WHATEVER I EXPECTED, Simon had no intention of letting the matter drop. Within days, he telephoned again, and over the next few months he told me in greater detail how he had come to submit his ‘Dollar Bill’ piece and his Red Self-Portrait to the Authentication Board. Much of that story hinges on the role played by Warhol’s former studio assistant, Vincent Fremont. As soon as I heard his name, I realised I knew him. We had met in the late 1990s, at the suggestion of Anthony d’Offay, the most important London dealer in contemporary art at the time, to discuss an exhibition proposal for a show of Andy Warhol’s portraits from the 1970s. In the end, nothing came of the exhibition, but I remembered Fremont as a pleasant man of about my age, dressed like a classy accountant in a designer suit and spectacles.
Simon had good reason to seek advice from Fremont, who was chief salesman and licensing agent for thousands of paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures bequeathed by Warhol to the Andy Warhol Foundation. When they had spoken on the telephone, exchanged emails, or had face-to-face meetings, Fremont could not have been more helpful. He recommended Simon submit his Red Self-Portrait to the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. Once the picture had been approved, he explained, a high-resolution photograph would be taken so that the painting could be included in the board’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné. Simon should be sure to include the picture’s full provenance with the submission.
Although Fremont had by now seen thousands of prints and paintings by Warhol, he was not working at the Factory during the summer of 1965 when Warhol made the Red Self-Portrait. Together with Simon, he went over every detail of the painting and its history. Simon told him that he had shown the painting to Andy’s executor, Fred Hughes, who remembered authenticating it in the early 1990s – a verdict that Fremont himself, who in those years authenticated Warhol’s work in tandem with Hughes, had endorsed. Now, Fremont made the entire process sound like the easiest thing in the world. He seemed to imply that Simon was doing him a personal favour by cooperating.
A few weeks later, Tony Shafrazi, a New York art dealer better known for having used spray paint to deface Picasso’s Guernica in the Museum of Modern Art, told him the brutal fact: unless the two works had the Board’s stamp of approval, no dealer, private collector, or auction house in the world would touch them.
The authenticity of an artwork can be determined in several ways, but one of the most common is to have an expert or experts affirm that it is what the seller purports it to be. The Warhol Foundation went further. If an owner consigned to a gallery or saleroom a picture that the Board had not authenticated, the gallerist or auction house received a lawyer’s letter stating that the sale could not proceed until the Board confirmed that the artwork was genuine. No one dared sell a picture the Board had not approved. Simon decided to get the procedure over and done with.
What Simon could not have guessed was that the Board would declare both works to be fakes. The Board kept a file labelled Estate Notebook Fake Works: Paintings Authenticated by Fred Hughes, and Simon’s Red Self-Portrait was in it. Simon would later learn that Fremont had already viewed the picture in Gagosian’s office and was disturbed that the image was printed on canvas (cotton duck) rather than on linen, which Warhol usually used.
In February 2002, Simon was in New York, waiting to collect the painting. That morning, a fax from the Authentication Board arrived at his house in Los Angeles. The person who first read it was his closest friend, British documentary film-maker Maddy Farley. The Board did not consider the picture authentic. As soon as she read these words, her instinct to protect her friend kicked in. Understanding how distressed Simon would be, she took the overnight flight to New York to be with him when he heard the news. Together, they went to the office of the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board on the Lower West Side to collect the picture.
There, Simon had a second shock. The picture had been stamped on the reverse with the word DENIED in indelible red ink. Not only that, it had been stamped not on the wooden stretcher, but on the canvas itself. A picture he had been about to sell for two million dollars had been ‘branded’ with such force that the letters came through on the front of the canvas, rendering it worthless.
Still not understanding Fremont’s role in what had happened, Simon and Maddy lunched with him the next day at a quiet restaurant, two blocks from the offices of the Authentication Board. Whenever they’d met before, Fremont had been warm and supportive. Now, Simon said, he seemed cold, detached and emotionless.
With his thick, slicked-back hair, broad face and wide eyes, Fremont exuded self-assurance. From the start, he exerted a gentle but sure control over the conversation. Through two courses, they talked about every subject except the picture. Maddy kept the conversation light, swapping camera tips and news about mutual friends, while Fremont and Simon prodded, each trying to extract information from the other. Simon itched to talk about the portrait, but Fremont sensed this and steered the conversation out of Simon’s reach whenever the subject was about to come up. Even when coffee came, he seemed reluctant to discuss the picture.
At that point, Simon couldn’t take any more: ‘All of my frustrations bubbled over, and I came right out and said how appalled I was by the Board’s refusal even to explain their unexpected decision to deny my painting. What I wanted to say – but didn’t – was that it was he, more than anyone, who had persuaded me to submit a portrait, that had already been signed by the artist and authenticated by his manager, to a mysterious organisation of which I knew nothing, assuring me that this would be just a formality and would add significantly to its value.’
Fremont said nothing. Finally, he indicated that the conversation was closed by advising Simon to ‘discover more of the picture’s history’. He even offered to assist by supplying the contact details of conservators and art historians.
‘But it’s just so unethical!’ Simon no longer hid the anger in his voice. ‘Surely this sort of behaviour can be challenged legally.’
Fremont replied very slowly, looking straight into Simon’s eyes, and stressing every word: ‘Don’t even think about it. They’ll drag you through the courts until you bleed – they never lose.’1 With this stark, apparently well-intentioned, but unmistakably threatening statement, he rose from the table and went for his coat. He returned a few minutes later to pick up the tab.
As well as advising Simon to resubmit the picture after gathering more information about it, Fremont also explained that the Authentication Board would require proof that Warhol had been aware of the picture’s existence. By ‘proof’ he meant ‘a signature in the artist’s own hand or evidence that it had been sold at auction during his lifetime’. The more facts Simon could accumulate, the better chance he would have of getting the work authenticated.
I had never had any dealings with an art authentication board. Simon explained to me that everyone who submits a work to the Warhol Board must sign a waiver agreeing that the owner is not legally entitled to any explanation for the Board’s decision. The legal waiver covered a previous authentication of the Red Self-Portrait by Fremont and Hughes in the early nineties, and shielded the assistant as a former employee of the Warhol Foundation, from legal action. As one lawyer put it to Simon, ‘Five million dollars in legal fees may get you past the waiver; otherwise, the waiver protects Warhol employees from a multitude of sins, including fraud.’
That left Simon helpless. He was not entitled to a refund from Hue-Williams because the time limit within which pictures can be returned had long passed. What upset him most was the dawning knowledge that Fremont had persuaded him to submit the picture knowing it was likely to be denied. Legally, Fremont could not be held responsible for his own previous authentication of the picture. Simon felt he had been stitched up.
In accordance with its policy, the Board refused to give Simon any indication of why the pictures had been denied. In the days that followed, he worked frantically to find out why it had happened. First, he took a transparency of his picture to the Castelli Gallery. Leo Castelli had been dead for several years, but his widow Barbara told Simon that even her husband, a dealer of legendary stature, had more than once had pictures by Warhol denied by the Board. She encouraged him not to lose hope.
Over that lunch in February, Fremont suggested Simon view his picture alongside a painting from the 1964 series on linen to understand why it had been rejected. Fremont had also informed Simon that Castelli’s son, Jean-Christophe, owned one of the 1964 self-portraits – the ones the Board considered authentic. It was in storage in Healey’s warehouse in Long Island City, Queens. Simon rang Castelli’s curator, who agreed that, for a fee of a few hundred dollars and the cost of opening the warehouse, he could view the 1964 picture and compare it to his own.
Simon also asked Fremont for the name of a picture conservator who specialised in twentieth-century painting. Fremont recommended the American painting conservator Sandra Amann, the Andy Warhol Foundation’s chief restorer.2 When Simon took the picture to her studio, Amann told him at once that it had been made in the 1960s, but she too needed to see it next to a picture from the 1964 series.
Simon liked Sandra Amann and believed she was doing her best to be helpful. But he still wanted a third person to be present to witness the all-important comparison. He found one in John Reinhold, a jewellery dealer and close friend of Warhol’s. Simon hired a car and driver to take all three, together with Simon’s painting, to the warehouse. When they arrived, the crate had already been opened and the 1964 picture placed on a table so that it could be examined alongside Simon’s 1965 painting.
‘Immediately, my heart sank,’ Simon recalled. ‘It [the 1964 painting] had a thick hand-painted background, and the colours [were] stronger. John looked at me, as if to say sorry. My heart just fell. We laid the pictures down next to each other. Sandra got out her measuring tape and we started to measure the pictures. They were almost the same size. After ten minutes… it was obvious that both pictures had been printed using the same acetate, but with different silk screens. The obvious difference was that the 1965 picture was painted on cotton duck, Castelli’s on linen, which holds paint much better – it reflects light and just looks richer. This cheered me up… I remembered the huge differences among other series – such as the “Studio-type” Elvis and the “Ferus-type” Elvis – and there were other examples of Warhol switching from linen to cotton within the same series in the early sixties.’
This was true: the series known as the ‘Studio-type’ Elvis has conspicuous hand painting and is not signed, whereas a later series, called the ‘Ferus-type’ Elvis (after the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, where they were first exhibited), looks more machine-made, more mechanical in feel, and it is signed. Warhol usually signed at least one picture in every series to signify that the entire series was his work. None of the Studio-Type Elvis pictures are signed, and none were exhibited during Andy’s lifetime. After a flood in the studio, the entire series became soaking wet and needed extensive restoration. Yet the Authentication Board accepts both series as genuine. What is more, as was true of the Red Self-Portraits series, the differences between the two Elvis series are instantly obvious, whether you know anything about Warhol’s working methods or not. But this was clutching at straws. The fact remained that, in early 2002, it looked as though the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board had been justified in deciding against Simon’s work.
Most people would have given up then and there. Not Simon.