Fake Keith Harings? Oh My!

Artnet.com posted a warning about fake Harings and Warhols flooding the internet. Here is a short intro. So buyer beware....

If you happen upon a mysterious trove of heretofore unknown Keith Haring works in an online sale, think twice. Maybe. According to several tips to artnet News, a rash of works by Haring and other ’80s stars are being peddled far and wide, and are plaguing the online art market.

Dubious eBay jackpot
Exhibit A: Charles Uzzell Edwards, owner of London’s Pure Evil Gallery, says about eight weeks ago he happened upon a substantial inventory of little-known ’80s Pop art ephemera on eBay, being sold by a Swedish seller. The online find included subway drawings attributed to Haring as well as Polaroids said to be by Warhol. He bought some pieces online, and then negotiated to buy a larger group of works from the Swede, who sells under the name bobinga33 and eventually identified himself to Edwards as Patrick Maske. Maske claims that the works belonged to his late father. (In an email to Edwards, read by artnet News, Maske described him as “a private and quiet collector” active in the 1980s and ’90s, adding, “I think he had contacts or someone helping him to take down pictures in the subway in New York in the 1980s.”)

Edwards says upon close examination that the Haring chalk drawings are likely artfully constructed fakes. Though many details are accurate, including references to specific ads that might have been in the subway at the time Haring was working, Edwards says that the paper appears to have been deliberately aged, of the wrong type, and its back shows no evidence of ever being stuck to a wall. “We have taken them off the market,” said Edwards yesterday. “I had a few conversations in the past 48 hours that convinced me they were all fake.”

Comments

[fk27]

Are there Patrick Maske victims here ?
Please contact me.