It’s total Pollocks: elaborate con job fools art buyers

Even by the standards of the art world it was an extraordinary story.

Jackson Pollock on the job.

Even by the standards of the art world it was an extraordinary story.

The Brennerman Collection comprised 748 works by Jackson Pollock sold by the artist’s widow in 1968 to an eccentric German dealer. When he died, he left the whole lot to his two faithful servants, who cashed in on their windfall by selling the paintings.

Unfortunately for those who bought them, the story was fiction — an elaborate tale invented to lend credibility to what were Pollock forgeries.

Art experts yesterday warned that any painting said to be from the collection, often sold at a bargain five-figure sum to attract more “modest” buyers, should be avoided at all costs.

The fraud was uncovered in America after a buyer ­approached the International Foundation for Art Research (Ifar) in 2013 for an authoritative opinion on a pair of paintings bought from a strip-club owner in Virginia. As is common in sales involving renowned artists, they were purchased with “provenance” — a dossier testifying to their veracity. Independently, two other buyers came forward to Ifar with Pollocks from the collection. All three had the same provenance and were fakes.

The American research group studied the documents. They consisted of letters and diaries purportedly written by one James Brennerman, a German art dealer who moved to the US in the 1940s where he bought a large ­estate called Buffalo Park in ­Chicago.

When Ifar scrutinised the ­accompanying photos of his ­library, they realised that they had been taken at Wiblingen Abbey in Ulm, southern Germany. A picture of his garden fountain turned out to be the Neptune fountain in Madrid, while the estate’s “southern ­entrance” was in fact Sforza Castle, Milan.

In the letters, written in poor German, Mr Brennerman also referenced his art dealing partner, Charles Farmer. Together they supposedly bought the 748 Pollocks from the artist’s widow, Lee Krasner, in 1968, carting them home in two trucks.

Yet, as Ifar pointed out, Pollock produced about 1100 artworks over his lifetime. “The suggestion that Lee Krasner would have sold over 700 Pollocks, more than half of his known output, wholesale for cash, simply defies belief,” they wrote.

After buying his partner out, Mr Brennerman’s character ­became ever more fantastical. As Ifar discovered, whoever was writing the letters decided that he should descend into madness, maybe in order to explain why his great collection was never made public.

“Later letters are filled with ­delusional rants regarding aliens and his plans for world domination,” an Ifar report reads.

“In one letter to (his servant) Ethel Ramsey dated June 7, 1970, Brennerman describes how he expects to be ‘transported to another planet over which I will rule. I am destined to become a god’ .”

Mr Brennerman’s character eventually died and left the collection to Ethel and her husband Bert. The strip club owner said he bought two Pollocks from them.

Ifar investigated the life and death of James Brennerman, along with all his associates. There is no record of any of them.

When it came to the paintings, Ifar found that acrylics had been used, and they only entered artists’ palettes in the 1980s, while Pollock died in 1956.

“We hope to stop this insidious scam from proceeding further,” Ifar said. “The sheer number of potential works involved, and the certain knowledge that more fakes from the ‘Brennerman Collection’ will continue to dupe the unwary, impels us to speak out.”

Ifar’s executive director Sharon Flescher believes the con is unfolding on the east coast of America and the mountain states among a network of low-grade dealers looking for “modest” but inexpert collectors.

It could, however, widen to Europe, she warned.

Art Recovery International chief executive Chris Marinello has warned that scams like Brennerman are rife.

The Times