TRUE AND FALSE: (1& 4) The fake versions of Arpana Caur’s paintings of Nanak. (2 & 3) The artist’s original paintings (Pictures: Rajesh Kumar)

Jatin Das is in despair. The art mart is under the scanner, and the artist is disgusted with the booming market in fake paintings. “The entire country is becoming a fake, including art,” he exclaims.

There is reason for concern. Internet transactions, fly-by-night gallery owners and art dealers in collusion with frame-makers and forgers seem to be working 24x7 to ensure that the multi-million-rupee market in fakes doesn’t meet the same fate as the plummeting stock market.

Fake paintings crop up every now and then at a gallery or an auction. Gullible buyers often fall for them. Somebody somewhere makes money, but not the painter whose signature is appended to a fake work of art. Some months ago, the Mumbai police seized 82 fake paintings which were being passed off as the original works of renowned artists.

“I have, in a way, grown accustomed to a weekly rip-off of my works,” says artist Anjolie Ela Menon. “There are so many out there who are cashing in on an artist’s style and signature.”

Arpana Caur has two fakes of her works jostling for space with her own creations at her studio in New Delhi. “I lodged a complaint with Delhi’s crime branch, but nothing has come of it,” she says resignedly.

She stumbled upon these two fakes of Nanak just by chance. The paintings, she says, had been bought in Delhi for Rs 4 lakh each by two art collectors. Caur smelt something fishy when one of them told her that she had just bought a Nanak. “It was only when she showed me the 3 feet by 4 feet Nanak that I realised it was a fake. The original is in the Birla Academy catalogue in Calcutta,” says Caur.

Confronting the seller, who is a self-proclaimed artist, served no purpose. “He said he had been paid the cheques for his own works. So I have no evidence by way of which I can drag him to court,” she says.

Faking art works, which shot into prominence when a spate of Jamini Roy fakes flooded the market in the seventies, is a fine art in itself. According to Sharan Apparao, owner of the Chennai-based Apparao Gallery, every year about 20-30 fakes of major paintings and 50-100 fakes of less important paintings get released for the markets globally. These fakes could be copied with or without the artist’s signature, undergo a change of medium, incorporate different elements patented by the artist, or be subject to subtle thematic alterations. To top it all, technology and different kinds of software aid the fraud market in matters such as replicating signatures.

Among artists — apart from Roy, Menon and Caur — whose works have been copied are Satish Gujral, S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain, Manjit Bawa, Tyeb Mehta, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Raja Ravi Verma, Amrita Shergil, Nandalal Bose and F.N. Souza.

But most artists are reluctant to take up the matter with the police as it’s not easy to prove a work a fake. Sometimes, the fakers are assistants who help an artist with a canvas, thereby picking up the artist’s style. “Pursuing such cases is a 24x7 job and, at the end of it, seems to be a pointless exercise,” says Menon.

Sanjay Bhattacharya had a nasty experience that he could do nothing about. A gallery had put up a fake of his well-known work Ghara. The original depicted two earthen pots in a dark room with a stained glass door. The copied painting was exactly the same with a slight variation — there was a man in the forefront with a musical instrument. There was little that Bhattacharya could do in this case.

RIPPED OFF: (From top) Artists Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Manjit Bawa, Arpana Caur and S.H. Raza have had their works faked

“Faking has definitely increased. In the last six to seven years, contemporary works of successful Indian artists have been faked, though it has not impacted overall sales,” notes Rakhi Sarkar of CIMA art gallery in Calcutta. She, however, contends, “Galleries should check the provenance of paintings before putting works on sale and a foolproof authentication method may be pursued to safeguard the authenticity of artworks.”

It doesn’t always happen. That is, perhaps, why the exhibition of 20 bronze sculptures titled ‘Agony and Ecstasy’ at New Delhi’s Gallery Espace last year was hailed as unprecedented by many in the art world — except by sculptor Somnath Hore’s family.

Although the gallery was convinced of both the lineage and authenticity of the works, Hore’s daughter, Chandana, herself an artist, said that at least one of the pieces was a fake as she had the original in her possession.

While some galleries may get duped by clever forgers, some operate precisely for this. Shyamsunder Desai, owner of Sahiil Art Gallery in Mumbai, was arrested by the police three months ago for allegedly trying to sell a fake of artist Subodh Gupta’s work. While the original painting was on display at the Bodhi Art Gallery in New Delhi, the fake was fetching a price of Rs 80 lakh on the Internet.

Experts say there are several reasons the fake business is burgeoning. In some cases, families of artists are behind the forgeries. Then, artists aren’t always accessible to a buyer who’d want to authenticate a painting. There are also inadequacies in the infrastructure that supports art. The lack of formal cataloguing and standardised protocols for tracking the sale of art works makes it difficult to ascertain if an artwork is an original or a fake. Also, technological advancements help forgers. After seeing a fake copy of one of his own works, Bhattacharya once said: “The trade has become so polished that even I had difficulties in finding faults with the fake.”

Neville Tuli of Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art — the first organisation in India to establish an All India Authentication Committee for Contemporary Arts — contends fake art flourishes because there’s an absence of any institutional mechanism for certifying original works. “There is a dearth of financial benchmarking, publications, etc. that build the credibility of art,” he had said.

The police find that there is little they can do to prove a forgery. Without concrete evidence, they cannot move forward in a case, which is then confined to allegations and counter-allegations. “As it is, we do not have the infrastructure to deal with fakes. Nor do we have a separate section for forgery as we do for antique theft,” says a source in the Calcutta police. “So following the trail of the forgers becomes tricky.”

Auction houses agree that it is not easy to check the authenticity of a work of art. “When reviewing any artwork proffered for sale, my colleagues and I at Sotheby’s use our judgment to determine if it is suitable for our auction. One of the questions we must ask any seller is the provenance or history of ownership of the artwork,” says Anu Ghosh Mazumdar, Sotheby’s Indian and Southeast Asian art specialist. “This is useful as it gives us additional information about the work itself and can be used to verify authenticity too. If there is any doubt in our mind about the work of a deceased artist, we ask the artist’s estate for an opinion or approach a recognised expert.”

The most they can do is take a complaint seriously. “Despite our due diligence, if there is any work in our sale which is questioned by a reputable party, we hold off on selling the work so that all parties involved can perform further research until the question is resolved,” says Ghosh Mazumdar.

But one pertinent question that needs to be addressed is whether the buyer is willing to conduct due diligence. Some — like those who bought the fake Nanaks — are hoodwinked and lose money. Some others, however, are not loath to buy a painting at a low price.

“A Rs 10 lakh painting for Rs 10,000 isn’t too bad a bargain,” says Mumbai-based art consultant Usha Mirchandani, who also runs Galerie Mirchandani and Steinruecke. “For such buyers, authentication is of no consequence as long as it looks good on the walls.”

No wonder then that at times it is impossible to see artists in their true colours.