Original or fake?

In an ‘antique’ store on Ontdekkers Road, West Rand, Johannesburg, the owner pops her head out of a tiny office, no larger than a closet, to offer help. Behind her desk a painting in an ornate gold frame commands attention – a burly self-portrait of Dutch 17th-century painter, Frans Hals. Peering closely, it is impossible to discern as a fake, but the owner swears it is real, with a price tag of R36 000.

Ontdekkers Road two decades ago was infamous for special ‘finds’, and unscrupulous dealers would sweep original impoverished mining homes on the reefs of old Johannesburg for new discoveries. Calculating buyers back then, without the naked internet, might have reckoned that the Hals was real, perhaps having made its way from Europe to post-World War II South Africa. Hoping perhaps neither the seller nor the dealer understood the true value of their goods, much like the folk on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, when an unsuspecting owner bags a million quid for an ornament that’s sat in a cupboard for 50 years. Today, claims of ignorance seem unimaginable – it takes a second online to discover that the original Hals self-portrait hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

CRIMINAL

The global phenomenon of fake art, a criminal violation of any artist’s legacy, has become a local issue, and South African art isn’t immune to forgeries. The legendary Gerard Sekoto was the first black artist to have a picture bought by a museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery, in 1940. He earned an honorary doctorate from WITS University, and his work featured in the IZIKO South African National Gallery. He left the country in 1947 to live his life in voluntary exile in Paris, which is where he remained until his death in 1993. Owning a Sekoto is like owning the Star of Africa, and master forgers know it. Today, Sotheby’s confirms record sales of his art at London and Johannesburg auctions.

Sekoto’s work is curated and protected by the Gerard Sekoto Foundation, which oversees the legacy of his oeuvre, and the artist’s copyright, keeping a beady eye out for infringements and forgeries. In recent years fake paintings have become a burgeoning industry. Not only of Sekoto’s work, but of many others.

An art professional can spot a fake quickly. Art scholars have multiple methods of detection and this plethora of knowledge assists with detecting fraud. Knowledge of top artists’ style during different periods is also meticulously documented and applied.

SPOTTING FAKES

Sekoto’s painting, Boy with a Yellow Cap (circa1940), has an illustrious history. It was owned by the late Prof Murray Schoonraad and the sale is on record. In 1939 Sekoto was taught by artist Judith Gluckman and the painting was an attempt at using a new technique, showing an emerging style that made him famous. Recently a ‘copy’ of the painting appeared on the market, apparently from the UK.

The Gerard Foundation Sekoto notes: “It is being marketed as a work of Sekoto’s hand, and yet shows none of the effortless versatility that is already evident in Sekoto’s early work. The colour tonalities and painterly techniques differ markedly in the two paintings, the original, dynamic, the copy, leaden and solid: the boy’s cap, in the original, comprises gold/brown tones with a range of light to dark, which are subtly integrated by brushwork. In the copy, buttercup yellow tones predominate, and the painterly technique is flat, lacking in dexterity and vivacity. The shadow on the forehead beneath the cap/above the left eye and ear is a muted deep grey in the original, whilst in the copy the shadow is depicted as a solid block of purplish colour, lacking all subtlety … it is as if the canvas has been chosen to fit an existing old looking frame, so the subject matter has to conform to the allowed space … here we have the work of the master compared with that of the amateur.”

SA FORGERY METHODS

While galleries are the most appropriate source of professional assessment of fraudulent copies, some are the culprit. Gerard de Kamper, Chief Curator of Collections, and lecturer at University of Pretoria, writes in The Conversation: “Based on my research, I’m of the opinion that the bulk of the fakes we’ve studied can be traced to a group we call the African Modernist Fake School – a trained artist or group of artists working together to create fakes on demand. The demand is created by an equally well organised group of ‘galleries’ and auction houses. These auction houses hide behind small-print clauses like ‘signed as’ and are mostly located in Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein. For their part, the galleries exist only on the internet and use popular classified advertising and online auction sites to peddle their wares. The sellers often claim to have been friends with the artists and their families, and may even have someone with the same surname as the artist on staff. They sell fake works with made-up certificates of authenticity. Sometimes they publish books on the artists where fake works are mixed with originals to create a false provenance for the forgeries. One gallery went as far as donating fake works by black modernist artists to a university in the US.”

The good news is that a solution is being formalised to stop this illegal and ludicrous practice. Credible auction houses are starting to call on universities at the hint of suspicion. The University of Pretoria has developed a Master’s programme in Tangible Heritage Conservation, training post-graduate students as conservators to preserve and protect SA’s cultural heritage. “The deception is because there is not enough published source material on these artists. Six of the eight [listed in the threat box] have no scholarly publications on them at all,” Prof de Kamper says.

It’s a given that groups of art students are working hard at a life of art crime, reproducing infamous artworks. For a smart, enterprising bunch, there’s an opportunity to earn an honest living, documenting, researching and building South African heritage databases to protect those artists whose legacies need it.