do it, it would
have to be approved by director, by the Bold and
so forth. So it was to me um a phone
(29:11):
call that left me spaceless. Even at the time when
I wrote it, I bore exclamation marks after that note
because of extraordinary On the morning of December two, two
tho high pitched scream could be heard from the bedroom
(29:32):
of a hotel suite in Miami, Florida. The annual Art
Bosl Fair was about to begin, and Domenico and Eleanor
Desole had arrived early to get premium tickets. Eleanor was
scrolling through The New York Times on her iPad when
a story jumped out. Domenico rushed from the shower to
(29:53):
see what was wrong. Too shocked to speak, Eleanor handed
him the iPad, her hands shaking. Patricia Cohen's first story
in the New York Times had mentioned the Knoedler and
publicly identified Glefara Rosales for the first time, but it
was a short piece and the Disules may not have
(30:13):
noticed it. That morning's follow up about Pierre Lagrange and
his fake Pollock made the news all too clear. One
of the soules first calls that morning was to Ann
Friedman and swore to the Dosilas that the Lagrange Pollock
described in the New York Times was real. So were
the rest of the works in the David Herbert collection,
(30:36):
including the Desuls, Rothko, the Dosilas demanded evidence who was
this mysterious Mr x Jr. Through whom all these paintings
had flowed, who was glefi Rosales, for that matter, and
promised she would soon be learning the identity of the
mysterious collector herself. The Soles were incredulous, and had previously
(30:59):
told them she know the collector. As one of the
Dess lawyers later put it, the most basic tenet of
authenticity for the Rothco was a lie. Neither Anne Freedman
nor the n Noodler Gallery knew the true identity of
their supposed client. Among the dozen or so victims who
(31:21):
began peppering the now defunct k Noodler Gallery with legal
demands for their money back was Francis Beatty. To her
shock and horror, Francis discovered that a Clifford Steel painting
she had purchased from Anne in two thousand was likely
just another fake from the supposed David Herbert collection. Beatty
had loved Clifford Stills paintings from her earliest days. They're
(31:44):
incredibly exciting. They look like sort of lightning or jagged
cliffs in an abstract way. They have enormous electricity and sometimes.
The colors are very I would say, dance intense, and
they have a tremendous sense of movement, very dynamic. Finding
(32:09):
them was a challenge. Clifford stills are rare. You don't
know where in the current universe there's going to be
a Clifford still for sale and one that someone might
let you get your hands on. I mean, they're not
sitting there in people's inventory. I had a colleague who
(32:30):
came in and said to me, could you sell a
great Clifford still, a great early still? And I said,
you bet you I can, And he said, I know
where there is one. There's a beauty, and Ann Friedman
has it. Francis rushed over to the notler. She was stunned.
The painting was perfect, the Jagon mountains, the colors, perfect size.
(32:56):
I had sold to pictures of this pure so over
a period. It took me, you know, fifteen years to
find the first one, twenty years to find the second one.
But of course it had no provenance. Oh I remember
very specifically because I said, this has no provenance and
(33:22):
it hasn't been exhibited anywhere. And so Anne wrote me
an email saying that it belonged to a Mexican who
had gotten it directly from Clifford Still and had been
in the same family that entire time to close the
(33:46):
deal and made an unusual promised to Francis. If we
did the deal, she would reveal the provenance to me.
I showed it to a wonderful restorer, very good friend
of mine, Alan goldrac who had been the restorer who
(34:07):
had unwrapped all the Clifford stills for the Metropolitan Museum's retrospective.
Francis also showed the painting to David an fhem as
much the Clifford still expert as the ultimate connoisseur for
Pollock and Rothcobe. He had liked the picture very much.
Despite the positive affirmations from experts, Francis remained wary. So
(34:30):
I said to Anne, I need a Nodler guarantee, and
you have to guarantee the authenticity of this picture with
Noler behind it, so if the authenticity is questioned, you
return the money to the client. And what did she
(34:52):
say to that? Fine? And I got her to write
a guarantee of authenticity on the Clifford still, and I
gave a copy of it to the client. And at
that point I thought you know what, We're safe if
(35:13):
the worst thing possibly happens and something goes wrong. It
is a Nodler guarantee, and no Ler is the last
place in the world that would renege on any kind
of guarantee. With that baby and two fellow dealers put
(35:36):
their money down about one million dollars. They sold it
for one point one million to the collector who had
pushed for the still in the first place. An entire
decade passed no issues with the painting. Popped up curiously, however,
and failed to keep her side of the bargain with Francis.
(35:56):
She didn't tell me who she got the picture phone.
I probably should have pressed her on that, but I
didn't because I think once I had obtained this Nodler
guarantee in writing, I thought that I had sort of
an impregnable defense. So fast forward to two thousand eleven,
(36:22):
Pierre Lagrange shouts it from the rooftops that he's paid
seventeen million dollars for a fake Pollock. What was your
reaction to that news. I'm not sure I want to
say it on air. I mean, holy moley, um, we
were absolutely stunned. We went and did the forensic testing
(36:48):
I think it had some kind of white in it
that hadn't been invented back then. And also the pigments
were of more recent vintage. God, so at that point
obviously you had to call your customer, who who bought
the painting. We said, we're going to give you back
(37:09):
your money and sue and I think we um We
sent him a check for one million, one thousand, but
he said to us that he thought the picture was
now worth three million and he was going to sue
us for that much money. I mean the suit must
have cost three yo dollars. And then we finally settled.
(37:34):
You settled with Ndler, which, of course, by now was
almost like a dead man walking, right. I mean it
had closed in officially, so you were you were negotiating
with a company that did it even exist. Right. We
were in the same boat as everybody else. Little by little,
lots of people were settling to get something. So we
(37:56):
were out the million dollars. We were out the cost
of the litigation a million four so maybe it was
more like a million plus. Well, that must have haunted
you for a long time. It was a terrible thing
for the profession. I'm the secretary of the Art Dealers
(38:16):
Association of America. And I'm an art historian and I
love the art dealing profession. It's full of wonderful, devoted
experts and people who love art. And this was just
a devastating blow. So it was on everybody's lips, and
(38:39):
it made you feel like you've gone from decades and
decades devoted to doing the right thing and suddenly you
were all like in cahoots with al Capone. Yeah, it
was hugely distressing. What happened to the painting. By the way,
(38:59):
it's because we got the painting back and it was
in our basement and I really wanted to take it out,
take it to, you know, the Clifford Still Museum, and
you know, stand it up and look at other pictures
of that vintage and figure out how why I had
(39:22):
how I had made this mistake. There's no question that
was a fake. But it was so damn good. It
was in the story to Richard Fannigan and Company. And
when we closed, when Richard left that building, I don't
know where it is and I kind of have a
mental note of trying to track it down and find
(39:44):
out where it is. By March two, twelves had a
team of lawyers harnessed up. Domenico Disle was a gentle
family man, but being cond out of eight point four
million dollars set of fire raging in his Italian soul.
(40:06):
He wasn't just set on getting his money back. He
wanted triple damages, a so called WECo penalty for what
amounted to a conspiracy among all of the defendants. A
trio of top art fraud lawyers began inundating the Knodler
with demands for documents. The number of artists, the number
(40:28):
of unknown works that cheap prices, know they're got them
for the incredible markups they sold them for. That's in
the papers we got in the first few months. Those
are just invoices from the nother gallery. I spoke with
the Disols attorneys, Aaron Crowle, Emily royce Baum and Gregory
Clark at their law offices, so we had discovery from
(40:51):
them relatively early on with those documents. So you know,
that's a big part of the case, right from the beginning,
right and also early on, before Jamie Martin had had
the opportunity to examine a number of different works like
he had looked at Pierre Le Grange's work. I think
he had looked at ours. We were telling the judge,
(41:13):
this is like you go to Canal Street and there's
a table. You don't have to one watches fake. They're
all fake. You don't have to test them all to
know that they're all fake. And sure enough, Jamie proved
that it was the same paint for the Pollock, for
the roth Cooe. You know that spread ten years apart.
Over the course of the two years between when we
(41:34):
filed the case and leading guilty. Over the course of
that time, Jamie Martin ultimately had access to eighteen works
out of the fort on the list, and he proved
every single one was a fake. What emerged was what
we showed that trial with the witness testimony, that there
(41:54):
were no experts who authenticated these paintings. For another it
just didn't happen. The lawyers came up with six red
flags clear indicators of a criminal enterprise. The one that
seems to interest people the most is the profits. And
you know, our expert testified that ordinarily in the secondary market,
(42:17):
the dealer will make twenty to thirty percent of a profit.
So they buy for a hundred dollars, they sell for
a hundred thirty dollars, they get to pocket thirty dollars. No,
there was making hundreds from the very beginning, making hundreds
of percent profits, and as the scheme went on, it
multiplied to six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred percent. Now
(42:39):
instead of just a little deep in corn on paper,
you had a pollock, you had a bunch of them,
had a bunch of them, and so you know, and
the profits were a loan, a signal. And I think
this is that hit the jurors the most, that the
profits were a signal that, like, something was wrong here.
But the number of works was wildly off the charts.
(43:05):
By early two thousand thirteen, the lawyers for the Soles
had done enough discovery to feel they had a rock
solid case. Jason Hernandez wasn't so sure, and assistant district
attorney specializing in fraud cases in New York City's Second District,
Hernandez had come to be wary of fraud cases built
(43:26):
on the testimony of experts. That was testimony the defense
could easily counter with experts of their own. After all,
who was to say which expert would be right? Hernandez
knew the case would be an enormous challenge. There were
an unusually large number of prominent people who seemingly were
going to stand by the paintings and say that they
(43:48):
were real. That is uncommon, and I could see right away. Well,
you know, how do you get over that? Because if
the person selling them is showing them to all of
these steam people and they're saying, yep, looks right to me,
looks good to me, that's not a criminal case anymore.
Despite the mountain of lawsuits, only one case would go
(44:11):
to trial. Eleanor and Domenico de Soule versus the defendants
and friedmanfro Rosalee, carlos Bergantino's, Michael Hammer and the NLAR Gallery.
That's next time on art Fraud, Why looks so awflyet
(44:33):
tragic but on a happy face? Smiling can work like magic,
but on a happy face. Take off the gloomy mask, tragedy.
It's not your style. You look so good that you'll
be glad you decided to smile. Art Fraud is brought
(44:54):
to you by I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio. Our
executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner,
myself and Michael Schneyerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan and
Zach McNeice. Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay
Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneyerson.
(45:19):
Blood on a happy face, on a happy face.
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