I’m abetting the Criminal Element again, this time with an article about the most spectacular modern art forgery scandal of the last twenty years.
Between 1994 and 2008, Knoedler & Company — the oldest art gallery in the United States — sold for $80 million dollars forty paintings created by some of the leading lights of Abstract Expressionism (such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko) to some of the big names in New York City’s high-profile contemporary art scene.
One problem: all forty were painted by a 73-year-old Chinese artist working out of a garage in Queens.
Read the entire story — and other good stuff besides — on Criminal Element.