by Richard Dorment. 276 pp. incl. numerous ills. (Picador, London, 2023), £20. ISBN 978–1– 5290–8149–7.

The story that Richard Dorment tells in this meticulously researched book should be a cause of considerable concern to museum directors, curators, art historians, art dealers, conservators and collectors, as well as those engaged in art law. As Dorment shows with devastating clarity, the business of authenticating works by Andy Warhol (1928– 87) in the early 2000s was indeed a business. That is, creating and sustaining a market for Warhol seems to have taken precedence over expertise and scholarship. 

Dorment’s interest in the subject began in January 2003 when he received a phone call from Joe Simon, an American film producer and art collector, who contacted him at the suggestion of David Hockney, his neighbour in Malibu. The purpose of his call seemed straightforward: ‘a committee of experts called the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board had declared two Warhols in his collection to be fake, and he wanted to know why’ (p.1). As it turned out, Simon was to discover through his own persistence why one of the works he owned was unquestionably a fake, but he had every reason to believe the other, a work from the silk-screen series Red self-portraits (1965), was authentic.[1] He was therefore shocked to discover that the verso of the canvas had been stamped with the word ‘denied’ by the Authentication Board, in indelible red paint and ‘with such force that the letters came through on the front of the canvas’ (p.14). 

Although initially reluctant, Dorment found himself drawn into Simon’s refusal to accept the board’s decision. Few collectors can be said to have put in the considerable research and resources that Simon dedicated to fighting for his Red self-portrait to be accepted as authentic. What began as a simple enquiry became a full-time job, even an obsession that would ultimately cost him dearly. After filing a complaint against the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Authentication Board in July 2002, Simon was forced, by a string of unfortunate circumstances and a lack of funds, to withdraw the suit in November 2010.[2] However, this was not before laying bare the shortcomings of the compilers of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, which is overseen by the Warhol Foundation, as well as the highly questionable behaviour of the Authentication Board and the Foundation more widely.[3] The scholarship that underlies decisions relating to authenticity is ruthlessly questioned by Dorment. The fact that these shortcomings suited the commercial objectives of those in charge of the Foundation only adds to the murkiness of the picture.[4] 

It is surely a given that any compiler of a catalogue raisonné must first get to know and understand the artist’s methods, their use of materials, the character of their work and the context in which that work was made. Neil Printz, the longest serving member of the Warhol Art Authentication Board and, together with George Frei and Sally King- Nero, one of the authors of the six-volume catalogue raisonné, told a journalist that he ‘wanted to catalogue Warhol like they catalogued Picasso’ (p.89).[5] But as Dorment points out, ‘Warhol’s hands-off way of making and thinking about art might be called the opposite of what went on in the studios of his predecessors, such as Picasso’ (p.89). And the importance of the Red self-portraits series, as the scholar Dietmar Elger has attested, is that ‘it was the hinge that opened the door into Warhol’s hands-off working methods in the 1970s and 1980s’ (p.193). Not to recognise the profound difference between such artists as Warhol and Picasso will inevitably lead to serious errors and misjudgments. Dorment drives home the point: ‘by treating [Warhol] as though he were an old master, [Printz and King-Nero] missed dozens of opportunities to hear eye witness testimony’ (p.111) – for instance, from Warhol’s studio assistants, such as Paul Morrissey, Billy Name and Sam Green. 

An even more curious oversight was to ignore the research of Rainer Crone. In 1968–70, as a young PhD student, Crone worked closely with Warhol, compiling the first catalogue raisonné of the paintings, films and works on paper.[6] Crone’s solution to cataloguing a silk-screen series such as the Red self-portraits was to select a single work to represent the whole. In this case, the chosen canvas was the one signed and dated by the artist and dedicated on the verso to the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger. That work appeared under the same catalogue number (no.169) in the two revised editions, and Warhol himself even chose it as the image for the original dust jacket cover. As Dorment notes, Crone was responsible for ‘the primary published source of information about Warhol’s art in the 1960s’ (p.133), which makes it all the more extraordinary that not only was the Red self-portraits series omitted from the second catalogue raisonné volume, which documents paintings and sculptures from 1964–69, but at no time was Crone consulted by its authors. 

In 2003 the owners of the version dedicated to Bischofberger submitted the work for authentication and received the following reply: ‘It is the opinion of the Authentication Board that said work is not the work of Andy Warhol but that said work was signed, dedicated, and dated by him’.[7] In 2009 Crone expressed his own concern at this serious omission by delivering the following statement: ‘I am aware of no other instance in which a revised catalogue raisonné omits a hitherto accepted work without explanation’ (pp.100–01). 

Even the most diligent and informed compiler of a catalogue raisonné can make mistakes. But if they or those in charge of the publication discourage scholarly participation in public debate or omit evidence that does not support their case then credibility will surely be lost. By not admitting Crone’s evidence that Warhol authorised the Red self-portrait series by signing one of the canvases, Printz, King-Nero and Frei showed a deliberate disregard for his scholarship, as well as Warhol’s right to determine his own output. Dorment also makes the point that the authors of the catalogue raisonné were not the only ones to treat Warhol as the artist he was so obviously not. Even the artist’s own art dealers ‘desperately wanted him to work more like a traditional artist’, begging him to cut back on the number of works he was making (p.89). Their concern was that he treated paintings as though they were prints, although of course, as Dorment explains, ‘the whole point of Warhol’s project was to demonstrate that they were exactly like prints, except one was printed on paper and the other on linen or canvas’ (p.89). This crucial point, as well as the fact that in the mid-1960s Warhol was moving away from creating works with his own hand, seems to have been missed or deliberately overlooked by the Foundation, the Authentication Board and the authors of the catalogue raisonné. 

Dorment suggests that the board ‘operated under a fundamental misconception: that authentication can be done in isolation [. . .] Their lawyers constructed a fortress to keep outsiders from knowing how they came to their decisions, but the same defences cut them off from a whole world of people who had known Warhol and where, when and how many of his pictures were made’ (p.108). But, as he goes on to say, ‘out in the real world, scholars, curators, students and dealers never stop talking and listening to each other’. The question of why ‘a scholar researching a problematic painting [would] not draw on the knowledge and experience of others’ naturally arises (pp.108–09). Readers will ask the same question. 

The board and those associated with it have not, however, offered any answers. In the wake of Dorment’s conclusions about their working methods, neither Printz or King-Nero has commented. Their prolonged silence is troubling. And theirs is not the only silence. Dorment felt sure that the artists Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, who both sat on the board in the 2000s, would ‘defend a fellow artist’s absolute right to determine what he did or did not paint’ (p.135). But neither artist said a word. ‘Corruption in the art world takes many forms’, he concludes, ‘and silence is among the most corroding’ (p.135). 

The courage and persistence that Simon and Dorment showed in standing up to the Warhol goliath is impressive. But there is another hero, without whom the story may never have been written. Robert B. Silvers, who was editor of the New York Review of Books (NYRB) from 1963 until his death in 2017, first encouraged Dorment to write about the Andy Warhol Foundation at a dinner in March 2009. Another guest on that occasion was the art historian John Richardson, who had been close to Warhol. Richardson was known to be highly critical of the Authentication Board and, as Dorment learned, ‘took every opportunity to denounce its incompetence’ (p.106). By the end of the evening Silvers had commissioned Dorment to write an article, which would be the first of several published by the NYRB. Challenging the Authentication Board provoked the wrath of the Foundation’s president, Joel Wachs. Silvers’s refusal to be intimidated by the threats, accusations and attempted smears that followed allowed Dorment to pursue his crusade but, as he freely admits, the machinations of Wachs and his lawyers caused him to live for years with a ‘background hum of permanent unease’ (p.120). 

Considering many of these events date back more than twenty years, some readers may view this as old history. However, when highly pertinent questions continue to go unanswered and questionable attributions remain unchallenged, the case against the Foundation and those responsible for the catalogue raisonné remains open. Nothing is likely to change. The website of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, as it is now called, informs us that they award over one hundred grants annually to artists, art organisations and curators throughout the United States. But, as Simon and Dorment discovered, rocking such a wealthy and powerful boat is a dangerous game. 

[1] The work was an untitled collage made of onedollar notes glued on canvas. The notes were genuine but had been printed after Warhol’s death. 

[2] As a member of the authentication boards of René Magritte, Arshile Gorky and Francis Bacon, this reviewer was asked to act as one of Simon’s independent and impartial witnesses, along with Heiner Bastian and Dietmar Elger. As the case never came to court, our testimony was not heard. 

[3] The catalogue raisonné project was initiated in 1977 by Thomas Amman and in 1993 the Andy Warhol Foundation assumed stewardship of it. The first volume dedicated to Warhol’s paintings and sculptures was published by Phaidon, London, in 2002. It was edited by George Frei and Neil Printz. The second volume was published in 2004, and was edited by Frei, Printz and Sally King-Nero. Volumes three to six were edited by Printz and King-Nero, the last of which was published in 2024. 

[4] Evidence that the Warhol Foundation and Amman catalogue raisonné project was closely bound up with commercial interests is found in the minutes of a meeting of the Foundation’s board of trustees held on 7th December 1994. According to the minutes, the purpose of the catalogue was to ‘contribute to the stabilisation of the market for Warhol’s works over time, thus having a direct benefit to the Foundation’s long-term goal of converting its Warhol works into cash for favourable prices’ (p.35). 

[5] K.D. Thomas: ‘Authenticating Andy’, ARTnews (September 2004), pp.128–37, at p.132. 

[6] See R. Crone: Andy Warhol: A Catalouge Raisonné, New York 1970, esp. no.169. 

[7] The document is headed ‘Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board Inc.’ and dated 21st May 2003. The work is given the identification number B139 032. Emphasis in original.