Stuart Piver, a 94-year-old chemical engineer who lives in New York, has been collecting art and bone seque items since he was a child. He estimates he has picked up about 300 works over the years, including portraits of himself by his friend Andy Warhol, as well as paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock and Edgar Dega.
Piver is also convinced that he owns the masterpiece of Vincent Van Gogh, a large landscape entitled “auvers, 1890” with “Vincent” signed on his back.
But the far more important voice disagrees. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has an incredible weight as it has the largest collection of works by 19th century impressionists. Its curators and researchers study all aspects of the life and work of Dutch artists.
When the museum sent Pival a 15-page letter in 2021, explaining why he didn't see a painting that spent thousands of dollars on Van Gogh, he responded by suing $300 million in US District Court. He claimed in court documents that it was “negligence” to not recognize the museum's paintings, with little value.
The costs of fighting lawsuits during the coronavirus pandemic and dealing with influx of inquiries were increasingly resisting the request for certification when hundreds of people believed they had found the original Van Gogh in auctions, dusty attics, or in grandfather's beds. But without that accusation, large auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's are unlikely to sell anything attributed to Gogh.
“This area can be very litigating, and that's a pain for us to avoid,” said Emily Gordenker, director of the Van Gogh Museum. “We have a lot of these conversations. Should we continue to play this role? It puts us in a troublesome state at times – let us rephrase it – it puts us in a sensitive position.”
It's more difficult than ever for a theoretical Van Gogh to become a real Van Gogh. More than a decade ago, the foundations of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, as well as Jean-Michel Basquiat's wealth, have completely escaped from the certification business. While not circulating fakes is an important task, it has led to lawsuits that threaten the wider work.
“They recognize that there is a high risk of litigation and low compensation for expressing their opinions,” says Maxwell Anderson, former director of the Whitney Museum in New York, who currently works for a certified company that uses a combination of scientific, curatorial and academic tools to evaluate artwork. “In Van Gogh's case, the interests are even higher.”
Certification is important for those who discover potentially advantageous artwork. It's important for academics who want to accurately record Van Gogh's “Orchard,” which sold for around $117.2 million in 2022, and everything the artist has ever painted.
“It's important for anyone who's interested in art and walks into the museum and sees the label on the wall,” said Gary Schwartz, an art historian who writes about Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Barmeal. “It's important to the quality of trust that the museum is being issued and promised.”
Founded by the artist neo, the Van Gogh Museum has held exhibitions and researched since it opened in 1973. Most submissions are processed based solely on photographs to quickly rule out what they deemed as “something clearly far from Van Gogh's work.” In rare cases, accepting work for further analysis uses both scientific tools such as scans, paint samples, and x-rays to compare with other artworks, letters and personal history from Gogh.
In 2021, the museum agreed to see a photo of Piver's scenery after former European Museum curator Michael P. Mezzatesta at the Kinbell Museum in Fort Worth was attributed to Van Gogh. However, the Van Gogh Museum refused to inspect the studio's paintings, saying it was not authentic, saying it was “clearly clear from the materials presented to us.”
The museum takes pride in Van Gogh's expertise, but Gordenker emphasized that the decision is not binding. “We just provide our opinions and we can make corrections,” she said.
Even for experts, it can be difficult to make uncontroversial decisions about who drew decades or centuries ago. After initially refusing to “Sunset at Montmajour” when sent for evaluation in 1991, the Van Gogh Museum decided in 2013 that the work was a “newly discovered landscape.”
In October, the museum published its opinions in the Art Journal, a Burlington magazine. This made me feel that the three works attributed to Gogh were not authentic. Previously, one of them, the “female head.” This was sold by Christy to private buyers in 2011 for nearly $1 million. When the second version was revealed, museum experts determined that “the woman's head” was “executed by a copy list.”
The museum is not facing lawsuits due to these opinions, Golddenker said. However, it has been sued for past decisions.
According to court filings, the museum decided to refuse “living with still life” in 2001, and then filed a lawsuit in Dutch court in 2001 after the museum decided to refuse “living with still life” in 2001. After examining the work, the museum discovered that the brush strokes and color palettes did not conform to Van Gogh's style.
Lou Bloc's complaints continued all the way to the Netherlands Supreme Court. This upheld a lower court's ruling that the museum was not acting negligently or illegally. He said he continues to work in a secure deposit box, believing that another expert might verify it in the future.
“I'm sure my drawings are real Van Gogh,” he wrote in an email. “The whole painting radiates Van Gogh. Everyone who sees it is just thinking about it.”
Gogh's catalogue Raisonné has around 2,100 artwork (approximately 870 paintings), and some art historians believe that 300 more could be discovered. Others say it is probably far less, given that it appears to be seen once every decade. Van Gogh sold several paintings in his lifetime and died penniless, but he could trade some, give them some, or leave them unfinished in the studio.
Experts at Sotheby's and Christie's, art dealers and staff at nonprofit art institutions, said that if a collector wants to sell Van Gogh, it usually requires verification from the Van Gogh Museum. Other voices could have some impact, they said, but no one has more authority.
Other Dutch art institution officials have informed the New York Times that they are postponing the Van Gogh Museum, including the Chroller Muller Museum in Ottaro. And the independent expert fell on the roadside. Ronald Pickvans and Bogomira Welsh Vukolov drove most of the way into the art world when museum experts attributed the sketchbook to Van Gogh in 2016.
“Scholars in each field should be invited, as before, for a collaborative dialogue on attribution,” says Wales Ouchorov, an art historian at the University of Toronto. “At least there should be an open dialogue. There is no Pope, there is no Van Gogh Studies Vatican.”
Zurich dealer and scholar Walter Ferchenfeld has written several books about Van Gogh, and sometimes opposed the museum's decisions, saying there should not be a “monopoly on Van Gogh's credibility.”
“If someone doesn't agree,” he said, “and then you're wrong right away.”
Others in the art world say that the role of the Van Gogh Museum is important and earns a lot. Sotheby's spokesman Mitzi Mina said auction houses were usually guided by the museum's decision.
“They are the world's leading authority and are about leading the industry in terms of refinement and hard work, both academic and scientific research,” she wrote in an email.
Martin Bailey, author of several books on Van Gogh, said the museum was in a strong position as the museum had family archives and top experts. “And the important thing is, they also have very good parents who are very experienced.
The Van Gogh Museum felt it was burdened by its role when certification requests doubled from about 250 to over 500 per year in 2021. “We couldn't handle it,” Golddenker said. After changing its policy to limit certification services to certified art dealers and auction houses, the museum processes around 35 requests each year.
“That doesn't mean we've become more tentative in our commitment to scholarships,” Golddenker said. “We are very open and transparent.”
One of the reasons museums, foundations and artist estates are getting out of certification business is that their decisions can be expensive.
The Andy Warhol Foundation in New York dissolved its certification committee in 2012 after being forced to protect itself in a lawsuit filed by the collector. The turning point was the antitrust law, filed by filmmaker Joe Simon, after the foundation said silkscreens were fake in the mid-1960s.
“We never lost these cases,” said Joel Wax, director of the Warhol Foundation.
The invalidation of authentication is met by companies relying on new technologies, such as digital scanning and artificial intelligence. Former Whitney Director Anderson joined one of such companies LMI Group after working in major museums for 30 years.
In 2019, Antiques Collector bought a painting for $50 at the Minnesota Garage Sale and sent the photo to the Gogh Museum. The LMI group then bought the painting for “a very small amount,” and Anderson spent at least $1 million to analyze it.
The LMI Group declared in January that the painting “Elimar” was created by Gogh in 1889 and released a 458-page report that factors such as Canvas Weave and DNA refer to the DNA of the hair on the surface of the painting. In a statement, Van Gogh Museum said it had “considered the new information,” but maintained its view that “this is not a real piece.”
Anderson said the swift termination reflects a larger issue with forensics.
“Only by stabbing the museum's secret veils can sunlight be recognized in the complex and untold features of this amazing artist,” he said in an email.
The $300 million lawsuit by New York collector Pivar was ultimately dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. He now regrets the sue, but he is still irritated that there is no place to spin. “It's really annoying to sue the museum,” he said. “I thought what they were doing was contrary to the scholarship, so I did it.”
Piver is determined to prove that the Van Gogh Museum experts are wrong. He invited an AI-based certified company to look into his art collection, but decided they were “phony.” Now he may ask the LMI group for opinions on the rolling wheat field of “Auvers, 1890”.
“I say this is one of Van Gogh's unique masterpieces,” Piver said.
