Toronto filmmaker Barry Avrich investigated an infamous art-world scandal — now he's written a book about it

Hamilton Spectator

2 days ago

In the spring of 2000, a well-dressed woman named Glafira Rosales walked into the posh Knoedler Gallery on New York's Upper East Side to sell a painting that she claimed was made by famed artist Mark Rothko. She said it originated from a collector who preferred to keep his identity a secret.
Gallery director Ann Friedman was all too willing to look past the murky provenance and do business with her. For the next 14 years, Rosales returned to the Knoedler (owned by Michael Hammer, grandson of business magnate Armand and father of actor Armie), delivering dozens of masterfully crafted forgeries that she would sell for nearly $80 million, including phoney Warhols, Motherwells and Pollocks.
Toronto's Barry Avrich
is perhaps best known for his filmmaking, having produced and directed dozens of awards shows, filmed plays and
documentaries
, including
'The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman,'
'Guilty Pleasure: The Dominick Dunne Story,' and
2020's 'Made You Look,'
which was the catalyst for his new book, 'The Devil Wears Rothko: Inside the Art Scandal That Rocked the World' (Post Hill Press).
'The Devil Wears Rothko,' by Barry Avrich, Post Hill Press, $39.99.
In it, Avrich chronicles the jaw-dropping twists and turns that led to
the biggest art fraud in history
. On this whirlwind journey, we meet art forgery victims
Domenico and Eleanore De Sole
in their gated community on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina; sit down with criminal mastermind Carlos Bergantiños, who successful staves off extradition from Spain; and tour a factory in Shenzhen, China, where dozens of gifted painters mimic the output of world-famous artists.
Despite the colourful mise en scene, it is the lustreless Friedman who Avrich foregrounds. He describes her in the book as 'a strange blend of your kooky aunt that keeps talking and the icy character that Meryl Streep played so well … in 'The Devil Wears Prada.'' Though Friedman could be manipulative and ruthless, Avrich purposely leaves her moral culpability up to the reader, and in the process raises timely questions — not just about the contemporary art world, but about the psychology behind human deception, the pernicious powers of the con artist, and why we are so prone to believe the most implausible and often contradictory claims.
In what ways was Ann Friedman the perfect candidate to be conned?
She was a born salesperson with a brilliant Rolodex. You could go into the gallery with a Rothko, or a Pollock, and she could always find a customer.
The Knoedler Gallery had missed a key period in the art world — the one defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Michael Hammer, the owner, was losing interest in the gallery. He was sitting on a building that could be worth $60 million. She was looking for a Hail Mary. So, she was in this unique position: she had this pressure on her to sell, she had missed the boat on a key period in the art world, and (Rosales's inventory) was all too good to be true — although Friedman believed it to be true.
Friedman was in Act 3 of her career, and in the art world, status is everything. If she's not the most powerful person in the art world of New York City, then artists and collectors are not coming to her first with new works.
In the book, journalist Michael H. Miller tells you that Friedman was either complicit in the con or 'one of the stupidest people to have ever worked in an art gallery.' You seem to make more of an institutional indictment, shining a light on the scholars, curators and exhibitors who were all too eager to judge the forged works favourably — frequently collecting consulting fees along the way. Was the idea to frame Friedman's dubious behaviour within the larger moral rot of the New York art world?
Friedman was the conduit to the collector, the aggregator of these fakes … but yes, everyone was guilty … The fact that she was selling lots of art made all these prestigious art shows like the Armory and Miami's Art Basel and Frieze exciting. 'Wow, the Knoedler booth has a Pollock? Wow!' So, everyone was excited about this. They were pissed off about her individual success, but it was very good for the art world.
The Knoedler Gallery had a history of dubious transactions with murky provenance.
There isn't a gallery in New York City, London or Paris (with) a pedigree of 50-60 years that has not been involved in a murky transaction. It's unavoidable. There are murky transactions that are going on daily in galleries. And, of course, Friedman was aware of it. But it's not like, when Armand Hammer called to offer her a job in 1977, she thought to herself, 'Oh, the Knoedler Gallery, they deal in Nazi-looted art' or 'They've had situations with fakes.' Every gallery has had a problem, at some point or another.
What made Carlos Bergantiños and Glafira Rosales such good con artists?
Carlos Bergantiños arrived in the U.S. the way Tony Montana in 'Scarface' arrived — with a dream, the American dream. He gets a job delivering caviar to various restaurants and then he starts his own business with an ambulance that he buys so he can turn on the sirens and drive through red lights.
Then, he starts delivering caviar that was fake and putting it into beluga cans. And so (after deliveries), he hangs around Christie's and Sotheby's for a couple of auctions and says to himself, 'Wait a minute, I'm selling fake caviar at $1,000 a tin. I could be selling fake paintings for millions.'
And he's got charisma. Even when I went to see him in Lugo, Spain: cashmere or Vicuña coat, gorgeous silk tie, the Audemars Piguet watch.
Glafira Rosales may not have a lot of charisma, but she came across as an academic and was very well dressed. Bergantiños schooled her in a 'My Fair Lady'/Eliza Doolittle way, gave her a backstory and dressed her up with a Birkin bag and a Max Mara coat.
And Ann Friedman always understood you could walk into a gallery, unshaven and poorly dressed, and still you might spend $5 million. So, she would never turn her nose up at anyone.
But how did the holes in their stories not set off alarms? On one of the fake Jackson Pollock paintings, his signature was misspelled! How in the world did people look past telltale signs like that?
They looked past it. Eleanor De Sole, the wife of Domenico De Sole, who is a very prestigious man — chairman of Tom Ford International, CEO of Gucci, chairman of Sotheby's — they both fall to their knees: 'We can own a Rothko?' They're already imagining it on the wall. The story in the provenance documents seems improbable, but they have to have it!
And as far as Ann Friedman looking past it? She believed anything was possible: You can find something in your attic. You can find something at a garage sale. So, Jackson Pollock was in a rush, he was drunk, he misspelled his name, he was depressed. It happens! And her defence, of course, was that she went to all these experts who are being paid and wanted it to be real: 'This art expert said it was authentic.' Later, during the litigation, (the experts) of course changed their tune, claiming that they never said it was 'real,' only that it 'looked good.'
In both the film and the book, you go to great lengths to portray the efforts Friedman undertook to authenticate the paintings and sculptures, so it was surprising that she ended up unhappy with your work. Were you surprised?
Ultimately, everyone has a sense of vanity, and it took about six bottles of very expensive Montrachet at a hotel in the Upper East Side in New York City to get her to do the film. She had said no to (CNN's) Anderson Cooper and to 'CBS This Morning.'
I said, 'I'm giving you an opportunity to tell your story unedited. It's not 20 minutes. It's not a 15-minute segment. It's not 'American Greed' (the TV series that ran from 2007-23). This is your opportunity to tell your entire story unedited. And she said, 'OK, I'm in.'
And I said, 'All right, Ann, but I want you to understand, the purpose of this film is not to simply vindicate you. It is not a Bat Mitzvah (celebration) film. And there's going to be two sides to it: Your story and victims and other people, the doubters and the journalists.' (And she said,) 'I know, I understand that.' And as I say in the book, for the year we were making the film, she was constantly sending me suggestions and friends of hers to interview who would vindicate her. I think she felt that ultimately the film did not vindicate her.
When she saw the film, she called and left me a voicemail. She said, 'Barry, it's Ann. I saw the movie. Lots of editing.' And that was it. Never heard from her again.
In your films,
your subjects are often powerful figures
like Friedman who struggle in their twilight years. What do you think your work communicates about power?
The Lew Wasserman film was my first major documentary. He had an almost Mafia-like grasp on Hollywood, having the entire equation of an industry in his head without a calculator or one note of paper on his desk. To me, what was staggering was, how do you go from that to sitting alone at a Universal Studios commissary eating tuna loaf every day, and nobody comes up to talk to you anymore and you're miserable?
I've seen that with people in my own world, who have the greatest lives ever and cannot deal with the fact time has passed. Instead of just enjoying what they've had, they cannot deal with the loss of power. I find it incredibly fascinating.
They don't know what to do with the drive that got them to the top.
One hundred per cent. You have money, so it's no longer a quest for real estate or cars or private planes. It becomes an almost relentless addiction to the next famous person that you can meet or even who you can get to pick your children up from school. It just becomes insane. I've seen this with the most powerful people losing all sense of reality.
How do you fight that off in your own inner world?
I try to be a concierge. I try to help people. It makes me happy. I try not to feel like I'm above anyone or anything.