Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art — When Wanting to Believe Is Just Not Enough
The story of the most significant art fraud in history where ruined reputations and wounded egos mattered more than money.
“No one wants to be fooled,” Ann Freedman says at the beginning of this highly entertaining documentary now on Netflix. The film documents an $80.7 million art forgery scandal perpetrated between 1995 and 2011 swallowing up some of the biggest names in the New York art world.
The deception began when in1995 Glafir Rosales walked into the Knoedler Gallery, which opened in New York City in1846, and presented them with a canvas apparently by Mark Rothko, the abstract painter who died by his own hand in 1970. Ann Freedman, the gallery director, and the documentary’s central figure, purchased the work for the relatively low price of $950,000. She would later sell it for $8.3 million.
Rosales had no art pedigree but could tell a passable story, dropping a few prominent names along the way, of representing a wealthy art collector. A collector who conveniently for all concerned wished to remain anonymous.
One word comes up a lot during the documentary. Provenance. Essentially provenance documents the ownership history of the…
