Writing in the Wall Street Journal, James Panero of The New Criterion uses two cases involving Robert Motherwell’s Dedalus Foundation to ask about the operations of authentication boards. With Richard Dorment refusing to let the Warhol Foundation’s denial of the Red Self Portrait stand, and the large sums of money hanging upon authentication, artists’ authentication boards and catalogues raisonnés being issued without discussion of the standards and methods used are increasingly coming under attack:
Artist foundations have come to serve as the art market’s rating agencies, with catalogues raisonnés providing triple-A stamps of approval. As such, these foundations regularly make determinations that can have a significant monetary impact on the value of art, as the Killala lawsuit maintains. At the same time, because these same foundations derive income from the sale of work in their possession by the same artist, there is the potential for conflict of interest, in fact or appearance, in their evaluations of works submitted for authentication. At no time did Dedalus offer any explanations, Killala claims, either of why it originally accepted the Motherwell as authentic, or what made it change its mind, or why it took two years to do so. Nor did it ever disclose how it arrived at its judgments, a claim Mr. Stern disputes in this particular case. Still, in general, this is the way many artist foundations work, a point with which Mr. Stern concurs: “As is the case with most catalogues raisonnés, the authors decline to give reasons to their decisions. It’s standard.”
Behind the Veil: Questions About Art Authentication (Wall Street Journal)