Fine Art Authentication Management
by
John Daab, for Fine Art Registry™
A failure to manage
Some time ago Fine Art Registry™ reported that the Parker family, believing that a painting they possessed might be a genuine Jackson Pollock, contacted Paul Biro, Montreal based art restorer and self-proclaimed art authentication fingerprint expert. Over a period of months the price for the forensic "authentication" and restoration moved from $5000 to close to $50,000. Each request for a status report was met with a request for additional money to further authenticate the work by added methods involving more people. There was no end in sight for the Parkers except continual increases in the cost of the authentication. The project was out of control. Then it was found out by the Parkers that associates of Biro were convicted felons looking to use the Parker’s money to generate some funds for a future escapade in art “authentication” and sales! Having been notified by Biro that the felons were going to come and examine the painting, the Parkers quickly jumped into their SUV and grabbed the painting just in time.
After months of seeking a report of the status of the authentication, the Parkers eventually received one from Biro which Ken Parker described as “a high school report – my kid could have done better”. The result of the cash spent, aggravation, and perhaps having their work disappear, was that the Parker’s painting was no closer to being authenticated than when the process started.
Must the fine art authentication process be a nightmare, full of surprises, with no controls taking place and excessive monies spent for almost no return?
This article proposes using the project management techniques employed in the construction industry to bring projects in on deadline and budget, to help in the art authentication and appraisal process.
The development of project management
Before the 1950s the construction of military building projects took place in very much the same way that many fine art authentications take place. A project was handed over to an expert (e.g. builder/general contractor) who built it based on prior building experiences and very few controls guidelines except to make money. The military found this approach troublesome, time consuming, and usually more expensive than the price quoted by the expert. The expert, like Biro, always wanted more money to finish the project. Tired of blown budgets, shoddy work and incomplete projects, the military experimented with a management approach grounded in a systematic control of the activities of the building process.
So how did the new approach work? The management process began with an analysis of a given project before the project began, moved into planning of the necessary activities to carry out the project with time frames and costs linked to the activities. The identified activities were organized, prioritized logically, and set in graphical form via a schedule. The project was no longer in the head of the expert, and under expert control, but laid out for all to see. In this form the control of the process shifted from expert to owner. The owner – the US Military – now knew the activities required to complete the project, their time durations and the specific costs associated with the activities. Management effectively reduced the freedom of the expert to continually request additional funds to continue building since the expert had already agreed to the graphical arrangement of his contract obligations via the schedule. Today systematic management of the building process is the prevalent mode in construction.
The methods used, which were so successful in keeping the construction project within budget and deadline, can easily be applied to the fine art authentication process.
Fine art authentication activities
What are the activities necessary to authenticate a work of fine art? There are three standard activities involved. These standards developed historically, are based in case law, and used by museums, and other experts.
Science
Scientific analysis starts the process by analyzing the materials of the work such as paint, canvas, wood, or type of stone or metal used in sculptures. The material bases of the work being authenticated must be appropriate in terms of date produced and materials used. The scientist might use paint pigment analysis to determine that the pigment used existed during the time the work was created. An automatic invalidator of authenticity would be a material used which was found to have been first used years after the work’s creation. Dendrochronology might be used to find if the wood “canvas” painted on was as old as the paint used. "X-Ray" analysis may be used to determine if other works lie beneath the work under examination. The use of fingerprinting and DNA analysis falls under new technologies, which need to be accepted by the community of art scholars. These are at risk to the collector since, as the Biro affair demonstrated, with scientific protocols remaining to be established there is much room for scientifically unsound practices to take place.
Provenance
Following material analysis a search for supporting documents known as provenance moves to establish that the work was from the hand of the artist. Here one looks to secure sale slips, estate property lists, taxes paid on properties sold or tags from Fine Art Registry indicating a works ownership.
Connoisseurship
A final activity, connoisseurship hopefully closes out the work in terms of a match of the artist's style, period, and culture with the subject matter of the work. Here the connoisseur checks ear lobes, fingers, folds in draperies, and clothing, and matches them to a comparative work of the artist or historical fact. Suspicion concerning authenticity will arise if a work, supposedly created in 1750, depicts the Empire State Building in the background.
The three standard categories of authentication processing may be further broken down into a myriad of sub standards, which will unfold as the process continues and result from the nature of the work being authenticated.
Fine art authentication management
The management of the fine art authentication process starts with an analysis of the collector’s need to authenticate, formulated into an identified list of activities and sub-activities necessary to complete the authentication. These identified activities, i.e. scientific analysis, provenance research and connoisseurship, are organized logically, prioritized, and given shape via a documented schedule. The activities and sub-activities such as scientific X-ray analysis, sales slips from provenance research, or corroboration of culture with the work under connoisseurship are depicted in a graphical schedule for all parties to see. Each activity or sub activity is broken down into time durations and costs associated with the activity to finalize the authentication process. The process starts with the most important, since if science says the work is inauthentic, the rest of the process need not move forward, thus saving time and money. Additionally, the process has logic in that unless an owner doesn't mind spending unnecessary monies, the process must start with science, move to provenance and finalize with connoisseur advisement. Spending on connoisseurship before science establishes that there are no inauthentic telltales wastes money unnecessarily. A typical simple authentication graph might look like the following:
The best-case scenario for managed authentication is that all activities corroborate each other. Science says the work has no inauthentic telltales, provenance provides documentation that the work has a paper trail indicating that the work has a history attached to it and connoisseurship states that style, content, culture, history and subject matter to name a few, point to the fact that the work comes from the hand of the artist.
Important points from authentication management
From our above graph, authentication management provides a list of identified activities, logic to carry out the activities, costs, time frames and a concrete graph of the authentication process. The owner or collector knows from his graph the parts of the process, how long each will take and what it will cost. If science examines and finds that a 100-year-old painting has a paint pigment created ten years ago, it would be reasonable to conclude that the work is not authentic. The owner does not have to continue with the process and as a result saves $60,000 in provenance and connoisseurship activities. The total cost also provides a data point to compare the value of the work with the cost of authentication. If the work is only valued at $40,000 (if it is found to be authentic), it makes no sense to spend $68,000 to authenticate.
Biro revisited
It is evident that if the Parkers had followed such an authentication management approach, Biro probably would have not become involved with the process at all, let alone managed to extract over $40,000 from them. This would have saved a substantial amount of money and avoided the result of a painting with issues attached to it. The management approach would have identified the nature of the fingerprinting activity and noted that logically and scientifically merely because a paint can fingerprint is stated to match a fingerprint on the stretcher of a piece of art, does not establish that the work was by the artist. The cleaner, hardware store clerk or Aunt Edna could have touched the can and the work – even if there had been a match between the two. In point of fact, no chain of custody was provided and therefore the conclusion reached by Biro was without merit. Science would have noted that although the work was not authenticated by the fingerprint, it does not follow that it is not authentic. As result of the Biro testing, the work now has issues. In point of fact, the authentication process has gone backwards due to Biro’s faulty work.
Completing the authentication management process
The fine art authentication management process starts with science, continues with documentation of the artist’s hand in the work and ends with the connoisseur analyzing the work for style, period, content, subject matter, history, and culture. The triangulation and corroboration of the three components provides a best-case scenario for authentication. Timeframes and costs for the authentication process may be secured from auction houses, renowned experts, appraisers, and art scholars. Christie’s will provide an appraisal based on a photo of the work and signature. The appraisal serves three purposes. The work will be analyzed in terms of signature verification to determine if the signature matches the signature of the artist. The photo of the work will be used to identify if the work was produced by the artist, by comparing it to works found in various sales catalogues, exhibits, and scholarly works. The value of the work based on the authenticating factors used serves as a benchmark for continuing the authentication. If the appraisal is less than the cost of the continued authentication, it would be unreasonable to continue the examination.. If the appraisal is significantly higher than the cost of the authentication process then it would make sense to continue the process. Upon selecting an authenticator, the collector/owner should discuss contract language with an attorney so that the authenticator and owner accept pricing, time durations and activities to be carried out for the authentication process. Each participant in the process should be obligated to provide a written document with back up stating how the authentication activity took place. Participants should also provide monthly updates of progress and possible issues and problems.
Some caveats in carrying out the authentication process:
- Before anything else, tag the work with a Fine Art Registry tag and register it in the database. This will ensure there is a permanent, indelible record, which will be invaluable if anything goes wrong along the rest of the way.
- If the work is not found in the Fine Art Registry, see if a catalogue of the artist’s work lists the piece in question
- Get prices from at least three authentication vendors.
- Ask to see past authentications and reports.
- Ask for the credentials of the person who will be preparing the report.
- Do a background check on the expert.
- Ascertain the types of scientific analysis to insure that the means and methods are standard. New methods are not always accepted ones.
- Secure all authentication procedures in writing.
- Do not pay for anything up-front. If unavoidable, then limit the amount of such payments.
- Be proactive. Waiting for results might be costly.
- Any activities additional to the contract are to be performed only with the collector’s approval.
- Note to the vendors that if they are in possession of the work they are totally responsible for it. Set a replacement value on it.
- Make sure each vendor has insurance to cover the cost of the piece if lost or damaged, value to be agreed.
- Make sure each contract has an escape clause allowing the owner to stop the process, if any activity provides evidence that the piece is inauthentic.
— by John Daab
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February 20, 2008
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