Director and filmmaker Daria Price takes viewers through an art forgery case that exposed one of the oldest galleries in the United States. The new documentary Driven to Abstraction follows the $80 million forgery scandal that would end up shuttering the previously venerable Knoedler gallery in New York City. The nightmare started when a wealthy art collector tried to sell a painting he’d purchased from Knoedler art gallery. He had paid $17 million for a Jackson Pollack painting, which later was discovered to feature paint that hadn’t existed during his lifetime. Furious, the purchaser demanded his money back and pretty soon all eyes were on the gallery’s art director. It soon became clear that there were far more people who had been swindled over a period of about fifteen years with fake paintings that were previously attributed to deceased Abstract artists. Did the gallery director know they were fake and continued to play the game, or was she ignorant of a multitude of red flags that clearly showed something was wrong?
Daria Price does an incredible job of walking viewers who may have no experience with the art world into the emotions and minutiae of why this crime was such a big deal. What comes across very clearly is the fact that the unregulated art world is super risky. The way the Knoedler gallery and their director did business was full of red flags, but the greedy desire to get so much for so little rings true of many industries. The documentary is filled with interviews from people who not only know the art world backwards and forwards, but clearly sat in on the trial. This case has everything from a supposed secret collector in Switzerland, a Chinese painter in Queens, and a a gallery director that chose her words very carefully on documents.
Driven to Abstraction is a fascinating investigation of an art crime that feels like something right out of a major movie.
Driven to Abstraction is available August 28, 2020 in virtual cinemas.
