Matthew J. Palm | Orlando Sentinel
How the now-discredited “Basquiat” artwork came to hang in Orlando Museum of Art is a story of lies, eBay, ticket stubs, catalog clues and shipping labels.
The 22-page plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, in which Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman admits he’s guilty of making false statements to a government agency about the art he helped counterfeit, paints a picture of the origins of the scandal that began more than a decade before the FBI raided the Orlando museum last June.
And though for more than a year speculation on the art’s authenticity has revolved around a FedEx shipping label found on the works — a label with a logo that was not used until after Basquiat’s death in 1988 — agents found something much more incriminating involving a label.
Barzman’s conversations with FBI agents provide a different take on the art’s origin story as presented in the museum’s “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat” catalog on the exhibit — and the plea deal reveals the agents were very aware of the catalog.
“The exhibition catalog included an essay stating that some of the featured pieces had previously been kept in Mumford’s storage locker,” the agreement notes. “The essay also referenced a sworn statement from a ‘small-time Los Angeles auctioneer’ — defendant — stating that defendant had purchased the contents of Mumford’s locker, including paintings on cardboard.”
The “Mumford” who is referenced is Thaddeus Mumford Jr., an Emmy-winning screenwriter who plays a large role in the purported origin story of the art. He died in 2018 — after telling FBI agents he never owned the paintings.
Through his company Mark Barzman Auctions, Barzman did in fact purchase the contents of Mumford’s storage unit in 2012 — but there were no Basquiat paintings among them.
Sometime that year, as the plea agreement relates, Barzman and an associate identified only as J.F. had formed “a plan to create drawings and paintings in the style of celebrated painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and market the artworks for sale as if they were authentic works by the artist.”
Between 20-30 works were created “by using various art materials to create colorful images on cardboard,” with J.F. spending just 5 to 30 minutes on each.
Former Orlando Museum of Art director Aaron de Groft would later describe the exhibition’s paintings as “destined to be ranked among his very best works.”
To add authenticity to the fakes, the pair “placed them outdoors to expose them to the elements and thus create an aged appearance consistent with works made in the 1980′s when Basquiat was painting.”
But shipping labels didn’t catch their attention — a detail that would come back to haunt Barzman.
They began selling the works — on online shopping and auction site eBay — and split the proceeds.
Lesson on provenance
The court document also provides an art lesson on provenance, explaining how it is the history of the ownership of a piece of art, starting with the artist and continuing to the current owner.
Significantly, it points out that “Establishing provenance is essential in determining if a piece of artwork is authentic. Artwork purported to be by an established artist with no provenance has less value than artwork by the same established artist which has an established provenance.”
Barzman used his legitimate acquisition of Mumford’s storage locker to create a story of provenance. To bolster the false background, he gave buyers of the fraudulent paintings a ticket stub from a storage unit, numbered 2125, saying the art had been put in storage in the 1980s and remained undisturbed until he found it there.
That falsehood was oft-repeated by De Groft, who brought the exhibit to Central Florida.
“Locked away for thirty years in a climate-controlled storage locker, Mumford’s cache might have been lost to posterity but for the perseverance and stubbornness of the resourceful new owners, the construction of an airtight case for authenticity and a healthy measure of serendipity,” he wrote in the exhibition catalog. “The fact these masterpieces even exist untouched for thirty years is a marvelous miracle for all of us.”
Pierce O’Donnell, a California lawyer who has controlling ownership of six of the paintings, notes in the catalog that “I had a sworn statement in which [Barzman] confirmed that he had purchased the contents of Mumford’s locker, including paintings on cardboard. … The auctioneer had no clue about the paintings’ creator or their conceivable value.”
‘In the manner of’
In a June 14 interview with FBI agents — less than two weeks before the raid at Orlando Museum of Art — Barzman was shown a notarized document, which he had signed, stating the paintings came from Mumford’s storage unit. He told the agents he “did not remember signing the document but said he might have.”
He also said he sold the works “to a couple of groups of people,” describing it as “in the manner of” Basquiat because he had doubts of the authenticity of the work.
One group of buyers, not identified in the court document, offered him $5,000 to sign documents authenticating the works, he told agents.
In the catalog, O’Donnell describes how a group of buyers that didn’t include himself “met at the auctioneer’s home, paid him a modest sum of cash, and drove away with the entire remaining collection.” Those collectors even tracked down two paintings that were already sold when they “found the eBay buyer and bought them back.”
That group of buyers approached O’Donnell, who later introduced the works to De Groft.
The museum director — who gushed in the “Heroes & Monsters” catalog that “the exceptional quality and depth of these raw-energy cardboard and plywood works from the Mumford Collection are the purest form of Basquiat” — was fired days after the FBI removed the exhibition’s art from the museum.
‘I don’t know’
Nearly two months later, In an Aug. 18 interview with FBI agents, Barzman made his story vaguer, saying he was unsure where he found the paintings, “either a storage-locker, an estate sale, a clear out, I don’t know, I had a lot of stuff coming in, so I don’t know.”
When asked point blank if he painted the works or had someone paint them for him, he responded, “No.”
But by Oct. 13, when agents again interviewed Barzman, his story had changed. “He admitted that he knew ‘it was a lie’ that the artwork came from Mumford’s storage locker,” the court document states. “Nevertheless, defendant still denied making the Fraudulent Paintings.”
That’s when the agents showed him a shipping label on the back of one of the paintings — a work that had been displayed in the Orlando museum’s exhibition.
Known as a graffiti or street artist, Basquiat often painted on found objects and materials, so seeing his work on ripped-up cardboard from a shipping container wouldn’t be unusual.
But it was unusual that this particular piece of cardboard had a shipping label addressed to Barzman at his former address.
“Defendant claimed that he had never seen the work and said that he had no idea how a shipping label bearing his information got on the back of it,” the document states. “Defendant denied making the art and claimed that he could not think of anyone else who could have been involved in its creation.”
Eight days later, on Oct. 21, Barzman admitted to agents that he “lied about the entire thing,” told the story of creating the art with J.F. and said he signed the notarized document after the buyers’ group offered to pay him $10,000 to $15,000. He also said he never received that money.
Under the plea agreement, Barzman is not charged with his role in the forgery — only with lying to government agents. The felony charge carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment; a three-year period of supervised release; a fine of $250,000 and a mandatory special assessment of $100.
The FBI is likely still working on the case, a retired FBI agent told the Orlando Sentinel this week, making Barzman’s arrest just the latest chapter in what De Groft’s catalog writing calls “an astounding story of ‘Lost art.’”
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at [email protected]. Want more theater and arts news and reviews? Go to orlandosentinel.com/arts.
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