This article appeared in the Indian Express and the original URL is here .
the article, may serve some academic interest here: (Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.)
A matter of fraud
Suneet Chopra
The question of fakes in the art market keeps coming up again and again. Lately, the debate has become even more strident with a Calcutta based artist, Ajoy Ghosh, claiming works that sold at Sotheby's and Christie's as those of Gaganendranth Tagore were actually his. Indeed, the big auction houses are not above making mistakes, as we saw from a Satish Panchal work being passed off as one of Satish Gujral.
This work of Panchal was exhibited at Mumbai's Jehangir Art Gallery in 1965. It came up for sale in the late 1990s twice in London as a work of Satish Gujral and had finally to be withdrawn from the Bonham's sale in 1998 as Gujral declared in public that the work was not his. In fact, Panchal's style and signature are both very different from those of Gujral, so the fraud is both blatant and over-confident.
Moreover, the catalogue stated that the work had been bought directly from the artist by the Mumbai seller. Once it could be a mistake. But the work has come up for sale in Britain twice. So, obviously the Mumbai seller is someone who is given to conducting frauds more than once on unsuspecting buyers. In the interest of art, the auctioneers should make the provenance public, so that people know who is passing off fakes like these in Mumbai.
Indeed, Mumbai appears to be quite a centre for fakes. I remember an art dealer of Mumbai bringing a Souza head to Delhi and exhibiting it at a sale, when exactly the same Souza had been put up for auction by another Mumbai dealer. There was a confrontation between the two and both claimed to have letters of provenance and authentication. But nothing more was heard of the matter.
One thing is clear, however. These are not matters of accidental identification. They are matters of fraud. In fact, neither Calcutta nor Delhi are free from fraudulent selling. As the Ajay Ghosh case shows, the artist claims to have sold works that were signed by him. And they later turned up at an auction house as works of Bengal masters with the signatures changed. Here again, it is the duty of the auction houses to make the name of the seller public, for they must have documentary evidence as to where it came from.
Delhi too is not immune from this. Some years ago, a gallery known to stock Ganesh Pyne received a work that was obviously not one of Pyne's, but being passed off as his. Correctly, the gallery contacted Pyne, found out that the work was a fake and returned it. What it did not do was make the dealer's name public or start criminal proceedings against him. Without such transparency and clarity of dealings, we are likely to do considerable damage to the global market that our art has acquired in the last decade or so.
Some people blame artists like Jamini Roy and others who used atelier methods to mass-produce works with the help of assistants. Others blame the Bengal masters for signing drawings of their students as a mark of appreciation, which they are now selling as originals. But only the signatures are genuine. Both atelier production and the signing of students' drawings have helped the faking industry, but they are not fraud as neither Jamini Roy nor the Bengal masters sold works at inflated prices. Nor did they attempt to pass off these works as their's. Jamini Roy clearly told people that he signed work his assistants had made and sold such works at prices as low as Rs 100 each or less.
Generally, neither Jamini Roy nor the other Bengal masters made money out of the process and they were open about it. The fraud is being conducted by unscrupulous dealers who are bringing these works up for sale now as originals. So stock market practices are coming into the art market, it seems.
In fact, frauds and fakes in art have come up in a big way only as Indian contemporary art works have sky-rocketed, making frauds worthwhile. Also, given the fact that the market is king nowadays, with organisations like the WTO being given the freedom to violate national sovereignty, profitability is the sole basis of allowing institutions to exist, even in the spheres of education, health and environment. In such conditions, fraud is only an extension of the profitability argument. It is not an accident that linguistically too, lobh (greed) and labh (profit) differ only in matra, that also means quantity, apart from indicating the presence of a vowel in Hindi. Clearly, fraud and profit as the social ultimate are not unconnected. And attempts to control fraud must put limitations on profiteering, if not on profits themselves.
Where that is not possible economically, as in our present free-market climate, social controls alone can put limitations on it by demanding greater transparency of provenance in art to limit fraudulent dealings. They cannot be eliminated in free-market conditions. This naturally burdens the buyer with the job of protecting himself from frauds as middlemen cannot be relied on to do this in every case.
The buyer must demand documents of provenance with a clear promise from dealers that the money will be fully repaid if the work is shown to be a fraud in a certain number of years. This will go a long way in preventing fraud. To add to it, the buyer must acquaint himself with a broad outline of an artist's work and his technique so as to detect the more obvious cases of fraud. The new dispensation of profit as the sole basis for any form of development-social, political or economic-has now come full circle to the economy again as the fraudulent economy. This is the price we pay for speculative globalisation. So the buyer must learn to protect himself in these conditions.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
the article, may serve some academic interest here: (Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.)
A matter of fraud
Suneet Chopra
The question of fakes in the art market keeps coming up again and again. Lately, the debate has become even more strident with a Calcutta based artist, Ajoy Ghosh, claiming works that sold at Sotheby's and Christie's as those of Gaganendranth Tagore were actually his. Indeed, the big auction houses are not above making mistakes, as we saw from a Satish Panchal work being passed off as one of Satish Gujral.
This work of Panchal was exhibited at Mumbai's Jehangir Art Gallery in 1965. It came up for sale in the late 1990s twice in London as a work of Satish Gujral and had finally to be withdrawn from the Bonham's sale in 1998 as Gujral declared in public that the work was not his. In fact, Panchal's style and signature are both very different from those of Gujral, so the fraud is both blatant and over-confident.
Moreover, the catalogue stated that the work had been bought directly from the artist by the Mumbai seller. Once it could be a mistake. But the work has come up for sale in Britain twice. So, obviously the Mumbai seller is someone who is given to conducting frauds more than once on unsuspecting buyers. In the interest of art, the auctioneers should make the provenance public, so that people know who is passing off fakes like these in Mumbai.
Indeed, Mumbai appears to be quite a centre for fakes. I remember an art dealer of Mumbai bringing a Souza head to Delhi and exhibiting it at a sale, when exactly the same Souza had been put up for auction by another Mumbai dealer. There was a confrontation between the two and both claimed to have letters of provenance and authentication. But nothing more was heard of the matter.
One thing is clear, however. These are not matters of accidental identification. They are matters of fraud. In fact, neither Calcutta nor Delhi are free from fraudulent selling. As the Ajay Ghosh case shows, the artist claims to have sold works that were signed by him. And they later turned up at an auction house as works of Bengal masters with the signatures changed. Here again, it is the duty of the auction houses to make the name of the seller public, for they must have documentary evidence as to where it came from.
Delhi too is not immune from this. Some years ago, a gallery known to stock Ganesh Pyne received a work that was obviously not one of Pyne's, but being passed off as his. Correctly, the gallery contacted Pyne, found out that the work was a fake and returned it. What it did not do was make the dealer's name public or start criminal proceedings against him. Without such transparency and clarity of dealings, we are likely to do considerable damage to the global market that our art has acquired in the last decade or so.
Some people blame artists like Jamini Roy and others who used atelier methods to mass-produce works with the help of assistants. Others blame the Bengal masters for signing drawings of their students as a mark of appreciation, which they are now selling as originals. But only the signatures are genuine. Both atelier production and the signing of students' drawings have helped the faking industry, but they are not fraud as neither Jamini Roy nor the Bengal masters sold works at inflated prices. Nor did they attempt to pass off these works as their's. Jamini Roy clearly told people that he signed work his assistants had made and sold such works at prices as low as Rs 100 each or less.
Generally, neither Jamini Roy nor the other Bengal masters made money out of the process and they were open about it. The fraud is being conducted by unscrupulous dealers who are bringing these works up for sale now as originals. So stock market practices are coming into the art market, it seems.
In fact, frauds and fakes in art have come up in a big way only as Indian contemporary art works have sky-rocketed, making frauds worthwhile. Also, given the fact that the market is king nowadays, with organisations like the WTO being given the freedom to violate national sovereignty, profitability is the sole basis of allowing institutions to exist, even in the spheres of education, health and environment. In such conditions, fraud is only an extension of the profitability argument. It is not an accident that linguistically too, lobh (greed) and labh (profit) differ only in matra, that also means quantity, apart from indicating the presence of a vowel in Hindi. Clearly, fraud and profit as the social ultimate are not unconnected. And attempts to control fraud must put limitations on profiteering, if not on profits themselves.
Where that is not possible economically, as in our present free-market climate, social controls alone can put limitations on it by demanding greater transparency of provenance in art to limit fraudulent dealings. They cannot be eliminated in free-market conditions. This naturally burdens the buyer with the job of protecting himself from frauds as middlemen cannot be relied on to do this in every case.
The buyer must demand documents of provenance with a clear promise from dealers that the money will be fully repaid if the work is shown to be a fraud in a certain number of years. This will go a long way in preventing fraud. To add to it, the buyer must acquaint himself with a broad outline of an artist's work and his technique so as to detect the more obvious cases of fraud. The new dispensation of profit as the sole basis for any form of development-social, political or economic-has now come full circle to the economy again as the fraudulent economy. This is the price we pay for speculative globalisation. So the buyer must learn to protect himself in these conditions.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
posted by abhi at 3:06 AM
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