Is Most Art Up For Auction Really Fake?
As the art season opens in earnest with the Frieze London fair, there comes a startling new claim from a Swiss art-research lab which claims that more than 70 percent of the works it checks out turn out to be either fakes, forgeries, or misattributions. (“Antiques Roadshow” has a higher percentage of authenticity!) But Yann Walther, executive director of the Fine Arts Institute in Geneva, says that the headline-grabbing claims should be treated with caution. “People who come to us often already have a question about the authenticity of the work,†he said. “So this does not mean that on the market, 70 to 90 percent of work is fake.â€
