What should an auction house do if they refuse to accept fake artworks after auctioning them? The appraiser uses a high-definition microscope to decipher the mystery of "real and fake pumpkins". Photo | Kusama | True and False
"300000 yuan per time, 300000 yuan twice, 300000 yuan three times, deal!" With the auction host's hammer down, Mr. Qi finally won his beloved work - a pumpkin print created by Yasushi Kusama.
Mr. Qi is usually fond of collecting the works of modern and contemporary artists, especially the works of Yayoshi Kusama. Many years ago, Mr. Qi heard from a friend that an auction house in Shanghai was about to hold an auction event. Among the items in the auction was a pumpkin print created by Yayoshi Kusama in the 1980s, which also included his autograph. He personally rushed to the auction site and first took a few photos of the artwork. Later, he bought it on the spot for 300000 yuan.
Later, Mr. Qi established contact with the studio of Yayoshi Kusama through a friend and informed the studio of his photo of Yayoshi Kusama's pumpkin print. However, the other party's response was like a bolt from the blue: the print in Mr. Qi's hand was not genuine.
Spending 300000 yuan to exchange for counterfeit goods? Mr. Qi was furious and sued the auction house, requesting a judgment to refund the auction price and compensation of 10 times the transaction amount. During the trial, Mr. Qi presented photos of his pumpkin prints taken at the auction site in an attempt to prove the consistency between the actual prints and the prints in the photos. The auction house recognized the authenticity of the photos and the authenticity of the physical prints determined by Kusama Yasushi Studio, but believed that relying solely on photos could not prove the identity of the two and could not prove that Mr. Qi's artwork was auctioned from the auction house.
The court believes that there are two controversial points in this case: first, whether Mr. Qi's Kusama Yayoshi pumpkin print in his hand is genuine; The second question is whether the printmaking in Mr. Qi's hand is the same as the one in the photo taken by Mr. Qi's phone. In order to clarify these two issues, the court sent the actual pumpkin print and the mobile phone containing the print photos to the Judicial Appraisal Science Research Institute, and filed an application for object identification.
Lu Qimeng, who is in charge of this case, is an assistant researcher at the Audiovisual and Electronic Data Appraisal Research Office of the Sijian Academy. In her more than ten years of work, she has completed over 3000 cases of audiovisual and electronic data appraisal.
"Compared to traditional disciplines such as document inspection and appraisal, judicial appraisal targeting sound, image, and electronic data has only begun to develop in the past decade, but has rapidly become an indispensable key evidence in various civil, criminal, and administrative cases." Lu Qimeng said in a recent interview with a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily".
Lu Qimeng first used a microscope to observe and analyze the images of physical prints. This print is about 64 centimeters high and 54 centimeters wide, with white space around the paper. The main body of the picture is composed of red serrations, yellow background, black dots, and irregular network lines of yellow on a black background. Through microscopic observation, Lu Qimeng found splashing ink dots around the white space and at the junction of different colors in the main body of the picture. For example, at the junction of a yellow pumpkin and a black background, black and yellow ink dots splashed into each other's respective areas. Due to the small size of these ink dots, they could not be detected by the naked eye.
"Printmaking is a form of painting that uses cutting tools or chemicals to carve or etch images onto materials such as woodblocks and stone tablets, and then rubs the images onto paper like a seal. This technique does not leave ink dots spreading outward on the paper, while modern inkjet printers can easily leave similar marks." Lu Qimeng said that this discovery can basically rule out the possibility that physical paintings that have been appraised were created using printmaking techniques.
It seems that a decisive basis has been found, but Lu Qimeng immediately encountered another problem - the blank space of this painting is written with the handwritten signature of Yasushi Kusama. According to Yasushi Kusama's studio, after creating and publishing this print, Yasushi Kusama did indeed sign his name with a pencil on each print. Can this signature wash away the suspicion of counterfeit identification of the subject?
After careful observation, Lu Qimeng found tiny carbon particles attached to the signature of the printmaking. When writing with a pencil, due to the friction of the paper and the impact of writing force, the pencil will leave carbon particles on the paper. This discovery also indicates that the signature on the printmaking was indeed written separately with a pencil after the work was formed. However, under the pencil carbon particles, Lu Qimeng also found very light gray ink dots.
"The signature is located in the blank space below the printmaking, where there is no visual content. In theory, there should not be any ink dots. This signature position has a very shallow continuous ink dot in the shape of the signature, covered with pencil marks, indicating that the signature was pre printed in very light black and then drawn with a pencil." Lu Qimeng said.
Based on the above findings, Lu Qimeng believes that Mr. Qi's physical printmaking should be made by inkjet printing, with pencil handwriting formed by description, which is different from the auction house's claim of "printmaking signed by the painter himself.".
The pumpkin print has been identified as genuine, so is this counterfeit artwork the same as the auction artwork taken by Mr. Qi's phone?
"We enlarged and compared the signatures in the photo with important local locations such as pencil signatures and pumpkin stems on the physical object. We found that the overall content and layout were consistent, and there was a good match in the corresponding color block shape, proportion, handwritten handwriting stroke shape, mutual relationship and other detailed features. At the same time, we found that the two also had a good match in the ink color, weight, attachment position and shape formed by pencil writing in the handwritten handwriting, so it can be concluded that the photo was taken from that object." Lu Qimeng said.
Finally, the Sijian Yuan determined that all of Mr. Qi's physical pumpkin prints were printed by an inkjet printer, and the photos were taken from the actual object. The pumpkin prints that Mr. Qi bought at the auction were indeed fake, and the mystery of "real and fake pumpkins" was finally solved.
