To fake the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988 and whose works of pop art and graffiti have come to auction for 75 million euros, it was enough for a man identified with the initials “JF” to dedicate half an hour to the largest and just five minutes to the little ones. He did about thirty. It would be anecdotal if those paintings, including an alleged Basquiat self-portrait, had not entered the art market, thanks to the skills of a Hollywood dealer, and ended up exhibited at the Orlando Museum of Art (Florida, United States), promoted as “rare” and “never seen”. Every day, about 10,000 people paid their admission to see the exhibition. Until the FBI arrived, seized the works and launched an investigation.
This week auctioneer Michael Barzman, a 45-year-old default-store dealer, pleaded guilty to participating in the forgery of these paintings, before the US Attorney’s Office for the District of California. In his confession he admitted to lying to the FBI about the provenance of the works and that “he and another man (JF) created the fake art. Barzman falsely attested to the provenance of the paintings,” according to a statement from the Los Angeles Attorney’s Office.
“JF spent a maximum of thirty minutes on each image and as little as five minutes on others, and then gave them to him to sell on eBay,” the plea agreement describes. “Barzman and JF agreed to split the money they would earn from the sale of the fraudulent paintings. They created approximately twenty to thirty works of art, using various art materials to create colorful images on cardboard.”
Part of the scam was to craft a story that speculators and collectors would believe. Barzman invented that Basquiat had created them in 1982 and that, missing, they had been found three decades later in a storage room bought by the original owner, a creator of series like ‘MASH’ who had died long ago. In his confession, Barzman “admitted that he attempted to create a false provenance, or ownership history, for the alleged Basquiats by stating in a notarized document that the fraudulent paintings were found inside a warehouse rented by a well-known screenwriter.” .
telltale label
Indicted for the art scam, Barzman has pleaded guilty to a felony charge before federal authorities and provided details to the FBI of how the fake paintings were made in 2012 “after hatching a scheme to commercialize the fake artworks.” », indicates the US prosecutor’s office. The forgeries were sold and “made their way into the art market.” Of that batch of quick draws, 25 were in the February 2022 show at the Orlando Museum of Art, raided by the FBI four months later.
The confessed forger was always suspected. In questioning in August last year, he denied having a hand in creating the paintings, which had been authenticated by experts including Orlando museum director Aaron DeGroft. A few months later, he changed his version and acknowledged that they had not been found in a storage room, but continued to maintain that they were original. Then, the federal agents showed him the back of one of those seized drawings, made on cardboard: it had his name on a postage label that had been painted on it, indicates the Californian Prosecutor’s Office. The story of the Basquiats forgery comes to an end.
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