Last evening at an informal gathering of artists and a few rasikas the conversation veered towards art and its authentication. Figures in lakhs were bandied about which artist’s family or foundation or gallery is charging how much to authenticate works of specific artists. That it was a pittance as compared to the actual cost of the works might well be true, but what about those who were getting the paper work in order not necessarily for commercial reasons.
Whatever the notional value of a painting, if it was acquired or presented years ago when it was not the norm to get authentications in place, owners have to spend huge amounts to get the papers now. More so if they or their subsequent owners ever plan to sell them or put them up in an auction, the paperwork is deemed imperative.
I am personally aware of many instances when a senior artist’s daughter is approached for authenticating works that were painted when she was not even born! She takes the smart way out and flatly refuses to issue any certificates, citing that she is in no intellectual or artistic position to certify the works she has not seen her father paint. When this cuts no ice, his former girlfriend is approached and she reportedly charges up to Rs 5 lakh for giving out the certificates. What kind of weight such an authentication carries in the art market is anybody’s guess. To me it is not worth even the paper it is printed on.
Similar is the case with another senior and highly prolific artist whose youngest daughter, who was his sporadic companion only in the last decade of his life, insists that she is the only person who can issue authentication certificates. Not even her other siblings. That he was hardly living with his wife and children for most part of his life is a fact that is conveniently overlooked by most people.
Another gallery which used to deal in his works too has taken on the mantle of issuing authentication certificates. They hold to ransom the veracity of even those works not directly bought from their gallery. Apart from charging whopping amounts for the certification, has grown the muscle flexing that goes with art authentications that is more like an institutionalised and legitimate gun being held to the owner’s head: Authentication from me or else I will declare your work a fake.
What does a buyer do when confronted with a situation when an artist wants to distance himself or herself from earlier works?
A case in point being S.H. Raza’s show at Dhoomimal’s where he had declared that each one of those works hanging there were fake. Why would an old gallery with a reputation to protect hold a show of fakes and invite the artist himself to inaugurate the show is an unresolved point. Incidentally his market crashed soon after when galleries were approached to buy back stuff painted by him.
How about works of artists who have juniors working for them who do the works and the senior artist only just about signs the work? Will subsequent generations remember that there were junior ateliers who were the real painters? Or is an artist’s authenticating his junior’s work by signing on that canvas good enough?
In the last few years, along with the exponential growth of art prices, unexpectedly has grown a market of and for fakes, and what differentiates a real from a good fake is that crucial certification of authentication. Little realising that art was bought and sold even before the authentication trend and that cannot be the way to hold the art market to ransom.
I have been speaking to several artists, curators, critics and art management gurus about it and have put together a list of suggestions wherein the art owners, buyers and auctioneers will not be at the receiving end of a few self-styled authentication types — be it galleries, family and progeny of artists. Read about it next week.
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi @yahoo.com
(Source: The Asian Age, 9 April 2015)
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