The Curious Case of the Contested Basquiats
The Atlantic|March 2024
Twenty-five "masterpieces," an FBI raid, and the maddening, sometimes impossible task of rooting out fakes and forgeries
Bianca Bosker
The Curious Case of the Contested Basquiats

The paintings that appeared on eBay in the fall of 2012 featured skeletal figures with frenzied eyes, blocky crowns, and gnashing rows of teeth. They were done in brilliant blues and electric reds, mostly on scraps of cardboard that ranged from notebook-size to as big as a kitchen table. According to the man who was selling them—a professional auctioneer named Michael Barz man— he’d found them in a storage unit whose contents he’d bought after its renter had fallen behind on his bills. Barz man claimed he’d tossed the art in the trash. Then he’d fished it out and put it online.

Various deal-hunters who saw Barz man’s pieces were impressed by their resemblance to work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist known for his energetic paintings of skulllike faces and expressionistic figures whose art grew only more celebrated after he died from a drug overdose in 1988, at age 27. Within a few months, the cardboards were snapped up by collectors who, intrigued by what they had, threw themselves into establishing who’d made them.

Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av The Atlantic.

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Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av The Atlantic.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.