Forgery Experts Explain 5 Ways To Spot A Fake | WIRED

this is thiago pivavarcik and jeff taylor of new york art forensics and this is a jackson pollock or at least it looks like one but it's actually a fake here's how they figured it out today we will perform all the steps necessary to determine its authorship [Music] jackson pollock was an american painter that painted from the early 20s to the 1950s he's best known by the drift or court paintings that he did from 1947 to the time of his death in 1956. pollock's grip paintings are considered his best period so uh good sized well-preserved jackson pollock he can go for over 100 million dollars there's a lot of claims of jackson pollock drip paintings and our laboratory was able to identify over a hundred fakes so we can say that we found more fakes and there are authentic jackson pollocks over there [Music] we received this painting by a client that chose to remain anonymous we're going to call him sydney first step when we receive a painting we're trying to establish something called the provenance provenance is a chain of ownership and custody of an artwork from the contemporary ownership all the way back to its manufacturing where this painting came from what is the story behind it is there anything that shows the history of this artwork so this is one of the most fascinating documents that i've ever seen this is a document to explain why sydney should have a jackson pollock most bargeries there are not as much forgeries of confidence with forgeries or documentation this is problematic in all these different ways the facts has no number dr armand hirschkovitz cannot be referenced there's no record of a tear gallery in dover new jersey then he says he acquired this painting in 1955 after pollock died but he didn't die until 1956. so for all these reasons this is an incredibly unreliable and deceitful document the next step will be we try to find a match for the artwork jackson polo paintings are specifically hard to look for matches because the nature of the image most of the sources are imprinted material and the catalog resonate which is the comprehensive catalogue of works for a given artist this painting has no match the next step is a close-up visual analysis [Music] so we're looking close to the painting to try to find anachronistic materials and techniques something that would be uncharacteristic from a given outer or a given time it's a very very thin layer yeah look at how many how many colors i count that aren't in the drip layers it's very hard to prove there's something is but it's easier to find things that are out of place things that should not be there look at these underlying colors we got a yellow a green and neither of them appear in the drip patterns that's done with a brush [Music] yeah it's rather strange because when pollock starts doing the port painting he really doesn't brush much anymore yep so there's no signature here a lot of the works going into the market in very controversial ways are not signed and we suspect that someone is trying to mitigate whatever legal repercussions trying to imply that unsigned work is not forgery per se as i say it's a next level to take the step to sign artwork [Music] now you see here tiago i got two holes right here they're just that distance and they're repetitive you have a series of smaller holes and that indicates that this canvas was a certain point staple and staple canvases will not be a thing on 1956. there's something did you see the dirt here yeah that's not nasty it's being aged through a series of processes to look older it's like they spilled something on this through carelessness or not through carelessness you can see by the marks on the back how it was dabbed with a tea bag and if you actually come really close and smell it you can smell tea still the surface is being sprayed with nicotine to emulate ages of exposure to smoking but the canvas is actually really good state of conservation it hasn't really shredded the way a canvas starts to unravel at its edges over time there's like some punctual damage that is here yeah you should be like all over like this [Music] then the next step will be photography so we want to see if there's any under drawings or sketches under the paint you never know sometimes the canvas was reused [Music] do you see that that squared green there oh yes in this case instead of finding under drawing actually we found that this canvas was reused from a prior picture that had very regular geometric shape which is very young characteristic from pollock as well now we get out the uv light if you're going to analyze the material aspects of the artwork we want to be sure that we're looking at relevant parts of it so we examine it with ultraviolet light to try to look at the original parts of the painting normally all the restorations would show up but none of the restorations show up any just different as if the thing was done all at the same time see look here this cut there is a big patch on the back and this ripping is held together by a patch and it's gluing it together you see there's two little canvas threads are actually loose and the restoration was made in a completely substandard way and it doesn't seem to be fulfilling the purpose of a proper conservation the x-ray fluorescence spectrometer that's the next step this handy device that looks kind of like a star trek phaser is a really outstanding tool in the field of art forensics i'm actually emitting a small amount of x-rays onto the surface of the painting it's exciting the electrons in the pigments there and that allows this to identify what elements are present it shows that we have titanium on it which is natural from titanium dioxide white pigment it's a very common material from the 1930s for a lot of our cases titanium is the determining factor and it has tripped up more forgers than any other element so if this were purporting to be a painting by degas and we found the titanium immediately we would know no way in this case however by the time pollock is working titanium is a widely available white so to find it in pollock's work is not surprising in fact it's well documented that his works do contain titanium titanium white was already available in the 1950s from that we move on to microscopy so thiago is going to be taking tiny non-destructive fragmentary samples of different bits of paint this process is mostly used for organic materials with those we would then be able to test both the pigment and the binder we're looking for what is the kind of paint used we try to take a few samples from each color and then we use the rama spectrometer we put in a microscope slide and we shine a laser over it and then this laser bounces back inside the machine in a slightly different color from the original hollow glazing that can tell us an idea of what we're looking at and we found mostly acrylics although the binder known as acrylics did exist at the time pollock was alive in this one the specific variant of acrylic did not exist it only started being manufactured in the 1960s for more than 100 years scientists have just been looking at tiny fragments of paintings under microscopes and this allows us to really make a visual identification based in metals and tiny fragments of mineralogy so there are studies regarding jackson pollock paintings that describe the type of debris found in his paintings look at that either somebody dropped us in a mud puddle or they directly applied this stuff and there is a specific type of sedimentary rock and dust that he would spread on his work i think it's a piece of insulation that's what i'm saying i don't you can't even tell what that is but on this case we analyzed the debris and dust embedded on the painting and it seems to be the breeze from drywall which is inconsistent with other pollux works conclusion a jackson polygon that technique per se that is not much of a mystery so it is our opinion that this would not qualify as a jackson pollock painting as i say if the deal is too good there's something wrong

Channel: WIRED

Views: 4,144,935

Rating: 4.8798194 out of 5

Keywords: anatomy, forgery, thiago piwowarczyk, jeffrey taylor, jackson pollock, jackson pollock painting, fake painting, forgery experts, forgery expert, expert, jackson pollock forgery, forged painting, forged, jackson pollock forged, forged jackson pollock, jackson pollock painting forgery, forgery analysis, forgeries, how to spot a forgery, how to spot a fake, fake, fake jackson pollock, forgery painting, forensics, forensic scientist, forensic, art historian, art expert, wired

Id: Amu2mOsIz-w

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/evenios]

i can tell by the pixels and seeing a number of shops in my day.

[u/dozar]

For anyone interested in watching a documentary about a convicted art forger, I highly recommend you check out the movie Beltracchi.

[u/PSw8WI9VDhy3]

This was a really interesting mini doc showing of some of their specialized tools. I's love to see them tackle some other pieces, especially from other eras.

It's a shame that this one turned out to be a fake, i was hoping for a "this proves that it is actually real" at the end after placing some red herrings earlier.

[u/Landro_Womed]

Attention to detail at its finest.

[u/[deleted]]

There is something to be said about how often people fake a Pollock. I personally never liked the drip shit. His earlier work is more interesting. If he simplified that instead of the drippings/splats, we could have seen something really special.

[u/amerett0]

If you spend $100 million and don't check it's authenticity, you deserve to be duped.