A remarkable trial starts today in the Oslo District Court. Sitting on the dock is John Hedemark, a gallerist from Oslo’s west end. The public prosecutor’s office wants him convicted of a total of seven offences, but what has attracted the most attention is the charge of gross fraud. John Hedemark has for a number of years sold paintings by Werner Jensen, a Berlin-based artist with an impressive CV. Then it turns out that Werner Jensen does not exist, and that the pictures were painted by Hedemark himself. The CV is fake. Hedemark has also used two other pseudonyms, Erik Krohn and Knut Olesen. He himself refers to the fact that it has been common for artists to use pseudonyms since the Middle Ages. Does he have a point? CLAIMS HIS INNOCENCE: John Hedemark believes he has only used a stage name in the same way as a number of artists have done throughout history. Photo: Martin Fonnebø / news Anyone who buys fine art buys two things. They buy a concrete object, in this case a piece of canvas with paint on it, which is hung on the wall in the living room or hallway. And then they buy an idea, an investment object, which has value because it was made by a certain artist or originates from a certain period. As for the first, nothing will have changed for the buyer even if it turned out that the artist was different than they thought. The brush strokes are the same, what they liked about the picture in the first place is presumably intact. As for the others, everything has changed. The artist behind the picture does not have the professional weight that they thought, his art had not received the stamp of quality from heavy art institutions that they were told it had. This is why the police now estimate that the value of the pictures is zero, and that the buyers have lost all the money they paid for them. It is true, as Hedemark says, that artists have used false names for hundreds of years. Today, however, it is common for buyers to be aware when a stage name is a pseudonym. No one believes that Banksy or Dolk are the real names of the renowned street artists. At the same time, it can be objected that artists have used pseudonyms for a number of reasons, and long before their use was regulated by modern norms and laws. EVERYONE KNOWS: Street artist Banksy doesn’t use his real name, but everyone knows it’s a pseudonym. Here a Banksy work from a garage in Wales. Photo: Rachel Honey-Jones / AP When the Werner Jensen case broke, for a while it was possible to imagine that it was all a big piece of concept art, where the images were just small pieces in a game that would reveal the gullibility of the art buyers. In that case, the artist would not have been able to be open about the pseudonym. Hedemark himself tries this type of argument when he has to defend himself. But what makes this unlikely is perhaps not primarily the pseudonym, but the falsified CV. It is the person, not the name, that enables the police with papers in hand to claim that those who have bought Hedemark’s pictures have received something completely different from what they thought. It is the CV that gives the seller arguments for jacking up the price of the photos. It is also telling that Hedemark has sold pictures of the same signature at wildly different prices. Comparable paintings by Werner Jensen have gone for sums from NOK 5,500 and up to NOK 45,000. This may indicate that they have been sold for the sum that it was possible to get out of the individual buyer, more than what the pictures could actually be said to be worth. It’s no fun being a former customer of John Hedemark these days. But those concerned can take comfort in the fact that they have become part of an industry where it is easy to manipulate, and easy to be manipulated. Because the price of a work of art is a kind of fantasy, a fiction. An image is worth what we, the collective, decide it is worth. It is naturally linked to the quality of the art, according to professionals and connoisseurs – but it can also be influenced through various tricks. There is a lot of triangulation of desire going on when art is bought and sold: You want what others want. When a work by a particular artist fetches an unexpectedly high price, the demand for other images with the same signature increases. This is because more people are becoming aware of the artist in question, but also because the works suddenly seem like a good investment. And because it gives status to be part of the group that discovers the new, great. SEIZED BY THE POLICE: A number of Werner Jensen photos have been seized. Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB Scanpix This is why it sometimes happens that two people go to the same auction, after agreeing in advance to bid on the same work. Perhaps they will sell art by the same artist themselves later, and are interested in getting the price as high as possible. This is why an auctioneer can pretend to see a bid in the hall and call it out, even if no one has entered. This is called “commandment from the chandelier” and is of course forbidden, but forbidden things happen all the time. Most people need pictures to hang on the wall. Many of these would also like to own something that is recognized and valuable. But the art world is complicated, and many buyers do not have the necessary knowledge to be able to tell what is what. And when a cunning seller pulls out a picture and says this, this is a good buy, yes, then there are many people who don’t have much to resist. Perhaps the Werner Jensen case will make shady actors roll their eyes and put aside whatever shady plans they may have. Or maybe not. Because the paradox is that the fraud case itself may be what, after many years, makes Werner Jensen a household name. There are those who believe that the pictures of John Hedemark can increase in value with this trial. Because now they are not just pictures, now they are linked to a public scandal, a criminal case. They still have no academic weight, but they have a story.
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When does it become fraud to paint pictures under a false name? Soon we will have the answer. – Speech
