(May 25, 2018)

Barenaked Ladies musician who claims he was sold fake Morrisseau painting loses lawsuit.  

The judge was unable to determine whether the painting Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, bought in 2005 by Barenaked Ladies musician Kevin Hearn, is a true Morrisseau. Claims of an art-fraud ring selling fakes attributed to legendary Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau have long tarnished his legacy and deflated the value of his work, and the art world was looking to an Ontario court case to finally settle things.  But in a ruling issued Thursday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan declared he is unable to determine whether the painting Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, bought in 2005 by Barenaked Ladies musician Kevin Hearn, is a true Morrisseau.

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(April 18, 2018)  

Picture-perfect forgery?

Art world awaits court decision on alleged fake Norval Morrisseau painting.  Since the early 2000s, persistent allegations of a fraud ring peddling fake Norval Morrisseaus have cast suspicion on countless paintings hanging in public galleries and in private collections.

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(November 19, 2016)  

The Van Gogh sketchbook dispute: Why it's so hard to verify art

A dispute this week over whether drawings in a recently found sketchbook were really by Vincent Van Gogh underlines the emotionally charged and often uncertain nature of art authentication, say some experts.  

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(February 3, 2014)  

Barenaked Ladies’ keyboardist suing in what may be the biggest art forgery case in Canadian history.  

If true, the allegations by Barenaked Ladies’ keyboardist Kevin Hearn and tenor John McDermott could well signal one of the largest cases of art fraud in Canadian history.  According to a lingering — but never proven — accusation in the Canadian art world, there is a well-organized band of forgers in Thunder Bay, Ont., who have spent more than a decade churning out a lucrative supply of fakes in the style of Norval Morrisseau, arguably Canada’s most famous Aboriginal artist.  If true, it could well signal one of the largest cases of art fraud in Canadian history.

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(February 7, 2006)  

Morrisseau has defeated the demons.  

The press conference for Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist, at the National Gallery of Canada last week, was one of those surreal affairs that sometimes transpire in the art world, moments where the spectacle of the museum, the artist and the public is almost as fascinating as the art on display.

 

There, seated in front of his huge, vividly colourful work Androgyny, the artist sat slumped in his wheelchair. His body, at 73, has absorbed a lot of punishment; the horrors of sexual abuse during his residential-school years in Port Arthur, Ont. (now part of Thunder Bay), the ravages of an enduring alcoholism that drove him to live for a while on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the late 1980s, and the final indignities of Parkinson's disease, which has left his facial features limp and hanging. Talking is no longer really an option.

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At his feet, a swarm of photographers crouched to get their shots of the famed Anishinabe artist. Some lay sprawled at his feet, propped on their elbows the better to wield their heavy lenses. They were pulling out all the stops, going for the most dramatic view of the artist's weather-beaten, crumbling frame, a figure that many might see as embodying the tragic, broken figure of the Indian in contemporary society. These pictures would be worth a lot. It made you want to look away.

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In truth, behind the mask of his Parkinsonism, Morrisseau was having a great moment, long awaited and fully savoured, at least according to his adoptive daughter-in-law, Michele Vadas. When her husband, Gabe, stepped in after a few minutes to ask Morrisseau if he had had enough, he indicated that he had not.

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(April 23, 2005)  

Paint Brawl.  

The voice over the telephone line is no more than a slurred mumble. But the thoughts behind the words seem clear, and occasionally the words themselves spill forth in an articulate flow.

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"The only thing I think about is to paint. I just want to paint. There are things in my head that I'd like to get out, but right now it can't happen."

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The words are those of Norval Morrisseau, at 73 perhaps the most famous first nations painter in Canada, the man whose revolutionary, colour-packed synthesis of native mythology and personal expression pushed him into the mainstream of Canadian art and gave birth to an entire generation of painters emboldened by his themes and bravura brushwork.

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Next February, the National Gallery will unveil a three-month retrospective of 60 Morrisseau works. While the National has previously included Morrisseau in some group shows, and holds three of his acrylics in its permanent collection (compared to the 100 paintings and drawings by Lawren Harris), the 2006 exhibit will mark the first time a first nations artist (as opposed to an Inuit) has been given a solo showcase in the National's 126-year history. The long delay has been a reflection of "the historical ambivalence toward native art at the gallery," says curator Greg Hill.

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It's an ambivalence he hopes his exhibition will transcend by showing Morrisseau as a "prominent figure within the art history of this country as a whole."

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Yet the Ojibwa artist and self-described shaman-trickster hasn't produced any new, commercially viable art in more than three years. He's living far from the Northern Ontario wilderness that originally inspired his art, in an extended care facility in Nanaimo, B.C., which has been his home since 1999. Severe Parkinson's disease and a stroke resulting, in part, from years of debilitating alcohol and drug abuse, as well as double knee-replacement surgery, have brought Morrisseau's vaunted productivity -- estimated by some to total more than 9,000 paintings -- to a halt, while confining his slumped body to a wheelchair. With no new art likely to enter the market between now and his death, whatever works out there now with a Morrisseau signature are all the more valuable.

 

But how many of them are real Morrisseaus? A fierce brawl has broken out in part over just that question, with charges related to forgeries, market manipulation and issues of authentication being hurled back and forth across the country. Morrisseau claims forgeries of his work have been "a problem for a long time." But it's in the last three years that disputes over what is or is not a Morrisseau have become especially intense -- so much so that a Toronto auctioneer who once sold Morrisseaus recently warned that the wariness those disputes are sowing "could kill the entire market."

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