ART FORGERIES TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2020

Based on our assessments in viewing thousands of artworks in various physical and online venues, here is a list of art forgeries and faking gamesmanship to be on the look out for:

1.  Jean Michel Basquiat.  These forgeries can purport to be early drawings. Some circulate with forged letters from the estate.   Sometimes these are postcards from the 1980s, lending to the works credibility, but with forged hand additions. 

2.  Andy Warhol.  These “artworks” might be accompanied by dead-end fake provenance, that is, documents purporting to show provenance but that lead an inquiry to a dead-end, like a gallery label from a long since closed gallery.  Remember, gallery labels are easily faked, too.

3. Frida Kahlo.  Sometimes, just bad copies, in other mediums, like watercolors, and of well-known artworks.

5. Joseph Albers.  These can be legitimate lithographic pages cut from better quality catalogs or publications but with fake signatures or phony edition numbers added to enhance the value.

6.  Jackson Pollock.  Sometimes legitimate works sourced from flea markets and period paintings done in the manner Pollock by well meaning amateur artists in the 1950s and 60s.  The forger will add a phony “Pollack” signature.  The works can be convincing because they have the correct age.

7.  Joan Mitchell.  Similar forgeries to Pollock, in terms of the manipulation and sometimes on paper, which is more easily manipulated in terms of laying down a false signature, if a true signature needs to be cut-out.

8.  Robert Crumb.  Works that may be pastiche and copied out of a comic, and sometimes with a claim that it was given as “a gift by the artist”, but without any more documentation. 

9.  Agnes Martin.  Works that can purport to be “Grid” works but more like something a child with a ruler would come up with.

10.  Banksy.  Sometimes a legitimate piece of ephemera will be attached, like Dismaland ephemera, to make the forged work appear authentic .