The Biggest Art Fraud Ring in History

(Ep. 1031 - Monday, September 30, 2024)

 

The late Norval Morrisseau is known as Canada's Picasso. He was the father of the Woodlands style. His work was exhibited at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada, and he was a member of the Order of Canada. Morrisseau is without question one of the most important painters in Canadian history. So why are so-called original Morrisseau paintings selling on eBay for $129? 

 

The answer is fraud. The market has been flooded with thousands of fake Morrisseau paintings and prints. In March 2023, eight people were charged and arrested in connection with these fakes and are now starting to be convicted. The police investigation started, in part, because of the Jamie Kastner documentary There Are No Fakes.

 

Credits: Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Kevin O’Keefe (Fact Checking), max collins (Production Manager), Jesse Brown (Host and Publisher)

 

Featured guests: Ryan McMahon and Jamie Kastner

 

Additional music by Audio Network

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LISTEN HERE

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ALSO AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY HERE

Comment les faussaires on tué l'art de Norval Morrisseau

(24 Août, 2024)

 

Journaliste Ismaël Houdassine explique comment les faussaires ont tué l'art de Norval Morrisseau. Avec Isabelle Craig de Radio-Canada.

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LIEN

Opinion: The Morrisseau forgeries herald a different kind of AI — Artificially Indigenous

It’s a tragedy that the work of Norval Morrisseau, “the Picasso of the North,” was corrupted, colonized, and subjugated

(September 16, 2024)

 

By Drew Hayden Taylor

 

Of course, there are many ways to confirm authenticity. There are organizations whose purpose is to perform such tasks, such as Morrisseau Art Consulting. Its website promises in large text: “Authenticity Determined.” 

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"We are committed to identifying authentic and fraudulent Norval Morrisseau artworks," it says, "and to being a key part of the solution to fakes."

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Read the full OP/Ed

How Scott Dove helped break the Norval Morrisseau Art fraud

September 6, 2024

 

During the Norval Morrisseau Art Fraud investigation, 1984 murder victim Scott Dove proved he was still relevant and was alway on the minds of those combatting the fraud. In this excerpt of The Decibel podcast "How an unsolved murder uncovered the world's largest art fraud,"  Globe & Mail Journalist Kristy Kirkup points out the vital importance Scott Dove played in exposing the Norval Morrisseau Art Fraud participants to justice.

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How an unsolved murder uncovered the world’s largest art fraud

September 6, 2024

 

Police say that it’s the biggest art fraud in world history—and it happened here in Canada. It centres around the art of the renowned Anishinaabe painter Norval Morrisseau, and there are potentially thousands of fakes out there, including in prominent institutions across Canada.

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The Globe’s Parliamentary reporter Kristy Kirkup tells us the details of this $100 million dollar fraud, how a homicide case blew it open, and the impact it’s had on the legacy of this trailblazing Indigenous artist.

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Listen to the Podcast at the Globe & Mail or here on Apple Podcasts

How an unsolved murder landed a homicide detective in the middle of the world’s biggest art-fraud case

Thunder Bay detective Jason Rybak helped crack the Morrisseau case and now makes the argument for a specialized art crime unit

August 22, 2024

 

By Kristy Kirkup

 

Homicide investigator Jason Rybak was digging into an unsolved murder in Thunder Bay five years ago when he was contacted by the deceased teenager’s mother about a documentary that included her son’s case.

 

That phone call and a series of improbable plot twists that followed led the Thunder Bay Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police to charge eight people in March, 2023, in what the investigators call the world’s biggest art fraud.

 

Their joint 2½-year probe focused on fraudulent paintings attributed to acclaimed Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, also known as Copper Thunderbird, from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in Ontario.

 

The complex tale behind the fake art and the elaborate cast of characters in the story seem like something out of Hollywood.

 

The connection between the fraud and the homicide case, detailed in the documentary, hinges on a man named Gary Lamont.

 

Lamont, a long-time Thunder Bay resident, was previously convicted for sex crimes. The film detailed how he was a suspect in the teen’s death but has never been charged in connection to the homicide. It also included allegations that Lamont was involved in the faking of art attributed to Morrisseau.

 

Last December, Lamont pleaded guilty to his role in the art fraud and he was sentenced to five years. Another guilty plea for fraud was entered in early June by a man named David Voss, who Rybak calls an “architect” of the scheme. Trials for three of the others charged are expected to begin early next year, while two had their charges dropped by the Crown.

 

Morrisseau’s authentic work, featuring vibrant colours and representations of Ojibwa stories and legends, is lauded in the art world and many around the globe perceive him as a force in the realm of Indigenous art. First Nations leaders say it has been instrumental in helping to explain their history.

 

But the late artist’s legacy has been tarnished by thousands of fakes – between 4,500 and 6,000, according to police estimates – attributed to him.

 

People who have been immersed in exposing the Morrisseau forgeries believe the magnitude of the case – and the length of time it was able to persist – underscore the rationale for having a dedicated team of investigators to tackle this kind of work in Canada. But no such unit exists here, unlike other countries. The U.S., for instance, has a multiperson team to handle art crime.

 

So far, Canada has not expressed interest in this idea. The federal Department of Canadian Heritage declined to comment on calls for the creation of such a unit and directed questions to the RCMP. The Mounties say there is no consideration within the national police force to set up an art-fraud investigation team.

 

Two weeks after speaking to the dead teen’s mother about the documentary in 2019, Rybak called the FBI. He says the Thunder Bay Police knew there wasn’t a specialized art-crime unit within the RCMP and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. was “the best in the world” at this kind of work.

 

Art crime may seem largely like a victimless offence that often centres on wealthy art lovers getting ripped off. But experts say it is about much more than that – including connections to organized crime.

 

Since its inception in 2004, the FBI’s art-crime team has recovered more than 20,000 items valued at more than US$900-million. Agents get specialized training and work in co-operation with law enforcement officials.

 

Rybak’s outreach to the FBI began with a very basic question: How do we investigate art fraud?

 

Rybak, a 49-year-old detective sergeant and married father of two, grew up in Thunder Bay. He became a police officer in Toronto and then in London, Ont., before returning to his hometown to join the Thunder Bay Police Service around the time he was looking to start a family.

 

His work there has taken many different turns. He was part of a rescue that resulted in a medal of bravery in 2014 from then-governor-general David Johnston. When you ask Rybak about that, he modestly says the officers were “focused on the task at hand and what we had to get done.”

 

In May, 2010, police got a call about a vehicle that had plunged into Lake Superior, jumping a barrier and going into the frigid water. A woman in her 60s had a medical event and lost consciousness in her car, with her foot jamming the accelerator. The water rescue that followed – involving Rybak and four other officers – is something he describes as the pinnacle of teamwork.

 

And then there was the time he came to investigate the massive art fraud involving fraudulent paintings attributed to Morrisseau.

 

Rybak says he treated that case like he would any other another criminal investigation. In basic terms, he says that means following the information – a process he likens to putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.

 

But he would be the first person to tell you he isn’t an art expert equipped with specialized training. The same would be true of most police officers across Canada.

 

When he watched the documentary Dolly Dove, the mother of the deceased teenager, had called him about, Rybak thought it might contain new information that could advance the investigation into the killing of her son, Scott.

 

Scott was last seen leaving for school on Halloween in 1984. That December, the 17-year-old’s body was found at the side of a road near a rock quarry by a couple out walking their dog. Rybak says the nature of Scott’s injuries led police to conclude it was murder.

 

Instead of learning more about Scott’s death, which is still considered an open and active investigation by Thunder Bay Police 40 years later, watching the documentary set off a series of developments that Rybak could have never predicted.

 

He says police interviewed everyone featured in the film about the Morrisseau art-fraud allegations. Officers also obtained a search warrant for Lamont’s Thunder Bay home in September, 2019.

 

There, they found art.

 

During the 2019 call with Dolly, Rybak says she told him a man named Kevin Hearn contacted her to tell her that Scott’s case was included in a documentary about Norval Morrisseau rip-offs, There Are No Fakes.

 

At the time, Rybak did not know who Hearn was. It turns out he’s a musician who the officer now considers a hero for helping to expose the Morrisseau art fraud.

 

Hearn is best known for being a member of the Barenaked Ladies – a band that has sold more than 15 million albums, won multiple Juno Awards and been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

 

Hearn is also an art collector who, in 2005, purchased a painting called Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, attributed to Morrisseau. He bought it at the Maslak McLeod Gallery in Toronto, owned by Joseph McLeod.

 

In 2012, Hearn sued the gallery and cited in court documents that he believed the painting was a “fake or forgery.” A statement of defence filed by McLeod’s lawyer Brian Shiller said his client was not in the business of selling fake works. The trial judge dismissed Hearn’s allegations.

 

McLeod was ultimately found liable for fraud in September, 2019, by the Ontario Court of Appeal and Hearn was awarded more than $60,000 in the legal battle over the artwork.

 

This June, Voss’s agreed statement of facts included admission that Spirit Energy of Mother Earth was an inauthentic painting.

 

Hearn was a propelling force behind There Are No Fakes – the backstory on the purchase of Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, and aspects of the court battle, were featured in it. He says he pitched the idea to Jamie Kastner, a filmmaker with whom he went to high school, over a 2017 lunch.

 

The documentary aired on TVO in 2020.

 

Hearn says he decided to reach out to Dove prior to a screening of the documentary in Thunder Bay after he learned through a local business owner that Scott’s parents had bought tickets to see it.

 

He says that during their conversation, she “expressed gratitude that Scott’s story was being kept alive.”

 

A day or two after speaking with Dove, Hearn says he was sitting backstage at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis., and had just finished a soundcheck when the phone rang. It was Rybak, who wanted to see the documentary immediately.

 

Soon after, Hearn says, Lamont’s house was raided and “a full-scale police investigation into the art fraud” began – something he calls a milestone moment.

 

“It felt like finally the tides were turning.”

 

In his legal battle against McLeod, Hearn was represented by Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer specializing in art fraud who has also been deeply entrenched in exposing the Morrisseau fakes.

 

Around 2011, Sommer says he started to reach out to police from forces in Ontario about his concerns – including the Thunder Bay Police Service and the OPP. He says he also contacted the RCMP. But for years, police at every level “resisted any kind” of discussion about it and it was essentially a “no-go subject” until Rybak came along and was willing to listen.

 

Sommer co-runs Morrisseau Art Consulting, which investigates artwork attributed to the acclaimed artist. He works with researcher John Zemanovich, an artist, collector and former gallery owner who provided information to Sommer’s law firm in the case of Hearn vs. McLeod.

 

Sommer says the fraud lasted years longer than it should have, got “vastly bigger” and caused much more damage because Canada did not have a dedicated art-crime division to investigate long-held concerns about fraudulent works attributed to Morrisseau.

 

He believes there could be a division of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to act as a co-ordinating agency to help police forces, rather than having an investigative unit exist within a specific force.

 

Hearn feels his involvement with the Morrisseau case makes it hard to deny the need for a federal art-fraud team.

 

Art crime is a global issue, Rybak notes, adding municipal polices forces do not have the ability to travel around the world to conduct investigations. He says, for example, that police know of hundreds of suspected fraudulent Morrisseau paintings in far-off locations, such as Germany and China.

 

The FBI has dedicated resources and funding to do its work, he says.

 

“In Canada, we have to have that same approach.”

 

For now, Rybak keeps a biography about Morrisseau on his desk in Thunder Bay. It is a reminder of the unexpected road that led him to becoming one of the key investigators on the biggest art fraud in the world while trying to solve how a teenager was killed in the Northwestern Ontario city decades prior.

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Read the original story here

​La Police Provinciale de l'Ontario (O.P.P) a maintenant fourni une transcription vidéo en français et des sous-titres pour les francophones de sa conférence de presse annonçant les accusations dans l'affaire de fraude artistique Norval Morrisseau.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qaRdNuV-K8

L’avocat Jonathan Sommer parle de la lutte contre les contrefaçons des œuvres du célèbre peintre ojibwé Norval Morrisseau

(10 Juillet, 2024)

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Le problème des copies frauduleuses d’œuvres d’art autochtones n’est pas nouveau. L’artiste autochtone le plus célèbre du Canada, le peintre ojibwé Norval Morrisseau, est également l’une des victimes les plus importantes de la fraude artistique.

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L’avocat Jonathan Sommer a œuvré pendant plus de dix ans pour réparer les torts que cette fraude a causés.

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Watch the interview here (French)​

Un faux Morrisseau à Winnipeg

(July 8, 2024)

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MAC CEO Jonathan Sommer appears in this French media story about the Winnipeg Art Gallery's fake Norval Morrisseau artwork.

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Full Story here

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Jonathan Sommer clip here

ART FRAUD INVESTIGATION REVEALS FAKE NORVAL MORRISSEAU PAINTING WAS ON DISPLAY AT WINNIPEG GALLERY

(June 26, 2024)

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With files from Rosanna Hempel and Issa Kixen

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A case investigators have called Canada's largest art fraud investigation has revealed one of thousands of paintings falsely attributed to renowned Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau was once on display in Winnipeg's biggest art gallery.

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The fake artwork, called Astral Plain Scouts, was donated to the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq in 2000 by a private collector who got it from a gallery in Thunder Bay, Ont., said Stephen Borys, the Winnipeg gallery's director and CEO. 

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The piece was last shown at the gallery in 2013 and is now in storage, after police notified the gallery on Friday it was confirmed to be a fraud following a years-long investigation.

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"It's extraordinary that the work that was in question here … was certified by the Canadian Cultural Export Property Review Board. It was certified by all appraisers," Borys said. "And yet today, as we look at it, we realize it is part of a larger body of works that are fraudulent."

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Morrisseau, who died in 2007 at age 75, was a renowned artist from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He's known as the founder of the Woodland school of art, and his work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada.

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Earlier this month, the man behind a scheme to create fraudulent Morrisseau pieces pleaded guilty in an Ontario court to his role operating a fraud ring out of Thunder Bay between 1996 and 2019.

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David Voss oversaw the creation of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court. He was among eight people charged with a total of 40 offences last year, following an investigation into the fake paintings.

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Jason Rybak, a detective staff sergeant with the Thunder Bay Police Service who worked on the investigation since it began in 2019, described Voss as "the architect of the whole scheme." 

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Rybak said investigators on the case were quickly drawn to Astral Plain Scouts — one of the 11 paintings attributed to Morrisseau in the Winnipeg gallery's collection — in part because of a black dry brush signature on its back, which was a feature found on other fraudulent Morrisseau works.

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Investigators also later determined Voss used a "paint-by-numbers" process that involved drawing an outline in pencil, then marking the areas to be coloured in with letter codes corresponding to different colours — a process outlined in the statement of facts read in court.

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Police were ultimately able to confirm the paintings from Voss's operation were fakes through infrared reflectography, Rybak said, which showed the markings underneath the paint.

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He said while police have gotten their hands on many of the roughly 1,700 fake Morrisseau paintings Voss was responsible for, they aren't in a position to seize them all.

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That's in part because they aren't concerned that owners like WAG-Qaumajuq — which said it offered to turn over the painting — will sell the piece, and because police would have trouble trying to store that many artworks.

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Galleries should be more proactive: lawyer

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Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer specializing in art fraud and the CEO of Morrisseau Art Consulting Inc., which examines work attributed to the artist, said it's "kind of incredible" the fraud that involved the piece at the Winnipeg gallery got to be as big as it did.

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It should also be a lesson for museums and galleries to actively police the authenticity of the works in major collections, he said.

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"They can do that in terms of having provisions and agreements with donors. They can do that in terms of upping the amount of effort they make to authenticate artworks that are donated or that they acquire, or even ones that have been sitting in their collections for a long time," Sommer told host Faith Fundal on CBC Manitoba's Up to Speed.

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"I think this almost has to be an ongoing process that is just part of the acquisition and the collections procedure."

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Sommer said he thinks there are still thousands of fake Morrisseau pieces out there, between fraudulent paintings and unauthorized prints of the artist's work.

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WAG-Qaumajuq director Borys said the art gallery will learn from the incident as it does from every acquisition, and that it plans to continue to co-operate with any further investigation into fraudulent Morrisseau works.

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"We do this not just to honour the family and the descendants, but also to contribute to the overall research in Canadian art history at this moment with Indigenous art," Borys said, adding no concerns have been raised about the gallery's other Morrisseau works.

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"There are many, many victims here, beginning with the artist — the artist's legacy, his family, the fact that fraudulent activities were going on during his lifetime. This is nothing new. And there are the victims … who collected, supported, exhibited, sold what they thought were rightful works."

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READ THE STORY HERE (LINK)

INTERVIEW WITH MAC CEO JONATHAN SOMMER ABOUT THE FAKE NORVAL MORRISSEAU PAINTING AT THE WINNIPEG ART GALLERY

(June 25, 2024)

 

​Up to Speed host Faith Fundal interviews Morrisseau Art Consulting CEO Jonathan Sommer after the discovery of a fake Norval Morrisseau artwork at the Winnipeg Art Gallery was made public.

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LISTEN HERE (LINK)

PUBLIC STATEMENT ON NORVAL MORRISSEAU FAKES

(June 24, 2024)

 

We suggest that it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that the police have resolved all Norval Morrisseau fraud issues, or that the works identified as fakes thus far, by convicted fraudsters Gary Lamont and David Voss, form an exhaustive list of all the fakes in existence.

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In our view, there are still thousands yet to be revealed.

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For example, in addition to many as-yet-unidentified fakes manufactured from 1996 onward, we are aware of problematic works made before that time, as well as fakes that do not exhibit a telltale black drybrush signature.

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Accordingly, we encourage all collectors and institutions to be proactive in verifying their collections. We are aware of paintings in numerous publicly funded institutions that we believe should be investigated.

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Morrisseau Art Consulting, Inc.

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Massive Norval Morrisseau art fraud hits Winnipeg’s leading gallery WAG-Qaumajuq

(June 24, 2024)

 

Kristy Kirkup

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The Winnipeg Art Gallery and Qaumajuq says it is keeping a fake painting attributed to First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau in a vault and it is planning next steps for the piece.

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WAG-Qaumajuq director and chief executive officer Stephen Borys said police reached out to the gallery on Friday about a guilty plea made by fraudster David Voss earlier this month.

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In an agreed statement of facts, Voss indicated one of the gallery’s paintings, called Astral Plain Scouts, came from his forgery operation. A lead investigator in the case, Thunder Bay police Detective Sergeant Jason Rybak, called Voss the “architect of this whole scheme.”

 

The late Morrisseau was an acclaimed artist and residential school survivor whose work continues to be displayed in prominent buildings and institutions. His legacy has been tarnished by fake paintings that make up what police call the “biggest art fraud in world history.”

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Borys said a team at the gallery worked closely with Thunder Bay police for more than three years and it offered to give the painting to investigators but this was “deemed unnecessary.”

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“We will continue to comply with any requests from law enforcement, including handing over the artwork if needed,” he said in a statement. “The gallery has not spoken publicly about this matter because it was an ongoing investigation.”

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Rybak told The Globe and Mail on Monday that the Winnipeg gallery was “extremely co-operative from the onset as were all public institutions” in Canada and the U.S. that officers dealt with. He said police did not seize Astral Plain Scouts because officers knew where it was and storing paintings was a “massive issue.”

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There are no plans to seize the painting, Rybak added.

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Borys said it was acquired through a donation from a private collector in 2000. A collector got the work from a dealer and was unaware of its false provenance, he added. Borys did not provide the name of the collector.

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The gallery is “deeply concerned and disappointed by this art fraud,” he added.

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“Our institution is committed to preserving the integrity of our collection and maintaining the trust of our community,” he said. “We are glad that the police have taken this incident seriously to prevent such occurrences in the future and to uphold the legacy of Norval Morrisseau and other artists.”

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Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer specializing in art fraud who has looked extensively at Morrisseau’s work, said it would be a mistake for anyone to assume police have resolved all of the issues with the fraud or that pieces identified as fakes thus far form an exhaustive list of all the ones that exist.

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Sommer and researcher John Zemanovich run a company, Morrisseau Art Consulting Inc., that investigates and examines work attributed to Morrisseau.

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Earlier this year, Sommer spoke to The Globe regarding concerns about the authenticity of two other paintings that have now been officially deemed in court to be fake.

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One of the paintings, called Salmon Life Giving Spawn, was hanging at the Ontario Legislature. Another one, called Circle of Four, was part of a National Capital Commission collection. Both paintings were included in the Voss agreed statement of facts.

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In January, Salmon Life Giving Spawn was removed from a room at the legislature and seized by police after Globe reporting on the painting. The same month, the NCC publicly announced it was working with police after The Globe identified Circle of Four as a suspected forgery.

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Circle of Four was donated to the NCC’s collection by now-former senator Serge Joyal, who acquired the piece at an auction in the 1990s. Rybak says both Joyal and the government of Canada are victims of the fraud.

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Sommer said there are thousands of fraudulent Morrisseau pieces yet to be revealed.

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“We encourage all collectors and institutions to be pro-active in verifying their collections,” he said. “We are aware of paintings in numerous publicly funded institutions that we believe should be investigated.”

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Read the full story here: LINK

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MASTERMIND OF MASSIVE ART FRAUD KNOCKING OFF NORVAL MORRISSEAU WORKS PLEADS GUILTY

(June 4, 2024)

 

Patrick White / Kristy Kirkup

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At its heart, one of the world’s most audacious art frauds amounted to a paint-by-numbers operation, scarcely more sophisticated than a child’s colouring book.

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Thunder Bay resident David Voss, aged 52, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to his central role in a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting ring that produced upwards of 1,500 works attributed to Norval Morrisseau, the international renowned Ojibwe painter.

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A statement of facts read before Ontario Superior Court in Thunder Bay revealed the broad contours of the forgery ring for the first time since police made eight arrests in the case last March and labelled it the “biggest art fraud in world history” owing to the sheer number of counterfeited pieces involved.

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Crown attorney John Corelli detailed how Mr. Voss sketched out drawings meant to mimic Mr. Morrisseau’s distinctive style and then annotated each section with letters indicating their ideal colour – ‘G’ for green, ‘B’ for blue, ‘LR’ for light red and so on. He would pass the sketches to hired painters to lay on the prescribed colours, before the works were signed with the Cree syllabic autograph Mr. Morrisseau was known for and backdated, usually to the 1970s.

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It was a scheme arranged in an efficient assembly-line manner that netted millions of dollars between 1995 and the mid-2010s.

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In court, Mr. Voss pleaded guilty to one count of forgery, for creating hundreds of fake paintings, and one count of uttering forged documents, relating to the fraudulent documentation he provided to authenticate the forgeries.

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After the proceeding, a lead investigator in the case, Thunder Bay Police Detective Sergeant Jason Rybak, called Mr. Voss the “architect of this whole scheme.”

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Once called Picasso of the North, Mr. Morrisseau died in 2007 having earned a reputation as one of the country’s greatest artists. His work featured X-ray depictions of people and animals outlined in thick black lines, a style that came to be called the Woodland School.

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In the years before his death, Mr. Morrisseau identified dozens of counterfeit works. But buyers who tried to sue galleries for selling them suspect Morrisseaus ran into legal hurdles trying to prove a painting was a definitive fake. One plaintiff, Margaret Hatfield, a retired schoolteacher, bought Wheel of Life for $10,350 in 2005, and sued the seller in 2009. Two courts ruled against her, finding that the painting was a Morrisseau original.

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Mr. Voss now admits it was a fake. Investigators submitted Wheel of Life to digital infrared photography at the Canadian Conservation Institute, which revealed Mr. Voss’s distinctive pencil outlines and letter codes beneath the overlying paint.

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“I’d love to see Margaret’s face as she finds out that everything she argued, and that I argued on her behalf, has been confirmed,” said lawyer Jonathan Sommer, who argued Ms. Hatfield’s case and as well as a similar lawsuit brought by Barenaked Ladies member Kevin Hearn that was the subject of a documentary called There Are No Fakes. For years, Mr. Sommer tried in vain to get police to pursue the counterfeiting ring.

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Police finally heeded those calls in 2020, when the Thunder Bay Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police launched Project Totton.

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Read the full story here: LINK

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COMMENT LES FAUSSAIRES ON TUÉ L'ART DE NORVAL MORRISSEAU Mardi, 7 mai (2024)

 

Plus de 15 ans après la mort de l’artiste, les contrefaçons s’accumulent par milliers.

 

Par/ By: Ismaël Houdassine

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Qualifié de « Picasso du Nord », Norval Morrisseau est aujourd’hui devenu le peintre le plus falsifié au Canada. Plus de 6000 peintures faussement attribuées à l’Anishinaabe seraient en circulation au pays et à l’international, contribuant à dévaluer l’héritage culturel et monétaire d’un artiste autochtone majeur dans le monde de l’art contemporain.

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Depuis plusieurs années, une toile de Norval Morrisseau (1931-2007) trônait fièrement sur l’un des murs de la bibliothèque McLennan à l’Université McGill. Baptisée Shaman Surrounded by Ancestral Spirit Totem (1977), l’œuvre serait en fait un faux. En catastrophe et presque en catimini, l'institution montréalaise a retiré en février la peinture en question, affirmant ouvrir une enquête sur l'authenticité du tableau.

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Cet événement malheureux pourrait être vu comme une simple anecdote s’ajoutant aux autres découvertes de contrefaçons qui secouent occasionnellement le milieu de l’art. Qui n’a pas déjà lu dans les pages d’un journal la découverte exceptionnelle d’un faux Van Gogh ou d’un faux Rembrandt? Mais dans le cas de Norval Morrisseau, la mise au jour d’œuvres falsifiées de l’artiste décédé en 2007 est presque monnaie courante.

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"Ça dure depuis un long moment," souffle au bout du fil Greg Hill, ancien conservateur d’art autochtone au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, à Ottawa. "Pas une période artistique de Morrisseau n’est épargnée. Un faux par-ci, un autre par-là. Quasiment chaque semaine, les médias annoncent avoir repéré une œuvre faussement attribuée à l’artiste."

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Membre de la communauté haudenosaunee des Six Nations de la rivière Grand, en Ontario, Greg Hill a connu Norval Morrisseau vers la fin de sa vie.  "J'ai eu l'occasion de le rencontrer à plusieurs reprises. Il était alors atteint de la maladie de Parkinson, cependant, il était encore capable de communiquer. Il s’inquiétait de l’impact des faussaires sur son héritage artistique."

 

Morrisseau – aussi appelé de son nom chamanique traditionnel Copper Thunderbird (Oiseau-Tonnerre de cuivre) – était en effet au courant que des imitations de ses œuvres étaient vendues comme authentiques sur le marché. Dès 1991, le quotidien Toronto Star relatait que l'artiste se plaignait d'avoir été arnaqué.

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Lisez plus ici/ read more here: LINK/LIEN

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EXAMPLES OF ARTWORKS FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO NORVAL MORRISSEAU

 

These are some of the fake Norval Morrisseau artworks which were seized by police and identified as part of the Gary Lamont fraud ring operating in Thunder Bay, Ontario. All of the paintings featured in this video have been declared as falsely attributed to Norval Morrisseau.

 

If you look at these artworks and don't know why they are fake or cannot recognize the differences between authentic and fake Norval Morrisseau artworks - we can help.

 

Music by Kevin Hearn

"Closing Theme” from the soundtrack to the film "There Are No Fakes" by Jamie Kastner

 

Used with Permission of the artist.

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SEE THE ARTWORKS HERE (LINK)​​​

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The “Multi-Multi-Multi-Million-Dollar” Art Fraud That Shook the World

(April 5, 2024) 

 

Norval Morrisseau was one of the most famous Indigenous artists anywhere. Then the fakes of his works surfaced—and kept coming.

by: Luc Rinaldi

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In the spring of 2005, Norval Morrisseau called a meeting to talk about “the fakes.” Picasso, Dalí, Van Gogh—many great artists have dealt with forgeries. Morrisseau, appointed to the Order of Canada and member of the Indigenous Group of Seven, was no exception. His paintings sold for tens of thousands of dollars, but so did fakes created by former apprentices, strangers, even his own relatives. For years, Morrisseau and Gabe Vadas, his business manager and adopted son, had witnessed dubious paintings pop up in galleries and collections across Canada. In one biography of Morrisseau, A Picasso in the North Country, the Thunder Bay author James R. Stevens wrote about a Manitoulin Island art dealer who brought Morrisseau photos of fifty pieces supposedly painted by the artist. Morrisseau set several aside. “The small pile, I might have had something to do with,” he said. “The rest, I’ve never seen before.” Another time, his friend Bryant Ross told me, Morrisseau was more blunt: “I didn’t paint those fucking things.”

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At first, Vadas tried to educate galleries about the fakes, but few gallerists stopped selling them. So, on the advice of their lawyer, Morrisseau and Vadas invited trusted experts—art historians and independent curators who’d studied and shown his art—to their lawyer’s office in Toronto and asked them to create a definitive catalogue of his oeuvre. They called this group of volunteers the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society. Like the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, which had formed a decade earlier to validate Warhol’s work, the society’s job was to separate Morrisseau’s masterpieces from his imitators’ knock-offs.

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It was a monumental task. Morrisseau had created thousands of works of art: paintings, drawings, carvings, pieces of clothing, furniture. Galleries and collectors sought these works because they were unlike anything they’d seen before. They were characterized by bold black lines and vibrant colours, depicting the birds, bears, and beasts of Ojibwe legends passed down by Morrisseau’s grandfather—imagery that was, at the time, uncommon in contemporary art. Morrisseau made these legends his own, melding traditional motifs with the Catholic iconography imprinted on him in residential school as well as the psychedelic symbols of Eckankar, a form of New Age spirituality he adopted later in life. His works were at once stoic and sexual, depicting Jesus on one canvas and a phallus on the next. He worked with different materials (paint, crayon, and, by some reports, orange juice and blood) on a variety of surfaces (birch bark, fridge doors, pizza boxes). He inspired others—artists who paint in his style are known as the Woodland School—but none rivalled his fame. Though his works could fetch huge sums, he often gifted them to friends or traded them. For reasons both good (his talent) and bad (his public struggles with substance use), he was frequently in the press.

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A year later, in the summer of 2006, Vadas learned that Heffel, a reputable Toronto auction house, was selling a number of Morrisseau paintings. He identified a handful of them as fakes, and Heffel removed them from the auction. When Heffel informed Joseph Otavnik, the owner of two of those paintings—as well as of dozens more on the walls of his home—that it wouldn’t be selling his pieces, Otavnik sued Vadas, claiming that he’d devalued the paintings and prevented him from selling them for as much as $12,000 each. By then, Morrisseau had been living with Parkinson’s disease. In the lawsuit, Otavnik referred to Morrisseau’s diagnosis and made the claim that his history of alcohol use might have contributed to a memory disorder; the artist, Otavnik asserted, therefore couldn’t be trusted to verify his own paintings. (The people who were closest to Morrisseau at the time say he remained mentally sharp.) Otavnik implored the courts to instead trust the judgment of Joseph McLeod, a gallerist who sold Otavnik the paintings and swore they were real. Moreover, earlier in his career, Morrisseau had allegedly allowed his assistants to pass off their work as his own so that they could make more money. In his claim, Otavnik wrote, “Norval doesn’t even care if people are copying his style of painting or even if they are selling fakes.”

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Morrisseau clearly cared. He and Vadas flew to Toronto, where the suit had been filed, to rally support from like-minded gallerists and settle the debate once and for all. But by then, the artist was in his mid-seventies and frail and was using a wheelchair; he’d suffered a stroke ten years earlier and had also had double knee surgery. While in Toronto, he was taken to Toronto General Hospital, where, on December 4, 2007, he died. He never got a chance to tell a judge he hadn’t painted those pieces. Years later, the fight over the fakes still rages.

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STATEMENT BY MORRISSEAU ART CONSULTING CEO JONATHAN SOMMER

(March 23, 2024) 

 

RE: JUNIOR HOCKEY TEAM SAYS IT MADE ERROR IN JUDGMENT WITH JERSEY SIMILAR TO WORK ATTRIBUTED TO MORRISSEAU BELIEVED TO BE FAKE (by Kristy Kirkup, Globe and Mail)

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When contacted by the Globe and Mail for this morning's article regarding the Guelph Storm jerseys, Morrisseau Art Consulting, Inc. issued the following statement on record: 

 

"The paintings from which the jersey logos appear to have been copied are known as Sacred Thunderbird and Sacred Medicine Bear.   Sacred Thunderbird, in particular, has an interesting history.  We are unaware of any provenance for that piece (or Sacred Medicine Bear) prior to the 2000’s,  but it was featured as a giclée print offered in various sizes by White Distribution Ltd., a company owned by James White, who is one of the people recently charged with fraud. When it was so offered, it was accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, signed by Christian Morrisseau, who was one of Norval’s sons.  That certificate was issued by the Morrisseau Family Foundation (the “MFF”), an organization set up with the help of Joseph McLeod, the art dealer who was found liable for fraud in relation to Morrisseau’s work. 

 

The MFF’s members also include several of Norval’s other children.  Those children, who are also now members of what is known as the Morrisseau Estate, have been long-time supporters of, and collaborators with, both White and McLeod.  In other words, Sacred Thunderbird’s history is strongly connected to the long-time business relationship between Norval’s children, who are now part of “the estate," and two art dealers, one of whom has been found by the court to be a fraud, and the other of whom is currently facing several criminal charges in relation to the Morrisseau fraud.

 

Norval Morrisseau’s children’s involvement in the promotion and authentication of fake Morrisseau paintings is not new. 

 

For example, the painting Shaman with Bird Artist, which was admitted to be a fake by fraudster Gary Lamont in his guilty plea, was authenticated by David Morrisseau and offered for sale in the 2008 Art Cube Gallery (Toronto) “Morrisseau Family” exhibition put on by Norval’s sons David Morrisseau, Eugene Morrisseau and Christian Morrisseau, all of whom are members of the MFF and of the current “Morrisseau Estate."  Remarkably, another painting that was offered for sale at that same Art Cube Gallery exhibition was a painting titled Great Thunderbird – which is actually the same painting that is now known in print form as Sacred Thunderbird.

 

Interestingly, Sacred Medicine Bear, which was dated 1974, was the subject of the art fraud charges against Gary Lamont, the Thunder Bay drug dealer and convicted rapist who ran part of the Morrisseau fakes production ring. When he pled guilty recently, he specifically identified Sacred Medicine Bear as a painting that his fraud ring produced, a fact with which the Crown agreed.

 

It is our view that both Sacred Thunderbird and Sacred Medicine Bear have various characteristics that are consistent with the works implicated by the police in Project Totton, and which are inconsistent with Morrisseau’s known authentic works.  Accordingly, we strongly urge that Sacred Thunderbird be examined for its authenticity to be determined."

 

Jonathan Sommer

Chief Executive Officer

Morrisseau Art Consulting Inc.

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DOWNLOAD THE STATEMENT WITH EXHIBITS

Junior hockey team says it made error in judgement with jersey similar to work attributed to Morrisseau believed to be fake

(March 23, 2024) 

 

An Ontario junior hockey team says it made “an error in judgment” in its use of artwork for a charity jersey that caught the attention of the estate of acclaimed Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

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In February, the Guelph Storm unveiled what it called the “Anishnabeg Outreach Jersey” and said the special logo was conceptualized and designed by Stephen Jackson, the CEO of Anishnabeg Outreach. The organization, based in Kitchener, Ont., bills itself as a hub for Indigenous culture and prosperity.

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“Renowned for his talent in crafting woodland-style artwork, the graphic featured on this jersey is a reproduction of one of his captivating acrylic painting pieces,” the team’s website said, adding that the image is of an eagle that brings the lesson of love, one of the Seven Grandfather Teachings.

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Morrisseau originated a pictographic style that came to be known as the Woodland School.

The jerseys were to be auctioned off in late February, with the proceeds going to Anishnabeg Outreach.

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The team worked on a similar charity jersey with Jackson in 2023 that featured an image of a bear.

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Matt Newby, the team’s vice-president of business operations, said that in each case the jerseys were worn for a single home game.

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But the eagle and bear logos came under fire online and caught the eye of Cory Dingle, the head of Morrisseau’s estate. He contacted the team, and they issued a joint statement saying they were both “aware of the concerns regarding the jerseys.”

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Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art fraud, said the image on the 2024 Guelph Storm jersey has elements that could make it a “near reproduction” of a work known as Sacred Thunderbird. He also said the 2023 jersey logo is similar to another piece called Sacred Medicine Bear.

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Sommer co-runs a company with researcher John Zemanovich called Morrisseau Art Consulting Inc., which investigates and examines works attributed to Morrisseau. He said he had no doubt the team intended to use the images as a tribute but inadvertently ended up perpetuating a “grave injustice” against the late artist.

LINK