Taking The False For The Real: Contemporary Art, A Prank?

Liu Ying / Wen

In 2016, the celebrities de sol and his wife sued the famous nordler Gallery in New York, believing that the latter had sold a fake mark Roscoe painting to it for $8.3 million. This is just the tip of the iceberg in a series of lawsuits that nordler gallery is facing, and it is also the only court trial open to the public. Due to the huge amount of money involved, the institutions and personnel involved are entitled to power. Once exposed, the incident has attracted much attention. After a long period of proof and debate, both parties finally chose to settle out of court. However, it is an indisputable fact that the famous paintings become fake.

If the evidence is not conclusive, it would be hard to believe that nordler Gallery, the most famous gallery in New York, USA, would withdraw from the stage of history due to the scandal of selling counterfeit goods after more than 100 years of operation. This farce is not only about gallery manager Ann Friedman, but also on artists including Jackson Pollock and mark Roscoe. The works of these artists have been canonized and have created numerous auction records. It is hard to imagine that anyone would dare to start from them. And the "behind the scenes hero" who imitates these masterpieces vividly is a mathematics teacher and painting enthusiast. His technology has fooled the world's most authoritative appraisal institutions, from professional galleries to celebrities' living rooms, and the whole process is astonishing. The biggest case of famous painting fraud in the history of the United States lasted more than 30 years, from manufacturing to sales, and then to the Dongchuang incident. What happened? Netflix made the whole story of this shocking deception into a true story of counterfeiting.

As a documentary film, the shooting method of "taking the false for the real" is very traditional. Because it is a post event review, it adopts the way of oral narration by the parties and commentators and interspersed with archives. The interviewees included direct party to the lawsuit, defendant Ann Friedman, and the famous plaintiff, Mr. and Mrs. de sol. Dominic de sol, once CEO of Gucci, now controls the Tom Ford brand. He was once the chairman of Sotheby's, and has a deep connection with the art world. Ann Friedman is at the heart of the storm, and it's a bit surprising that she's going to face the camera like this. As the gold medal agent of nordler Gallery, she has always been a powerful figure in the collection industry. From the very beginning, Ann insisted that she was a victim, believing that the forgery manufacturer had made up a lie to convince her of the authenticity of the masterpieces of American Abstract Expressionists in front of her. Since then, in order to meet the needs of Tibetans, she has repeatedly consulted authoritative experts and issued corresponding documents. Therefore, she thinks her professional ethics is "beyond reproach".

Ann's attitude to the event is consistent, but more voices join in, which makes her presentation not perfect. The prosecution lawyers, defense lawyers, appraisal agencies, art historians and media critics all appeared on the stage one by one to express their views on this shocking case. It is like a multi voice chorus, which constructs the so-called truth for the audience from multiple aspects. It is worth noting that, as a settled lawsuit, it was only grafila Rosales, the supplier of forgery, who was found guilty in the nordler case. Her boyfriend Jos é Carlos bogantinos, who was planning the scam with her, and Qian Peichen, a real painter with a paintbrush, went back to Spain and other countries. Jose, the man behind the case, even gave an interview. Of course, he strongly denied the fraud and even tried to sell the director a harmonica that was said to have been used by Bob Dylan. However, as an intermediary who sold the unknown paintings at a high price to make a profit, the documentary did not give a judgment on whether it was a victim or a conspiracy. However, after different opinions, the audience should have their own conclusion.

Taking the false for the true is an image recording of art fraud cases, but its intention is not so much to reveal and restore the process of the event and approach the so-called "truth", but to reveal the absurdity of the event through various "Rashomon" narratives. If we say that the appeal of contemporary art itself is to dispel the sublime in a radical way, then the swindlers subvert the upper class by means of reproduction and forgery, which seems to be a mockery of the blind pursuit of the art market, as if it was a long-term prank and ended up in a joking way.

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