Art, Lies, and Spectral Cameras

Martin Kemp examing an alleged Jackson Pollock; Photo: Steve Pyke (The New Yorker)

Martin Kemp’s daily work involves a magnifying glass, an archive of art books, a nimble memory, and a keen eye. As one of the world’s leading art authenticators he has transformed works that were once thought to be worth pennies into objects that now have the value of small 3rd world countries. The methods by which he arrives at his conclusions are often the object of both praise and ridicule. To hear Kemp articulate what it’s like to come into the presence of an authentic work by a Renaissance master bears all the imprint of a connoisseur in thrall to his subjective vision.

The New Yorker reports:

Kemp has a formidable visual memory, and can summon into consciousness any of Leonardo’s known works. When vetting a painting, he proceeds methodically, analyzing brushstrokes, composition, iconography, and pigments—those elements which may reveal an artist’s hidden identity. But he also relies on a more primal force. “The initial thing is just that immediate reaction, as when we’re recognizing the face of a friend in a crowd,” he explains. “You can go on later and say, ‘I recognize her face because the eyebrows are like this, and that is the right color of her hair,’ but, in effect, we don’t do that. It’s the totality of the thing. It feels instantaneous.

In Orson Welles masterpiece F is for Fake, we follow the particulars of the life of Elmyr De Hory, one of the world’s most famous art forgers and con- men. As Welles guides us into the shadowy maze that De Hory inhabits, a labyrinth of illusion emerges, one that is replete with layers of truth, lies and equivocations, in sum the perfect metaphor for artistic creation itself. This rarefied world shaped by both characters and a plot that resemble an Italo Calvino novel forces upon us to question the relationship between authenticity and art. Although the narrative does not end well for De Hory, his character intrigues us, and provokes our imagination in the same way that the intricacies of a jewel thief’s heist incites our curiosity.

The New Yorker currently has a profile on Peter Paul Biro, a colleague of Martin Kemp, who is currently involved in a debate over the verification of a Da Vinci that has put him at odds with many of the art world’s elite. He validates Kemp’s assertion that this small drawing (“La Bella Principessa”), which was originally thought to be of German origin, to be a genuine Da Vinci.

Although art authentication is a painstaking and meticulous process that involves years of training and expertise it has long been seen with suspicion in art circles as the work of charlatans. When millions of dollars in investment are at stake, a wealthy patron must begrudgingly put his assets at the altar of subjectivity. Even if an authenticator is an expert in the work of an artist or period, how can he conclusively say that the work is authentic, especially when dealing with works that are centuries old ? This has been a hotly contested issue within the museum world for centuries, a process which has built a veritable wall around the authenticator and his findings.

Authenticators have also struggled to explain their evaluative process, their “eye.” Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who died in December, liked to speak of the “ineffable sense of connoisseurship.” The art historian Bernard Berenson described his talent as a “sixth sense.” “It is very largely a question of accumulated experience upon which your spirit sets unconsciously,” he said. “When I see a picture, in most cases, I recognize it at once as being or not being by the master it is ascribed to; the rest is merely a question of how to fish out the evidence that will make the conviction as plain to others as it is to me.” Berenson recalled that once, upon seeing a fake, he had felt an immediate discomfort in his stomach.

The reason why Peter Paul Biro’s findings are different from that of the average authenticator is that he claims he can scientifically prove that a work is genuine by matching the fingerprints of the artist with those that are embedded within the paintings itself. This had been unheard of in the world of authentication prior to his arrival on the scene, and has caused some extreme pronouncements on both ends of the spectrum, patrons and museums alike.

If art works can be scientifically proven to be authentic via fingerprints this would render all other experts obsolete. Not a favorable place to be if you have built your reputation and career on this rarefied skill. Doubts have arisen in the last year over Biro’s scientific claims as he asserts that he is the only one to have the technology to recover these elusive fingerprints.

Biro showed me another laboratory, in a locked basement. Here, he said, he kept his most revolutionary device: a multispectral-imaging camera, of his own design, which was mounted on a robotic arm and scanned a canvas from above. The device could take photographs of a painting at different wavelengths of light, from infrared to ultraviolet, allowing him to distinguish, without damaging the work, the kind of pigments an artist had used. (Previously, tiny samples of paint had to be extracted and submitted to chemical analysis.) The multispectral camera could also reveal whether an older painting was hidden beneath the surface, or whether a picture had been restored. And if a fingerprint was present the camera could pick up extraordinary levels of detail. Biro once boasted that his invention surpassed “any camera today” and was “the only one of its kind in the world.”

There are other more peculiar details about Biro that have come to light, namely a father who was involved in art restoration and possibly forgery. Lawsuits have begun to be uncovered about Biro while the narrative has turned into a Borgesian tale of mirrors. Could an authenticator be pulling the greatest con of all by actually planting fingerprints onto a painting and then declaring art works genuine? Meanwhile museums and wealthy connoisseurs see their art speculations inflate in value while money exchanges hands behind closed doors? It’s a fascinating tale that has led writer David Grann to some interesting conclusions.

[Grann's article is published in the New Yorker]