Why the fake art market isn't going anywhere

How not to fall for an art scam? The paperwork around an artwork has to be double, if not triple-checked, before a sale deed is signed. (Photo by Dalan Gan via Pexels)

In 2004, the art world was about a year away from experiencing its biggest boom in post-liberalisation India. As a result, a new-found interest was being seen in what had until then been a milieu of a lower lux, a world in which money and paintings exchanged hands gently—largely in the confines of the rarefied enclave of South Mumbai.

However, in the fevered gold rush that was beginning to simmer under the surface, a scandal did send shock waves through this hitherto sleepy world. Anjolie Ela Menon, then India’s biggest female artist, accused a Cuffe Parade-based gallery, of allegedly faking her works. The gallery, in turn, accused her of allegedly outsourcing all her works from the late '70s onwards to her assistant, an impoverished guy called Hamid.

Given the magnitude—and madness—of this “fake art” story, it became a nation-wide sensation. It was picked up by every news channel and newspaper in the country. A year later, another scandal broke: in early 2005, top artists began accusing Neville Tuli’s auction house Osian of allegedly selling a Bhupen Khakkar “fake” at an auction.

The fake painting was here to stay.

The counterfeit has always existed in popular culture. The VHS film we saw in the 1980s and the DVD we picked up from a railway station stall, even the Murakami bestseller we buy at a traffic signal are examples of “fakes”, pirated content as they are. The only difference is the sum of money that exchanges hands when a “fake painting” is sold.

Earlier this month, Mumbai-based investment banker Puneet Bhatia told the police that a man named Rajesh Rajpal had sold him 11 paintings for Rs 17.9 crore. Rajpal had posited that two of these paintings were by Manjit Bawa and F.N. Souza, respectively. These claims, Bhatia later found out, were untrue.

How does the fake art operate?

The fake art world operates on various levels. For one, if the artist’s works have recurring motifs and ideas. Like Manjit Bawa's works, which almost always comprise an animal over a brightly coloured background. These are relatively easier to replicate. Indeed, the latest scam to come to light - worth Rs 17.9 crore - involved a fake Manjit Bawa painting.

Similarly, an M.F. Husain has a signature style that has been in circulation for so many decades that replicating that merely takes a canvas and an out-of-work art graduate—so long as the fake art dealer and the graduate have an understanding. Depending on one’s greed, this formula can be scaled up to industrial scale.

Similarly, given the fact that some of our most renowned artists have drawn from India’s immeasurable reserves of folk art to build formidable career trajectories, the fake art market can sometimes mushroom in “zones of interest”. For example, if there is a huge demand for Jamini Roys and Jogen Chowdhurys, both hail from West Bengal, one can expect to find a fake Jamini Roy or Jogen Chaudhary dealer in Kolkata or thereabouts. Markets for abstractionists is a lot more area-agnostic. You can have a fake abstract factory for VS Gaitonde or Ram Kumar (artists whose abstract works sell for crores at auctions) anywhere.

Educating the educated

It is not as if the art world has turned a blind eye to the scourge of fake paintings. For instance, the Piramal Museum of Art admirably held an exhibition titled “Like Without Reference — the Cultures of Forgery” in 2017. Here the privately owned museums sourced real works and juxtaposed them next to a fake replica of the same work, and a walkthrough with its curators showed viewers the nuances that went into spotting an off-kilter M.F. Husain or a Raja Ravi Varma. It was also ominously revealed then that the capital of fake art in India had shifted from Kolkata to New Delhi to Mumbai!

How to protect yourself from a scam

The first and only rule of thumb—and something no art dealer, gallerist or buyer can afford to circumvent—is provenance. The paperwork around an artwork has to be double, if not triple-checked, before a sale deed is signed. And moreover, merely “certificates of authenticity” cannot be relied upon as “provenance”. A huge problem in the art world currently is the now ubiquitous “certificate of authenticity”. An artist dies, a dubious art dealer rushes to the closest relative he or she can find, and gets that relative to sign a “certificate of authenticity”. Some don’t even bother to visit a relative to make a “certificate of authenticity”; they create it themselves. I mean, why waste those PhotoShop skills?

Provenance is the only right way to go about this. Conducting an assiduous check on the paper trail of an artwork, its journey from point of origin (i.e., artist’s studio or bonafide exhibition from a reputed gallery or a real relative who is not an autograph-vendor) to end buyer is the only way to authenticate an artwork. It’s hard work. But it’s always good to keep in mind that a stint at Arthur Road Jail is even harder work.