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All About Fake Morrisseaus 1 |
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Norval Morrisseau - Copper Thunderbird - 3 |
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Norval Morrisseau, and his long-time agent Gabor Vadas, hit Toronto in the fall of 2007- their mission: root out the fakes...
We have seen fake Morrisseaus turn up at auctions in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal as well as on ebay.
Wherever the word has gone out that Norval Morrisseau is a bankable Canadian artist whose prices are climbing rapidly, can the forgeries be far behind?
"They're back. It's another invasion of the fake Norval Morrisseaus. For years, canvases allegedly done by the great Ojibwa artist have been turning up in galleries and at auction -- canvasses which the artist, through his business manager and friend Gabor Vadas, insists are bogus." (Val Ross, Globe & Mail)
"As prices for Morrisseau works rise, so do the number of forgeries in the market. They are a concern not only because of fraud, but because a flood of fake paintings devalues the true works of an artist and diminishes the amount of money he receives for his work." (Grania Litwin, Victoria Times Colonist)
Offering sage advice to buyers of any items at auction cautions Donald McLean of Waddington's Auctioneers, "Technically any auction, anywhere, the buyer is on their own. When you are buying at auction, you are required to do your own checking as well." (Globe & Mail interview)
Indian art has attracted lots more attention since Norval Morrisseau has belatedly been recognized by the art glitterati in Ottawa.
The public hunger for a work of art from a man they had never heard of before has brought lots of Norval's old works out of the woodwork from all the little shacks and houses of northern Ontario where he once sold them for five or ten bucks.
With his skyrocketing prices, art dealers have begun buying up canvases they only had derision for before.
But hey, if one can make a buck, what the heck...
With so many conflicting interests the unwary buyer can fall victim to all kinds of pitfalls.
Below, how to evaluate what you are thinking of buying...
Ever since Norval Morrisseau had his one man show at Canada's National Gallery and the McMichael Gallery of Art (2006-07) art bearing his name has been showing up at auctions all over the place.
The real ones and the fakes mixed in... So how can you tell them apart?
The pitfalls are many, not the least of which are art dealers, of which there are many, and all trying to support their wives, their mistresses, their illegitimate children, and still make those payments on their Bentley.
Maybe Norval can help...
So, how do you, a beginner, protect yourself from buying a fake?
First you can't trust the auction houses. They haven't got a clue. They sell thousands of paintings, sketches, and prints a year. They can't possibly verify each and every one. They'd spend all their time researching instead of selling, and would go belly up. So they rely on the people who bring the art in to tell them what it is. "I got it from a gallery who told me they got it from Morrisseau himself. I can't remember the gallery or who. It was a long time ago. But it looks like a Morrisseau to me..." Hmmmhhh...
The auction house employee can't spend hours sleuthing out the proof. He gets hundreds of these things a month. He makes his money selling not researching. Their interest is selling lots; you only care to buy one. The two interests don't combine to a buyer's advantage...
So the auction house takes the consignors word, as far as it goes...
But they're of little or no help to you when you spend your money. Hey, they don't want to put you off helping their bottom line...
Ask probing questions, but it won't get you very far most times. When we asked one reputable auctioneer if the antique McKenney and Hall print was really from the 1833 edition, as was printed on the front, or a later repro, he replied "I couldn't promise you that. We didn't have the back off. All I can say is if you don't trust it don't bid on it." We didn't...
Good advice from a reputable auctioneer.
If you yourself can't verify its authenticity, for yourself, don't buy it...
Relying on others will, most times, cost you money and heartache...
But when six Morrisseaus show up everyone comes out...
They look them over, silently, they turn them over and look at the back; nobody says much. More than one smirks.. They don't want to share what they know or what they suspect. But hey, if they go cheap...
Left is a real Morrisseau from his early period, probably sixties. It's his design, his artistic execution, the brown paper he used then. Similar ones, from the same period, were in the recent one man show. And the signature looks good. There's one more good thing about it...
It's a wreck...
When Bad is Good...
There are many horizontal bends and cracks across the image. Not only the paper, but the paint, has broken in places along the folds. It has clearly been very badly rolled up and stored for a long time by someone careless.
Probably by someone who hated Morrisseaus, until he became famous, and his prices shot up. Hmmmh... Better go up the attic and unroll that damn thing I got years ago...
So, bad can be good. No forger or faker would so damage his chances of selling his fake for a good price by putting it in that condition.
But the owner of a real Morrisseau would. And this one patently is...
Left is a typical run-of-the-mill Morrisseau, of which he did many in the 1970s. It has a good signature; it has Norval's usual smeary inscription on the back.
Also, the canvas backing is off-white, and dirty. And the front shows creasing from having been rolled at various times in its life. It looks its age...
Everything points to a genuine, if ordinary and not very inspired, work Norval did in the 1970s.
This one didn't take him long to do. He probably did it while waiting for the lightning of inspiration to strike him.
The three loons also show a typical Norval presentation.
Again, as expected, the canvas back is old, scuffed and somewhat dirty. The front painted surface shows signs of wear. It's clearly "been around," from before Norval became bankable, from before forgers started taking a lively interest in Norval's art. So once again, with the grime and wear, bad is good...
Another plus is the signature. It has Norval's typical spacing, execution, and sizing. Better yet, his signature is written backwards and maintains its integrity. Only the original writer could possibly get away with that. And no forger would even try...
So the loons is another Morrisseau, but a minimal one, coming out of storage now because prices are going up and one can always use an extra buck if we send this to auction...
The bear is a better Morrisseau that has his trademark designs and is executed with his sense of artistic control. And the signature - whoops - is surely his too...
Which brings us to the next one...
When Good is Bad...
This is the cleanest, neatest, newest canvas of what is claimed to be a Morrisseau, we've ever seen. The canvas back is unsigned and sparkling white and unmarked, like it was made last week. Wonder if it was?
And the front is equally totally spotless and uncreased.
The stark newness, coupled with the detailed precision of the painting is troubling, as it would have had to come from the 1980s, before Norval's Parkinson made his brush too wobbly to do this kind of rock steady detailed work...
Where's the age burn? Where has it been for the last fifteen to twenty years, to be so unsullied in all that time...? And out in the open on that stretcher...?
The signature also gives us real problems when compared to the one below from a $15,000 Morrisseau.
There is a controlled sizing and spacing on the letters of the green signature that you can see a hundred times on Norval's canvases.
Conversely, the letters in the gray one seem wildly all over the place, of every vertical size imaginable, and have the tightest compression of the letters we have ever seen on any Morrisseau signature. It's as if the signer began, then started to panic that he was going to run out of space with a signature he wasn't used to parsing into a restricted space, like a person is used to doing with his own.
One wonders, wouldn't Norval have foreseen the problem and just arced his signature, where there's lots of room, along the lower neck of the bird like he often likes to do?
You're on your own with your money on this one.
You'll see it again; a dealer bought it and will be selling it for big bucks, to an unwary buyer, as a guess what? One thing's for certain. He'll be hyping it as "in extremely fine, original condition." Which it is, of course... But is it a Morrisseau?
Which brings us to the last one.
Fat, ugly, a graceless, and gross departure from Norval's usual style, and content, and the signature is a very mannered, workmanlike execution of what someone thought Norval's signature is supposed to be, assembled like scrabble letters. Certainly not from the heart... Make that Norval's heart...
You compare the last two. Do you think the same artist painted both? Did both signatures?
The last one too, you'll see again. A dealer will sell it somewhere, to someone, as a Norval Morrisseau. Let's hope they will love it for what it is, and, like a wedding diamond, not count on recouping - from a knowledgeable buyer - even a fraction of what you paid when your time comes for selling it off...
Don't count on passing this off as Norval on a bad day...
But then what do I know...?
