Documenting a notorious episode in art authentication

Perhaps nothing is more devastating to an art collection than the discovery that one of its beloved pieces is merely a replica of the real thing. The subject of counterfeit artworks has long been taboo in the art world, but the fear of forgery has led to the reassessment of many museum collections and an increase in transparency regarding the strategies used to identify such forgeries. For the past decade, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany has engaged in a systematic examination of its collection of Russian avant-garde paintings acquired by Peter and Irene Ludwig and donated to the museum in 2011. This fascinating volume presents 24 examples of diligent research completed in the name of authenticity. The text offers valuable insight into the artistic methods of the Russian avant-garde movement as it reveals the detailed process of confirming an artwork’s authenticity or spotting a fake.

Af­ter a long pe­ri­od in which it was ta­boo, an in­creas­ing num­ber of mu­se­ums are be­com­ing more trans­par­ent about how they deal with inau­then­tic works and exchang­ing knowl­edge. With a stu­dio ex­hi­bi­tion on the Rus­sian avant-garde, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is pre­sent­ing re­search on the au­then­tic­i­ty of works in its col­lec­tion. Thanks to Peter and Irene Lud­wig, in ad­di­tion to Pop Art and Pi­cas­so, the Rus­sian avant-garde is a core fo­cus of the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion, with more than 600 works from the pe­ri­od be­tween 1905 and 1930, in­clud­ing some 100 paint­ings.

For vari­ous rea­sons, works of ques­tion­able au­thor­ship have cont­in­u­al­ly found their way in­to pri­vate and in­sti­tu­tio­n­al col­lec­tions. Works by Rus­sian avant-garde artists were coun­ter­feit­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly of­ten (due to their de­layed re­cep­tion af­ter Stalin­ism, for in­s­tance). Even re­cent­ly, paint­ings from this era that have turned out to be inau­then­tic have been pre­sent­ed in mu­se­ums. The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is al­so af­fect­ed and is cur­rent­ly sys­te­m­at­i­cal­ly in­vesti­gat­ing its col­lec­tion of paint­ings with the help of in­ter­na­tio­n­al scho­lars. This re­search rep­re­sents an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the in­ter­na­tio­n­al dis­course on the Rus­sian avant-garde. One goal is to iden­ti­fy and distin­guish in­cor­rect at­tri­bu­tions in the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion.

The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents the meth­ods and find­ings. With twen­ty-sev­en works by, or former­ly at­tribut­ed to Ljubow Popowa, Kli­ment Red­ko, Niko­lai Suetin, Ni­na Ko­gan, El Lis­sitzky, and other artists, it pre­sents art-his­tor­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal meth­ods for mak­ing artis­tic au­thor­ship and ques­tion­able at­tri­bu­tions rec­og­niz­able. In ad­di­tion to works from the mu­se­um’s own hold­ings, Mo­mus in Thes­sa­loni­ki - home to the Col­lec­tion of Ge­orge Cos­takis - as well as Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Ma­drid kind­ly pro­vide loans of orig­i­nal works that served as tem­plates for our not-au­then­tic pic­tures.

Based on no­tice­able ex­am­ples, vis­i­tors can look be­hind the scenes and gain an un­der­s­tand­ing of prove­nance re­search and vari­ous in­vestiga­tive tech­niques such as in­frared and X-ray im­ages, fab­ric tests, and ma­te­rial anal­y­s­es. Cer­tain pig­ments, such as ti­ta­ni­um white, serve as mark­ers that al­low the dat­ing of a paint­ing to be ver­i­fied. The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives by re­search­ers in res­to­ra­tion, art tech­nol­o­gy, and art his­to­ry on the ques­tion of the au­then­tic­i­ty of an art­work.

Of the 100 paint­ings in the Rus­sian avant-garde col­lec­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, half have un­der­gone an art-his­tor­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion, most by Dr. Maria Kokko­ri, art his­to­rian and art tech­nol­o­gist at the Art In­sti­tute of Chica­go and a spe­cial­ist in the Rus­sian avant-garde, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the paint­ing re­s­tor­er at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Pe­tra Mandt. Four­teen paint­ings by Mikhail Lari­onov and Na­talia Goncharo­va were se­lect­ed for a fun­da­men­tal ex­am­i­na­tion of the Rus­sian Avant-Garde Art Pro­ject, which was con­duct­ed by Dr. Jilleen Na­dol­ny from Art Anal­y­sis & Re­search In­sti­tute in Lon­don.

The ex­am­i­na­tion of the paint­ings was gener­ous­ly sup­port­ed by the Peter and Irene Lud­wig Foun­da­tion and the Rus­sian Avant-garde Re­search Pro­ject; ad­di­tio­n­al fund­ing came from the Ger­da Henkel Foun­da­tion and the ZEIT Stif­tung. The ex­hi­bi­tion, ca­t­a­logue, and ac­com­pany­ing sym­po­si­um are al­so sup­port­ed by the Peter and Irene Lud­wig Foun­da­tion and the Rus­sian Avant-garde Re­search Pro­ject as well as the Ernst von Sie­mens Kun­st­s­tif­tung, the Bea­t­rix Lichtken Stif­tung, the Fre­unde des Wall­raf-Richartz-Mu­se­um und des Mu­se­um Lud­wig, and the Fritz Thyssen Foun­da­tion.