Art Authentication Quotes

If I were to sign it now, I'd be committing forgery. I'd be putting my 1943 signature on a canvas painted in 1922.

Just think for a moment if science really could move in the field of authenticity of works of art. There would be a cultural revolution to say the least, but also, I would say, a market revolution, let me add.

I threw [Picasso's] drawing on the floor and in doing so, threw away about £50m.

If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't I say it's a fake.

My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, had owned it, so that's the earliest.

You cannot own a symphony or a novel in the way you can own a Damien Hirst. As a result there are far fewer fake symphonies or fake novels than there are fake works of visual art.

If you were going through your attic and found a Van Gogh, what would you do? You wouldn't put it in your bathroom; you'd want to share it with the world because you know people will love it.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I don't know if there will ever be an ideal way of selling an original picture. Because everything you're doing, you're inventing.

No dealer, curator, buyer or critic, or any existing combination of these, can be depended on to produce a reputation that is more than a momentary flurry.

Forgers can start with the same photographic images Warhol did, and sometimes knock off silkscreens only an expert can distinguish from the originals.

In the Raphael Room, the secret turned out to be that only some of the paintings were made by the great master; the rest were made by students. I had liked the ones by Raphael. This was a big jab for my self-confidence in my ability to appreciate art.

For me, all collecting must be done out of the love of the art. That being said, investment knowledge is absolutely mandatory so that you are really buying what you think you are buying.

In one way or another, I always marked my pictures. But there were times when I put my signature on the back of the canvas. All my works from the cubist period, until about 1914, have my name and the date on the back side of the stretcher. I know someone spread the story that in Céret, Braque and I decided not to sign our pictures anymore. But that's just a legend!

Modern art, in particular, seems especially vulnerable to fraud. Its abstractions are sometimes difficult to understand or grasp, and a modern painting is often loved less because of its intrinsic quality - its beauty, as conventionally understood - than because of the identity of the painter, its mark of social status.

Art can retain its value and even make you some money. If you have your iPhone on you - and you probably do - look for the artist's signature, and use that to look up the artist and get a sense of the piece's value before you buy it.

Each year, tens of millions of museumgoers walk through the entrance of the Getty, or the Metropolitan or the Prado or the Hermitage, and never consider the possibility of having to arbitrate for themselves the authenticity of what they have come to see.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?

I got a house full of Rembrandts and priceless art, and all the little girls they wanna tear me apart.