Basquiat Paintings Under Investigation
I am excited to bring you something that is happening now and currently unfolding. The only downside is that I don’t have all the answers yet so we will all have to wait and see where this investigation goes. Basically, the FBI removed 25 Basquiat paintings on display in Orlando in June. But why?
The 25 Paintings
I won’t do any real preamble today I’ll just jump right into it. So the background that you need to know is that the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) opened an exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work in February 2022 called Heroes and Monsters. In mid-June, FBI agents entered the gallery with a warrant and in front of confused and surprised visitors removed 25 of the paintings attributed to Basquiat because of questions about their authenticity. They say they’re investigating two potential crimes: conspiracy and wire fraud and they state that “the FBI’s efforts have revealed “false information related to the alleged prior ownership of the paintings” and “attempts to sell the paintings using false provenance,” among other things” (Kuta, 2022).
So the OMA says that they had no idea that the paintings were questionably attributed to Basquiat. They thought the following was true: in 1982 Basquiat painted these 25 works on cardboard while living in California. He sold them to screenwriter Thad Mumford for $5,000 who stashed them away in a storage unit for 30 years until 2012 when he fell behind on rent payments and had to auction them off. Art dealer William Force and his financial backer Lee Mangan bought them for $15,000. Sounds reasonable enough.
However, you can take a look at some of these alleged Basquiat paintings below and you’ll be able to see that they don’t quite look right even just to an average viewer.
Questions about the authenticity of these paintings began swirling almost as soon as they were rediscovered. Before his death in 2018, Mumford told the FBI that he had never owned any Basquiat pieces. Additionally, the cardboard used in at least one of the paintings contained a FedEx typeface that the company didn’t start using until 1994, 6 years after Basquiat’s death. Getting pretty sketchy now. Additionally, scholars and those extremely familiar with Basquiat’s work have looked at these 25 paintings and have doubts that they were painted by the artist. Todd Levin, an art advisor, said, “it’s clear to anybody who has expertise about Basquiat’s oeuvre—built up from decades of experience handling it, dealing with it, looking at it, and having known the artist—that these are, without a doubt, not by the artist” (Kuta, 2022). Based on what, he doesn’t say but definitely suspicious.
It’s worth noting that the OMA director and the paintings’ owners maintain that they’re genuine and if that is the case they would be worth upwards of $100 million. It’s also interesting that the exhibit, which opened in February and was scheduled to run until June 2023, had changed plans. With the museum announcing that it would actually end this summer and instead travel to Italy. The FBI believes that this could be because they were trying to avoid increased scrutiny of the authenticity of the works by the public and law enforcement.
Then, a few days after the FBI raid, the Director and CEO of the OMA, Aaron de Groft lost his position at the museum. The chairwoman of the museum’s board said in a statement that the museum’s trustees are “extremely concerned about several issues” regarding the Basquiat exhibition, titled “Heroes and Monsters.” Among them was “the recent revelation of an inappropriate e-mail correspondence sent to academia concerning the authentication of some of the artwork in the exhibition”” (Solomon, 2022). The excerpts from these emails that have been published are truly (and when I say truly, I mean truly) wild.
In an email exchange between de Groft and one of the experts hired to authenticate the paintings, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland, de Groft said “do your academic thing and stay in your limited lane.” He then threatened to disclose the details of their agreement with her employer. “You want us to put out there you got $60 grand to write this? Ok then. Shut up. You took the money. Stop being holier than thou”” (Solomon, 2022). Yes, this professor was paid $60,000 for her research (basically to say yes these are authentic Basquiat paintings), and she later requested that her name not be associated with the exhibition. What a vote of confidence.
Since this is an ongoing investigation I promise I’ll update you with any new information that comes to light but definitely a very interesting case currently unfolding. We still don’t know who may have created these paintings (if it wasn’t Basquiat), for what reason, and how they got into the hands of the OMA. Kinda seems like de Groft knows something about it from those emails though.
Works Cited
Kuta, Sarah. “FBI Seizes 25 Basquiat Paintings off a Florida Museum’s Walls”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fbi-seizes-25-basquiat-paintings-180980327/#:~:text=Late%20last%20week%2C%20FBI%20agents,of%20the%20late%20artist's%20work.
Solomon, Tessa. “Orlando Museum of Art Director is Out Following FBI Raid of Basquiat Show”. ArtNews. 2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/orlando-museum-of-art-director-departs-basquiat-raid-1234633043/