Art Authenticator Sues The New Yorker, Claiming Profile Defamed Him

from the this-could-get-interesting dept

Last year, we wrote about a fascinating (and very long) New Yorker piece by David Grann all about famed art authenticator, Peter Paul Biro. What struck us as interesting about the story was the way in which mere claims of "science" can get people to not necessarily explore some details further. Also, it was just a well-written story, and acted as a nice contrast to a documentary (in which Biro appears) called Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?. If you have the time, I suggest watching both the movie and reading the story.

I wouldn't have thought much more about it, but we started to notice some odd comments on that original post soon after it went up, with people making rather nasty claims against David Grann. In fact, there were three comments in close proximity to each other, each from different "names" but all having the same IP address, as identified by the little icons next to their names. Even if it was three different people posting from the same router/computer, the fact that they were all so interested in the story seemed curious. It got weirder still when one of them claimed that my headline was defamatory, and then started posting additional claims of other publications being forced to issue corrections or changes to the story. When asked if this person, "Elizabeth" had any direct interest in the story, she denied it, but the singular infatuation with the story certainly raised some questions. We also thought it was interesting that she would accuse us of defamation, when one of the people commenting from her same IP address made all sorts of very direct, and quite possibly defamatory, claims about David Grann, including that he was a "drunkard." There was also the hilarious claim that some organization I've never heard of gave The New Yorker (in general) a "70% accuracy rating." I have no idea what that means, but this "Elizabeth" insisted that it meant, definitively, that 30% of every article was made up. Interesting use of statistics.

Either way, it seemed like there was some sort of effort under way, no matter how amateurish, to claim that Grann's article was not at all accurate. And, now we may get to see some actual evidence either way, because Peter Paul Biro has officially sued Conde Nast and Grann for defamation.

Biro says Grann's 16,000-word article, "purports to be an in-depth study of the science of forensic examination of art works, and of the use of fingerprint technology to advance that science." But, Biro says, "It is nothing of the sort, but rather a false and defamatory screed against plaintiff, written and published with malice and an indifference to the standards of responsible journalism.

"The article relies to a significant extent on anonymous sources, many of whom are no longer alive, and repeats defamatory statements made by those sources.

"Through selective omission, innuendo and malicious sarcasm, the article paints a portrait of plaintiff which has no bases in reality, and which has been highly damaging to his reputation.

"The intent of the article is apparent from the very subtitle, which implies that plaintiff finds fingerprints where they do not exist, and which represents an editorial attempt to prejudice the reader in advance of the narrative which follows."

I figure this could make for an interesting trial. The bar to proving defamation for a public persona, as Biro clearly is, is pretty high. And despite the claims of "Elizabeth," The New Yorker actually has one of the best reputations around when it comes to fact checking. Perhaps there's something more that will come out during the trial, but I'd guess that it'll be difficult to get the defamation claim to stick.

Filed Under: art, authentication, david grann, new yorker, peter paul biro
Companies: conde nast

Forging Science: The Story Of How Famed Painting Authenticator Likely Duped The Art World

from the fingerprint-this dept

A couple years ago, on a whim, knowing nothing at all about the movie, I rented the documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?. It's a really amazing documentary. Compelling, well-done and really entertaining. The reviewers loved it too. It tells the story of a truck driver woman, who bought a painting for $5 at a garage sale, and is convinced that it's actually done by Jackson Pollock. The movie has numerous amusing scenes with famed art experts staring at the painting and dismissing it in the most... condescending of tones. Eventually, the "hero" of the film is a guy named Peter Paul Biro, who matches a fingerprint on the back of the painting to one he found in Pollock's (still preserved) studio. The movie ends and you're absolutely convinced that the painting is really by Pollock -- even if the art world won't recognize it. At the end of the film, the truck driver who bought the painting has turned down a $2 million and a $9 million offer for the painting, holding out for the $50 million she's sure it's worth. I highly recommend watching it (though, oddly, I can't seem to find any video clips of it online -- not even a trailer for the flick).

Remembering that, I was fascinated to see that The New Yorker recently did a long feature piece on Peter Paul Biro and dove in to read it. The first half of the article covers Biro's rise to fame. How a few of these "fingerprinting" authentications had made him quite famous, with that documentary ratcheting up his fame level even higher. The key point that everyone keeps noting is that, rather than the traditional form of authentication -- the condescending art experts in the documentary who are ripe for mocking and use what often feel like extremely subjective techniques -- this involved science. After all, if the fingerprints matched, how can you question that?

But, then, the article takes a turn. There are a few cracks in the story, and someone who knows Biro well suggests that the reporter, David Grann, look a bit more deeply into Biro's (and his family's) history. It turns out that they were involved in several lawsuits years earlier involving selling what were later found to be forged artwork. Of course, painting forgeries are nothing new, but as Grann dug deeper and deeper he kept coming across evidence that Biro's "authentications," may have involved questionable practices -- including planting faked fingerprints on some of the paintings he was supposed to be authenticating. It's an amazing and gripping article -- and totally calls into question pretty much all of Biro's work. At the end of it, I was just as convinced that the truck driver's "Pollock" painting is not by Pollock, as I was that it was by Pollock at the end of the documentary!

But I found most interesting of all was the reasons why so many people were convinced that Biro's authentications were real. It wasn't just the use of "science." And it wasn't just that people had this natural inclination to believe that so-called "art experts" don't know what they're talking about, but that Biro appears (and, for what it's worth, Biro denies the allegations in the article) to have used what are effectively social engineering tricks to make this work. There's a certain brilliance in realizing that rather than forging paintings, there may be money to be made in authenticating works by effectively forging fingerprints on top of other works -- which then gives it the air of legitimacy-via-science. Honestly, the whole idea that someone would go in and forge fingerprints on top of a piece of art work just doesn't seem in the realm of possibility, and so most people didn't even consider it.

I had started reading the article last week (as mentioned, it's pretty long), but ended up finishing it up now, because I was thinking some more about the recent story of those glass negatives that have been "authenticated" as being from Ansel Adams -- which Ansel Adams' estate is vehemently denying are Adams' work. After reading The New Yorker piece, it's difficult not to be increasingly skeptical of the claims of these new negatives, even with all of the "scientific" evidence that has been mentioned by the team involved in the authentication.

Filed Under: authentication, forgery, jackson pollock, painting, peter paul biro, social engineering