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I've been reading about the art market and apparently its lack of regulation means it is often compared to the drugs or arms trade, which is _wild_
This regulation is at issue particularly because galleries and dealers often need to protect art vendors' identities, rendering the provenance docs heavily redacted
What this also means is that galleries,auction houses, and dealers are selling looted or fake art all for a handshake at undisclosed amounts
What art? We don't even know sometimes! Undisclosed paintings at undisclosed prices, sold behind doors. Vendor: Mr. X
Such is the case with the dealership Knoedler - now closed amid its involvement in several high profile lawsuits, for selling Nazi-looted art (inc. a Matisse and El Greco) and for selling forgeries passed on by art dealer Glafira Rosales
And get this: one of the Pollock paintings obtained from Rosales had his signature misspelled https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/arts/design/note-to-forgers-dont-forget-the-spell-check.html?ref=design&_r=0
btw this is all fantastically explained in this episode of Reveal https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/fancy-galleries-fake-art/
Even more incredible was hearing about a number of people who doubted the authenticity of these paintings who didn't eventually speak out. This is because in the art world you can be sued for defamation if you claim, or considered to claim, a work is fake
I imagine there is a long chain of people with pretty big incentives to keep the market unregulated. I mean, Knoedler sold a whopping $63 million worth of fakes over a 15-year period.
Art dealers do have the responsibility to trace the origins of works of art through their research teams, so why then would they have easily bought + sold a "Pollok"?
The art market is a key method of money laundering, and certainly an attractive way, because transactions are often secret and prices can be distorted
And although it has been argued that the legitimate art market is not a practical method to launder money, it is precisely the subjective (and extremely high) pricing of works of art and protection of sellers' identities/provenances that make for some really shady transactions
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anyway this was my ted talk thank you
anyway this was my ted talk thank you
tl;dr: the art market is obscene
