‘The Devil Wears Rothko' Review: Victimhood and Vanity
Four years earlier, Ms. Freedman had sold Mr. Lagrange, a Belgian financier, a Jackson Pollock painting for $17 million. Except this was no Pollock, Mr. Lagrange argued—it was a forgery, and Mr. Lagrange said he could prove it. When confronted with this evidence, Ms. Freedman apparently offered to help him resell the piece. That's when Mr. Lagrange supposedly made his fiery declaration.
As Barry Avrich tells us in his peppery 'The Devil Wears Rothko,' Mr. Lagrange's Pollock was one of the many pieces involved in the most lucrative art-forgery scheme in American history. According to the author, the scheme's mastermind was Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz. In the 1980s, the Spaniard fled to Mexico with a bullfighter, then fell in love with a nursing student, Glafira Rosales, before he and Rosales made their way to New York. There, as a newly employed caviar courier, he purchased a secondhand ambulance with a functioning siren, which he made liberal use of to part the city's traffic. Deliveries to Sotheby's and Christie's gave him his first exposure to the New York art world, where he discovered seductive glamour and easy marks.
Shortly afterward, we are told, Mr. Bergantiños chanced upon Pei-Shen Qian, a talented street painter. Born in China, Mr. Qian had endured Mao's Cultural Revolution and wasted years painting paeans to the Great Leader before escaping to New York. He had hoped to emulate his Abstract Expressionist idols, but found no success—until Mr. Bergantiños allegedly offered him cash to forge the works of his idols. In addition to Pollock, Mr. Avrich writes, Mr. Qian would create paintings in the style of Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol, among others.
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