Nicholas S
Exceptional watch and interesting peak into the art world. Now off to buy some fake art!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
11/06/22
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william k
Fascinating documentary works on several levels, since there are more than just one mystery behind this infamous art forgery scandal; what it does reveal quite clearly is that the whole money-heavy art world thrives within a "I want to believe" mood and not so much with true expertise.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
Mildly interesting story as far as art forgeries go and could hage been told in half the time.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
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Audience Member
A documentary that waffles on about excessively rich white people being duped and purchasing fake art with their pocket change. 1 hour 30 minutes worth of waffling that could've been edited into 30 minutes essentially. Regurgitating the 'poor wealthy art buyers' narrative for 90% of the storyline. It would've been interesting to explore other facets, as well as viewpoints, within art forgery from different persons of different standings.
Also slow clap to the documentary filmmakers for hosting proper interview sessions with the American wealthy whilst - all of a sudden - adopting an aggressive technique in trying to hunt down Pei-Shen Qian, literally pitching up at his apartment's front door without any prior arrangements.
3 stars given though as there is some joy to derive from seeing these greedy humans cry over a Rothko.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/29/23
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Audience Member
Made You Look is a time passing movie which gives a window into the strange world of art deals through the question of how could a multi-million dollar international art fraud occur?
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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Audience Member
It's not who could be guilty of what that's most fascinating, it's how Glafir Rosales had the balls to attempt such a massive con, and how the high-end art world was so easily fooled.
Hindsight's a wonderful thing, isn't it? It's all too easy and overly simplistic to now say: "Oh come on, unknown works by famous artists turning up out of the blue?"
No, you come on. Rosales didn't just pitch up at Knoedler with a truck full of fake abstract expressionist artwork, she drip-fed them into the system, bringing them to Freedman over the course of ten years.
Or, as everyone cries in the documentary, "Ann Freedman must have been in on it."
Maybe. But you know what? Either way, I don't care.
Whether she's a guilty or unwitting accomplice makes no difference to me personally as I have no axe to grind, and I save my moral outrage for crimes where someone's abused or ends up dead. So, having gone in with an open mind and evaluating the evidence as it's presented, for me, Freedman's claim that she truly believed the paintings were real comes across as believable, and to be fair, an awful lot of highly respected experts authenticated them as genuine at the time.
Also, from a psychological standpoint, it's understandable why Freedman would refute the assertion that the first painting to set alarm bells of fraudulency ringing was fake and continue to defend her belief that it and all the other paintings in question were real up until the point it became clear beyond doubt that they were fakes. But ultimately, only she knows if she is guilty of fraud or merely being duped.
As Maria Konnikova (author of The Confidence Game) says, the thing about master con artists is that "they understand human need and desire, how belief and hope works and give you what you want". And thus, from Ann Freedman to all the other experts who authenticated them as real and the collectors who between 1994 and 2008 paid over $80 million for 60+ fake paintings were taken in for two compelling reasons: the desire for them to be real and greed.
They'll never admit it, but greed was certainly the underlying driving force for the collectors. That's why they collect. When you or I buy a print and put it on our wall we do so because we love it. They buy to own something no one else has. Then they stick it in a bank's vault where it stays until it finally sees the light of day when they sell it years later for a huge profit. It's not the art they truly love, it's the investment value.
Yes, collectors should expect authenticity, but, compared to people who lose their pensions due to fraud perpetrated by investment groups, or those who, desperate to claw their way out of poverty, get caught out by scams, I just can't bring myself to have much sympathy for people who have more money than any one person needs and spends it on art just to make more money.
Although, having said that, whoever you are, when you buy something in good faith you expect it to be what the seller claims it is, so I don't blame the collectors for wanting their money back when their paintings were proven to be fakes. I'd want it back too.
One moment in the documentary that made me literally laugh out loud was when Charles Schmerler (lawyer for Michael Hammer & Knoedler Gallery) said it was "highly unlikely, if not impossible, that one person would be able to master the styles of so many artists". He clearly hasn't heard of Tom Keating, who back in the 1970s forged Rembrandt, Constable, Degas, Renoir and Turner to name but a few.
STREAM OR SKIP IT Rating: 😀 GOOD. An entertaining and eye-opening 90 minutes.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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