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How far would he go to prove ?</div><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl SplScreenContentHearByle-kvEhqE ejWxsm"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle bylbyle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU bylename"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss bylepreamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx bylename-lk button" href="/ntributors/sam-knight">Sam Knight</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2022-09-19T06:00:00-04:00" class="SplScreenContentHearPublishDate-bMGEVk gvRvVr">September 19, 2022</time><div class="SocialInsWrapper-hKMEXV ffgPVr social-ins social-ins--standard SplScreenContentHearSocialShare-gSVclr kUKgnn"><ul data-ttid="socialInslist" class="SocialInsList-cHVTIA 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width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save Story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z" fill="black"></path><path class="in-bookmark-stroke" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z" fill="black"></path></svg></div></a></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM eHLzLy grid--em"><div class="SplScreenContentHearLeadWrapper-jYfGAC kBeEbL"><div data-ttid="ContentHearLeadAsset" class="SplScreenContentHearLeBlock-nUOA cwQiEB"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh sxTal"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh sxTal rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="A patg a home." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src="></picture></span></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SplScreenContentHearGrid-kFpOdh fLkIyA"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn SplScreenContentHearCaptn-iOfEOv ckLUKG"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptntext">The llector claimed that, one day, he got a ll om Frd. “You will not sell the patg all your life,” the artist said.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptncred">Photographs by Lewis Khan for The New Yorker</span></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-bodyntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU cAHp"><div class="ActnBarWrapperComponent-cjwxLS bEeSLb"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" 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bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP imbgVA"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG lmuXQm"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay ; encrypted-media ; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">In the sprg of 1997, an art llector Geneva received a ll om a ntact at the cy’s office of bankptci and legal proceedgs. There was an ctn g up, of an tate that had gone unclaimed for ne years, and among the lots was a patg that the llector might want to take a look at: a nvas attributed to the Brish artist Lucian Frd. The llector was a bsman, origally om North Ai, who was ed to pickg up furnure and art works at petive pric om Geneva’s plentiful array of galleri, antique alers, and salrooms. He is keen to prerve his privacy, so I will ll him Omar.</p><p class="paywall">Omar went to see the patg that day, at the ctn hoe Carouge, a suburb to the south of the cy. The tate had belonged to a man named Adolfo di Calo, who died 1988. Acrdg to ctn rerds, di Calo appeared to have been a llector, too. In the seventi, he had sold a seventeenth-century patg of Pan, the Greek god of shepherds, that was once believed to be a Rubens.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-unslot nsumer-marketg-unslot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-unslot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The work attributed to Frd was a medium-sized, naturalistic oil portra of a naked man, pated om the si and om behd. Parts of the background appeared unfished, or hastily sketched, but the figure self was skillfully ptured, wh a certa power. “Oh, ’s tertg, ’s strong,” Omar relled sayg to himself.</p><p class="paywall">The bankptcy office had attached an timate of five hundred thoand Swiss ancs (about three hundred and fifty thoand dollars) to the work. At the time, a regnized Frd portra of a named ster uld fetch three tim that amount. Omar asked his ntact to hold back, as one of the fal lots of the sale, so that the room would be quieter. On the afternoon of March 7th, Omar bought the patg for ls than a hundred thoand Swiss ancs, or seventy thoand dollars. He also picked up one of di Calo’s si tabl, a lampsha, and a bronze sculpture the style of Giaetti.</p><p class="paywall">“After I bought the patg, I went home and put the rt of my llectn and I fot about ,” Omar told me French when we met, earlier this year, at an expensive hotel on the lakeont Geneva. He wore a Harrods baseball p and was rryg a plastic bag. For years, Frd’s searchg, ndid portras went agast the overwhelmg appete of the ntemporary art market, which was for abstractn. Although he was a famo pater England, part bee of his surname (Sigmund, his grandfather, went to London as a refugee 1938), Frd was a rpected rather than a fashnable artist Europe. In 2002, Omar watched a program about his reer on Swiss televisn, which prompted him to learn more about the patg. So he put on eBay.</p><p class="paywall">Omar posted the ad on the eveng of Saturday, November 30th. The em scriptn read “Lucian Frd Patg.” Omar told me that he didn’t tend to sell the work; rather, he hoped to flh out rmatn. “To do a rennaissance,” he said. Four days later, Omar got a msage om the ctn se: his em had been blocked bee of a pyright plat. He lled eBay’s office France, and was told that the plat had e om the artist.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Omar, a few days later the phone rang his apartment. It was early the afternoon. “I said, ‘Hello, hello,’ and after a long time I heard a voice: ‘I am Frd, Lucian Frd,’ ” Omar relled. The voice, speakg English, but wh a Germanic rasp, said that he was the rightful owner of Omar’s patg and that he wanted back. (Omar had put his phone number on the eBay ad.) Omar says that Frd offered him a hundred thoand Swiss ancs, which he cled.</p><p class="paywall">Three days later, the voice lled back. This time, acrdg to Omar, the man was angry. Frd was eighty years old at the time. The ller offered Omar twice what he had paid for the patg, but still the llector refed to sell. “ ‘No. Sorry,’ ” Omar remembered sayg. “ ‘I am lovg this patg. I am lovg this.’ He said, ‘Fuck you.’ He said, I remember, ‘You will not sell the patg all your life.’ And he hung up.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">Omar has been tryg to unravel the meang of this ll—and have his patg thentited—for the past twenty years. Owng a disputed, possibly wildly valuable, art work is a cel tt of any person’s athetic valu, basic reason, and nate (often well-disguised) pacy for greed. Close your ey and there are lns of dollars hangg on the wall. Open them, and there is nothg to see. Hope flar, di for years at a time, then sparks aga, at odd moments. The qutn of thorship n be both madngly simple and ightengly difficult to rolve. Laboratori and lawyers might tell you what you want to hear, and charge you by the hour. Omar always projected nfince when we spoke. “There is a betiful story behd this patg,” he told me more than once. But there were days this year when I wished that I had never heard of at all.</p><le-embed name="feature-flt" attrs="[object Object]" childTyp="image" ntentType="llout:feature-flt"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Thierry Navarro" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embedptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptntext">Thierry Navarro was asked to get to the bottom of the thentitn problem.</span></div></figure></le-embed><p class="paywall">In July, 2005, Omar shipped the portra to London, where was examed by Frd’s longtime nfidant and bgrapher, William Feaver. By this time, Omar was wonrg if uld be a self-portra, notg a siary between the face of the figure and photographs of Frd om the fifti and sixti. In ctoms documents, he clared the value of the patg to be a ln Swiss ancs.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">Feaver gave the thumbs-down: the feet were unfished, which was unlike Frd; the body was too heavily built for a self-portra; the background was stylistilly off. When I asked Feaver about the picture recently, almost seventeen years after the viewg, he had no memory of seeg at all. But after nsultg his diary he agreed wh his ial assertn, which was rerd by a gallery assistant at the time. “If this spectral me had gone , he would have said roundly that wasn’t by Frd,” Feaver said. “There’s nothg like Lucian’s work ever, anywhere, to survive. . . . Every sgle certifiable one is fundamentally que different om this rather reful, pastakg, rrect thg.”</p><p class="paywall">Frd was shown imag of the patg several tim, by his dghter Esther and by Pilar Ordovas, a former puty chairman of postwar and ntemporary art at Christie’s, who is now a gallerist. Ordovas grew close to Frd 2003, after she brought to market a rare urban scene of his, which he had not seen for thirty years. She beme a regular visor to his stud and handled his relatnship wh the ctn hoe. “The artist was alive. I was dog my duty of showg him this work, slightly embarrassed,” she told me. “He said, ‘Pilar, absolutely not.’ There was not even a moment’s thought or qutn.” After Esther showed her father imag of the patg, Frd asked for his name to be removed om the ame.</p><p class="paywall">Omar had more luck wh pennt experts. In the summer of 2006, Nicholas Eastgh, a world thory on pigmentatn analysis, travelled to Geneva. Eastgh examed the patg, which was now beg lled “Standg Male Nu,” wh a microspe, unr UV light, and took sixteen ty pat sampl. Eastgh found “a seri of pots of siary and rrponnce” between Omar’s patg and known Frd works: trac of charal the pat, the e of hog-hair bsh, which Frd favored startg the late fifti, and the prence of a loose preparatory drawg, pencil. On the bottom edge of the nvas, Eastgh also found a partial fgerprt, which uld pot to a more five nnectn wh the artist.</p><p class="paywall">In life, Frd was a keen guardian of his œuvre and of his privacy. He munited mostly by phone but did not give out his number, and he changed often. He was sensive to the market for his work and hated signg his name. “He was prepared to do whatever was necsary orr to protect what he thought was his right to be able to project to the world what he wanted,” Geordie Greig, a former edor of the <em>Daily Mail</em> and a iend of Frd’s, who wrote a book about him, told me.</p><p class="paywall">Most of Frd’s failed patgs never left the stud. “Lucian was an avid stroyer of works that went wrong,” Feaver wrote me, an e-mail. “I n remember many awag the cull. Generally, the—portras pecially—would be stiff and, more often, disproportnate.” Frd also kept an eye on patgs long after he ma them. Throughout his reer, he beme angry when substandard works found their way to the market or fotten nvas rurfaced. In the early fifti, the hoe of Gerald Garder, Frd’s lawyer at the time, was broken to and a sgle picture was taken: a portra of Carol, Garder’s dghter, which Frd had pated but didn’t thk much of. The story gave rise to a legend, enuraged by Frd, that he paid crimals to get hold of patgs that displeased him or that he regretted seeg out the world. Late his life, one of Frd’s dghters, Rose Boyt, hated to send him a patg for thentitn, for fear that he would punch a hole stead.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="89op67"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Everythg had to be <em>remarkable</em>,” Greig said. Frd was drawn to extrem, and to fights. In the early seventi, John Craxton, an artist and an timate iend of Frd’s, sold some of his drawgs to a llector. When a aler asked Frd to sign the sketch, he was fur, wrg, “John Craxton is a cunt” on one of them. Frd’s fight wh Craxton—a ms of legal letters and junctns—went on for years. At one pot, acrdg to Ian Colls, Craxton’s bgrapher, Frd managed to have a Craxton portra lled “Lucian” removed om an exhibn, by sayg was not of him. “They beme an art form,” Colls said of Frd’s fds. “He had this phenomenal energy. He actually need this to get him fired up. He need enemi.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Frd died 2011, at the age of eighty-eight. From then on, his tate, and his lawyers, took over the protectn of his name. Omar felt that every attempt to have his patg thentited, or even looked at, rulted a myster ad end. Cursy would turn to silence. A few months after Frd’s ath, a French nnoissr named Hector Obalk agreed to go to Geneva. Obalk prents an art-history show on French televisn. In the precedg , he had filmed two hundred and fifty-eight Frd works, llectg hours of footage llaboratn wh the artist’s stud. Obalk viewed the patg Omar’s office. “He had a pipe. He stood for half an hour like this,” Omar relled, strikg a pose of ntemplatn.</p><p class="paywall">Obalk had no doubt that the patg was by Frd. But he saw limatns, too. Like Feaver, he found the feet unnvcg. He thought the face showed poor technique. Moreover, he rpected Frd’s right to reject the patg. “Authentitn of an œuvre do not only pend on the realy of a piece of work, but also on an athetic cisn sanctned by a number of acts, such as s signature, the stud output, exhibn the artist’s lifetime, etc.,” Obalk wrote, a ne-page report.</p><p class="paywall">But the patg didn’t look like a fery, or a se of mistaken attributn. Obalk noted a patch of impasto on the figure’s flank—pat so thick that stands out om the nvas, a characteristic of Frd’s work—and a handlg of the flh ton that relled several of his other portras. In Obalk’s analysis, the patg was <em>by</em> Frd but not <em>a</em> Frd. “In our opn, <em>Standg Male</em> is a nvas which Lucian Frd pated, then abandoned and disowned,” he wrote. “It is always more lite to thentite an unfished work ( which the artist has h an impasse) than to thentite a roundg masterpiece.”</p><p class="paywall">Twelve days before he livered his verdict to Omar, the sprg of 2012, Obalk received a warng om Goodman Derrick, L.L.P., the law firm that reprented Frd’s tate. The letter reerated Frd’s disavowal of the patg durg his lifetime. “It seems unclear to why you may be g your extensive knowledge of the work of Lucian Frd to back an attributn you mt know mak no sense,” the letter said. The law firm asked Obalk not to thentite the patg but “to ny ,” and appeared to threaten any future öperatn by the tate on Obalk’s televisn work.</p><p class="paywall">Obalk thentited the patg anyway. He cled to speak for this article. “I have nothg to add,” he said. For several years, he was the only nnoissr willg to study Omar’s portra, let alone give a posive opn. The trail went ld until January, 2016, when Omar mounted a private show of his llectn at the Freeport, a huge storage facily for art works and other valuabl, Geneva. To his surprise, an acquatance named Ignac Moreno stopped ont of “Standg Male Nu,” and said that he had seen before.</p><p class="paywall">“It was a flashback,” Moreno told me recently. Moreno, who was born Cuba, is his mid-sixti. He remembered seeg the nu on the wall of the apartment of the prev owner, di Calo, where he ocsnally went as a young man, the late seventi. Moreno scribed the apartment as a gay oasis Geneva at the time. He showed me a photograph of himself stg near a fireplace, wh another nvas propped agast the wall behd him. Curly, Moreno said that the apartment was ed by Francis Ban when he stayed the cy: a place of ms and pat by day, and r gathergs by night.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">The relatnship between Frd and Ban, two of Bra’s greatt twentieth-century artists, is one of the most excg and plex stori morn art. Durg the fifti, the two men saw each other almost every day. Ban was thirteen years olr: famo, more obvly transgrsive, gregar and , openly gay when homosexual activy was still illegal Bra. Frd was, many ways, an unlikely protégé. He was a social celebry—the weekend gut of aristocrats, turng heads grotty drkg ns Soho—magic to an almost tolerable gree. People kept fallg love wh him. But Frd was hnted by Ban’s geni: the olr artist’s willgns to embrace accint, his feel for pat self. “Real imagatn is technil imagatn,” Ban told <em>Time</em>, 1952. “It is the ways you thk up to brg an event to life aga.”</p><p class="paywall">Each was entranced by the other. Ban pated Frd at least seventeen tim. The younger artist had accs to Ban’s cramped, image-strewn stud. (Ban preferred to work alone, om photographs, often taken by the artists’ mutual iend John Deak, which he first cmpled up and threw on the floor.) There was a fierce attractn. A Ban patg, “Two Figur,” om 1953, which is based on an Eadweard Muybridge photograph of wrtlers but seems to show two men makg love, hung oppose Frd’s bed for fifty years. He was reluctant to lend for exhibns.</p><p class="paywall">Frd pated Ban only twice (an exquise, postrd-size portra, on pper, om 1952, was stolen Berl 1988 and has never been revered), but, of the two men, he owed the greater artistic bt. “I got very impatient wh the way I was workg. It was limg,” he told Feaver. “I thk my admiratn for Francis me to this.” In the late fifti, Frd moved away om his hyper-ntrolled, almost ert patg style to a looser, more baroque mo of portraure, which he ultimately realized wh his ndid, sprawlg nus of the eighti and neti. Frd pated om life, workg on some piec for years at a time. “My work is purely tobgraphil,” he said. “It is about myself and my surroundgs. It is an attempt at a rerd. I work om the people that tert me, and that I re about and thk about, rooms that I live and know.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">As Frd fully matured as an artist, he and Ban drifted apart, wh ocsnal spats until Ban’s ath, 1992. In 2008, Frd’s “Benefs Supervisor Sleepg” sold for $33.6 ln, makg him, for a time, the world’s most expensive livg artist. Both paters are now highly llectible, but works that rry a charge of their early love and rivalry are a tegory of their own. Earlier this year, a sgle panel of a Ban triptych, “Study for Portra of Lucian Frd,” om 1964, sold for fifty-two ln dollars.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Three mobsters seated around a table" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoonptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptntext">“Once he los the hat, he’ll be jt what the voters are lookg for an elected official.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtooncred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptncred">Cartoon by Frank Cotham</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg 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19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">The possibily of a nnectn between Omar’s patg and Ban was tantalizg. Had Ban owned the work? What was he dog Geneva?</p><p class="paywall">In late 2018, Omar asked Thierry Navarro, a Swiss vtigator, to get to the bottom of the thentitn problem. An engeer by trag, Navarro is an alert, quietly stubborn man his early fifti, who wears half-rimmed glass and walks extremely fast, as if he were slightly late, which he often is. His other jobs have clud velopg puter gam and a new navigatn system for motorcyclists. His father, Pedro, was a landspe artist, and Navarro himself is a self-tght pater. “I’m a multidimensnal person, que a plex one, I gus,” he told me. Nohels, Navarro saw the qutn of Frd’s thorship bary, provable terms. “It has been nied. That is a fact. No qutn,” he said. “And there is another fact: the patg is on the table. I mean, exists. And nothg is agast the attributn to Lucian Frd.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="lepbyc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Studyg Omar’s file, Navarro noticed that Obalk had flagged the amic, formal pose of the subject as extremely unual for Frd. “Throw of disc?” Obalk had asked, parenth. One eveng, as Navarro read up on Ban, he found himself scrollg through an onle py of “The Human Figure Motn,” a llectn of Muybridge photographs om 1901. “Sudnly, I me to a seri of imag—then I went slowly,” he relled. The seri was lled “<em class="small">Athlete. tchg at a ball</em>.” Navarro stopped scrollg. “It was jt, like, That’s ,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">Navarro zoomed . To his eye, the pose of Omar’s portra matched a figure the third row of the Muybridge seri, down to the le of the wall and the floor the background and a blemish on the figure’s left buttock. “My md was, jt, Wow,” Navarro said. The only difference was that the imag were reversed—a discrepancy that uld be explaed if the artist had been patg a mirror, which, if the work was a self-portra, he might have been. “You get the dots and you start drawg a le,” Navarro said. “It’s probably not the entire le, but there are a lot of siari and nsistency, I would say, between all those dots.” If his theory was rrect, and Frd had worked om a key Ban reference, that would make the patg a remarkable artifact of the artists’ relatnship. “I thk this might have been a challenge requted by Ban,” Navarro said. “ ‘Can you pat yourself om the back? For me?’ ”</p><p class="paywall">In the sprg of 2019, Omar and Navarro approached Art Regnn, a tech pany outsi Zurich, and asked to evaluate the patg. Art Regnn artificial telligence to tect the bshstrok, lor palette, posnal choic, and other barely fable mannerisms of dividual artists. The C.E.O. is Cara Popovici, a theoretil physicist. She traed the first prototype of the system to regnize works by Max Pechste, the German Exprsnist, orr to weed out fak by Wolfgang Beltracchi, a notor fer, and has sce worked wh mms, galleri, and dozens of private llectors. In 2019, Art Regnn penntly thentited a van Gogh self-portra at the Norwegian Natnal Mm, Oslo. When she started out, Popovici worried about givg owners bad news. It turns out that most people are relieved, eher way. “They’re jt glad to have an answer,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">For Omar’s portra, Art Regnn ed data om two hundred and thirty-five known Frd patgs and more than three hundred patgs by other parable artists om the same perd. The were broken down to a total of some five thoand agments, which were ed to tra the A.I. to intify patch of nvas pated by Frd, and those by other artists. For each art work examed by the A.I., Popovici explaed, the mol is n forty-five tim, wh slightly different libratns, to make sure that the over-all rult is reprentative. Popovici’s team found that “Standg Male Nu” had an eighty-ne-per-cent chance of beg an origal art work by Lucian Frd. “From our pot of view, ’s a very, very solid rult,” she told me. I asked if, to her knowledge, her A.I. system had ever been wrong. “No,” Popovici replied. Then she lghed for a long time, as though this was somehow an appropriate qutn.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">The A.I. report appeared to vdite Navarro’s technil approach to provg that “Standg Male Nu” was by Frd. “There is no feelg,” he said. “It’s jt facts.” Navarro me to perceive the rejectns of the artist and his tate as a matter of trigue, rather than facts wh meang of their own.</p><p class="paywall">“<em>Why</em> would the pater have nied this? That is really, for me, the pot,” he said. When I suggted that Frd may have nied the work bee he didn’t pat , Navarro shgged off the ia. Both Omar and his vtigator beme eply spic of what Navarro lled “the Frd environment”—the close group of experts, former assistants, bgraphers, and lawyers who guard his work, and s value— London. “Nobody’s gog to move,” Navarro said. “There is this kd of secret le. You don’t go agast the will of someone like Frd.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In time, Omar’s file of paperwork relatg to the patg grew thick, beg— the ey of many art-world sirs—a problem s own right. A New York-based art lawyer told me that he tun out whenever people start talkg about scientific reports relatg to disputed art works. “You n tell when somethg don’t feel right,” another aler said, of siar suatns, “when someone so sperately wants somethg.” The art market n’t stand doubt. Great art should be simple, agreed-upon, and expensive: visceral to the eye and to the wallet. Tth is more important than facts. “The moment the story is elaborated, the boredom sets ,” Ban once said, of plited patgs. “The story talks lour than the pat.”</p><p class="paywall">It didn’t help that Omar and Navarro were relative outsirs, wh no track rerd of owng or rearchg Frd’s work. Some of their attempts to make headway were touchg their naïveté. Navarro lled Stland Yard and the F.B.I., to see if they had pi of Frd’s fgerprts that they would be willg to share. (The thori cled.) Navarro was offend when experts seemed to skim through a dossier that he had prepared on the patg, or didn’t engage wh his Muybridge theory.</p><p class="paywall">One proment European aler, who went to see the patg at a private bank Geneva, told me that he had misgivgs as soon as he walked through the door. “I’m not an expert Frd,” the aler told me. “But I am an expert suatns.” “Standg Male Nu” was on an easel, next to another work om Omar’s llectn, which the aler believed was a reproductn.</p><p class="paywall">“It was jt a farce,” the aler said. “Everybody was talkg about lns of dollars. . . . And I was, like, What are we talkg about? We shouldn’t be talkg about money when we don’t even know what we have.” Acrdg to the aler, Navarro seemed to thk that was up to the Frd tate to disprove the attributn, rather than up to him to provi any proof that this uld be a Frd the first place. “There was nothg to substantiate anythg,” the aler said. “I’m not doubtg the good fah of everyone. But, basilly, when you’re outsi of the art world, you put the chart before the ttle. I don’t know how you say English, but you do thgs backwards.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="c0th2i"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Durg the meetg, the aler lled Ordovas, the former Christie’s expert, whom he knew, for her opn. She told him that Frd had nied the work durg his lifetime, which the aler said was the end of the matter. Navarro told me that he thought the ll was staged—a stunt signed to huiate him and Omar—and he lost his temper. “I was a b upset,” he said. He remd the aler of Obalk’s verdict, the A.I. report, and Eastgh’s posive pigmentatn analysis. “How n you say that? Do you have no rpect for those experts? Who are you?” Navarro relled sayg.</p><p class="paywall">The aler softened and, acrdg to Navarro, acknowledged, “<em>Ça pue Frd</em>.” “It stks of Frd.” (The aler disput Navarro’s acunt of the meetg.) But to what end? “Even if was the se, there’s nothg I n do about ,” the aler told me. Acrdg to Navarro, the aler offered to send the patg to London aga, to other experts that he knew, but there was a risk that might be stroyed, or disfigured, the procs. “Come on,” Navarro said. “It’s a joke.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">More than a hundred and fifty years after art historians began certifyg Old Master patgs (for a fee, of urse), the l for thentitg art works are the same as the l for the rt of the art market: strict, scholarly, and unrmed by human s.</p><p class="paywall">People talk about three pillars, or a triangle, of thentitn: nnoissrship (What do look like?), technil analysis (What is ma of?), and provenance (Where did e om?). But tth every major artist’s output is a fiefdom unto self, wh gt gatekeepers and unwrten l. There is no sgle thentitn procs. Some artists’ tat have a mtee, ma up of scholars and hangers-on, to evaluate possible works. Others have disband theirs, part bee of the risk of ligatn om rich llectors. (Sce 2012, mte for Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenste, Keh Harg, and Jean-Michel Basquiat have all stopped thentitg works.) Some artists have a sgle talogue raisonné—a five rerd of all their work, typilly chronologil orr—which acts as the reference for their œuvre. Others have none. Modigliani has five, and they are all different.</p><p class="paywall">Money mak everythg worse. “You n have good people at the begng. And then, you know, they beg to be fluenced for some reason,” a Swiss lawyer who works the field told me. At the top end of the market, the power to thentite a Pisso, a Rothko, a Hepworth, is a lambent, magil thg. Often to rt—by chance or by reful plottg— the hands of two or three people. Preparg a talogue raisonné is a project wh s own unique rewards, risks, and accs to privileged rmatn. Dealers have been known to fund the rearch, orr to fd out who owns an artist’s œuvre. Decidg what to clu, and what to leave out, n have huge fancial implitns. One aler scribed the rponsibily as a kd of curse.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoonimage-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Woman wearg baby rrier on red rpet" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoonptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptntext">“Who are you wearg?”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtooncred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptncred">Cartoon by Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT 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19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">But the lure of beg an thentitor is strong. Sce the late neti, Marc Rtelli, a French curator and nnoissr, has been attemptg to sort out the Modigliani ms. He began work on a sixth (and prumably fal) talogue raisonné wh a rearch stute France, fund by the Wilnste fay, the legendary Parisian art alers.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In 2001, Rtelli psed his work on Modigliani’s drawgs after receivg ath threats. I asked him recently whether the threats had e bee he had been willg to clu prevly unregnized works (which n drive down pric) or bee he had taken out existg Modiglianis. “Out. Out. Out!” Rtelli replied. For the past twenty-five years, he explaed, his problem has been a talogue raisonné first published by Ambrog Ceroni, 1958. The Ceroni talogue has e to fe the market for Modigliani (the most expensive Modigliani nu sold for a hundred and seventy ln dollars) spe ntag obv omissns. Rtelli believ that Ceroni also clud feri and even touched up Modigliani’s patgs himself. (The talogue’s publisher did not rpond to a requt for ment.) “The market for me is jt mad,” he said. “Bee they are negatn of the tth for jt private and fancial tert.”</p><p class="paywall">It is unclear whether Rtelli will ever set the rerd straight. Sce 2020, he has been ligatn wh the Wilnste Plattner Instute over tellectual-property rights relatg to the latt talogue raisonné. Rtelli is himself an art-world player. He has been a curator and an entreprenr, as well as a scholar. He lends his name to a high-end art-analysis laboratory, the Instut Rtelli-Invtigatn, Geneva. He promised that his Modigliani-patgs talogue will be published next year. I said that the project sound like a nightmare. “Not so much,” he replied. “I thk I am the nightmare of many people.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">Overturng an artist’s own verdict on a work—durg his lifetime or after his ath—is a tough move a tough game. In France, the moral right of an artist to whdraw or ny his work is perpetual, and passed on to his heirs. Disrdg art is an athetic gture self, the verse of the creative act. “Cuttg up the patgs was always an act of liberatn,” Gerhard Richter, the German artist, told the magaze <em>Der Spiegel</em> a few years ago. Richter is thought to have stroyed about sixty works om the early sixti, when he began to pat om photographs, that would now have an timated value of six hundred ln dollars. If an artist tts somethg he mak, particularly an early work or an experiment that failed, then the market tends to reflect that. “You wouldn’t want to own that, would you?” one aler said. “If you uld buy anythg?”</p><p class="paywall">But what about when artists lie, or muddy the waters for their own reasons? “I often pat fak,” Pisso is said to have said. In the sixti, he was shown a photograph of “La Doulr,” a patg that he supposedly ma 1902 or 1903. Pisso scribed the work as a “joke by iends,” and was ignored for s a storage room at the Metropolan Mm of Art until was fively thentited 2010. In 1995, a New York appeals urt overled a judgment that a work by Balth was a fake jt bee the artist said was. At the age of eighty-three, Balth had signed an affidav sayg that he was not bld and that “Colette Profil,” a portra om 1954, was a “<em>fx manifte</em>.” But the urt sid wh the work’s former owner and an expert om the Met, who suggted that Balth was tryg to get back at his ex-wife, who had thentited the first place.</p><p class="paywall">Along wh the moral and legal hazards, orphaned works are often difficult to intify bee they are simply not that good. “It’s slapdash,” Gary Tterow, a Met curator, told the <em>Tim</em>, 2010, of the thentited Pisso. Talkg to Frd experts, I noticed that even nnoissrs who were extremely disparagg about Omar’s patg often left the door open a ty crack. “I saw a photo of this a year or two ago and assumed ’s a dud,” Jam Kirkman, one of Frd’s former alers, told me an e-mail. “One is pable of beg proved wrong, I suppose,” Feaver said.</p><p class="paywall">One day Febary, I stopped by the Ban tate, which occupi Ban’s former stud, Reece Mews, Kensgton. I was lookg for evince that Ban spent time Geneva. Until 2016, the Ban tate had an thentitn mtee, which was chaired by Mart Harrison, the edor of Ban’s five-volume talogue raisonné. (The mtee stopped meetg after the talogue was published.) Like Frd, Ban stroyed or abandoned hundreds of patgs durg his reer, many of which then ped om his ntrol one way or another. (Ban’s stud was burgled three tim; roughly a hundred nvas that had been slashed by Ban survive.) When genue works have rurfaced, Harrison has had no choice but to regnize them as such. “If I believe a work to be by Ban, I have to say ,” he told me. “I wish weren’t, many ways. What am I gog to do?”</p><p class="paywall">Ban and Frd scholars mata a quietly bchy relatnship, and Harrison, who has a mischievo si, took an tert Omar’s patg. “It don’t stop beg a Frd jt bee ’s not good,” he said. “<em>I</em> wouldn’t dismiss .” In a recent bgraphy of Ban, the Amerin art wrers Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens suggted that he ma short trips to Swzerland the seventi, likely to llect money om a Swiss bank acunt. Harrison ved me to look at one of Ban’s two passports for the perd. I found only a few Swiss borr stamps, om Basel, 1969 and 1976.</p><p class="paywall">Harrison thought that Omar’s patg was petently done. “Some of the Bans that I had to reproduce were much more negligible than this,” he said. In the room where Ban ed to pat, Sophie Pretori, who manag the tate’s archive, magnified an image of “Standg Male Nu” on her puter. “I jt don’t thk the body is right,” she said. “There’s no distortn.” Harrison looked aga. “It looks like somebody else,” he agreed. “But who on earth is somebody else?” Harrison said he thought the patg had a thirteen-per-cent chance of beg by Lucian Frd. I uldn’t tell if he was teasg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="a4qtb"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The perils of the thentitn procs, and the slim chance of extreme rewards, mean that some quts never end. Eastgh, the pigmentatn expert, told me that he se a lot: the bulgg file, the flights om one European cy to another, the latt voice for a round of bomb-pulse radrbon datg. It’s ually a mpaign rried on by men and, when they die, Eastgh observed, ntued by their dghters. At a certa pot, stops beg about the patg and be a search for eper, and even more impossible, forms of validatn. Owng a work ma by a geni duc a feelg of nnectn—to somethg pure, and, perhaps, to the purer part of ourselv. “The obssive sire to prove parentage is que a strong psychologil state of md,” Feaver remarked. “Isn’t ?”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Seven years ago, Richard Polsky, a former Warhol aler, set up his own art-thentitn bs. He quoted a Talmudic ia to scribe an elisn of inty that n take place between owners and their unproven masterpiec: “We don’t see thgs as they are, we see thgs as we are.” (Polsky’s life has also been threatened, over a fake Basquiat). “When you make money, you feel smart. It’s as simple as that,” he told me. “It do sort of jtify who you are as a person—‘I’m a smart person, I ma a good cisn. I saw somethg others didn’t see.’ ” Unfortably, the reverse is also te. Fdg out that you didn’t, fact, buy a pricels art work om a bankptcy ctn n raise troublg qutns about whom you image yourself to be.</p><p class="paywall">When I first met Omar, over lunch Geneva, I asked him why he didn’t jt try to sell the patg s disputed state, and let someone else take on the problem. He ma clear that this wasn’t an optn. “It is a battle,” he replied.</p><p class="paywall">“I thk ’s about personal ego,” Navarro chimed across the table, ditg a gree of associatn that now existed between his client and one of the greatt twentieth-century artists. “I thk he has a personal feelg, or he wants to prove to himself that he n go over this cisn by Frd.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">There is no Frd thentitn mtee. In 2013, the Frd archive appoted Cathere Lampert, a curator and historian, who knew Frd, and Toby Trev, a former curator of twentieth-century Brish art at Tate, to wre his talogue raisonné. The first talogue, of Frd’s prts, was published the sprg. A send talogue, of about five hundred patgs, will appear next year.</p><p class="paywall">In May, I vised Trev at his home, Wt London. Although Omar and Navarro had not formally submted “Standg Male Nu” for the talogue raisonné, Trev had seen an image of the patg an article the <em>Observer</em>, last year. “I don’t need to see aga,” he said. “If we put that patg a le wh all the other patgs that he ma om 1939 to 2011, I thk pretty much everyone would thk, That looks like the odd one out.” The selectn for the Frd talogue raisonné was practilly plete. “The creria is certaty,” Trev explaed. “And, if we’re not certa, then that’s .”</p><p class="paywall">Trev acknowledged Frd’s unpredictable behavr toward attributn durg his lifetime. “Frd was an extremely knowg dividual,” he said. “And he knows about mythmakg.” But Trev also observed that Frd’s artistic output was well documented. He had the same stud assistant, David Dawson, for the last twenty years of his life. He worked extremely slowly, ually on three portras at a time, and was fairly static, makg almost all his patgs London. Durg ne years of rearch, Trev and Lampert turned up only four small patgs that they prevly hadn’t seen, and three belonged to the fay of one of Frd’s lovers. “People dog the projects would love to fd a new work,” Trev said. “That really is fdg a new poem by Keats.” But he add that the chanc of disverg a major portra at this stage were almost nonexistent. “I very much doubt ,” he said. “What you may fd is unfished, abandoned patgs. . . . That’s fely happened.”</p><p class="paywall">In 1997, the year that Omar bought his nu, a creative director named Jon Lys Turner hered another patg attributed to Frd which the artist had nied. Turner’s portra, of a young man a black cravat, belonged for many years to Denis Wirth-Miller, a bohemian landspe pater. Wirth-Miller and his partner, Richard (Dicky) Choppg, were among Francis Ban’s clost iends. But they uldn’t stand Frd. Frd lled Wirth-Miller Worth-Nothg; Choppg kept a handwrten list of reasons he hated Frd. Turner relled that Wirth-Miller had left the patg to him wh a specific stctn: “I want sold as loudly as possible to really upset Lucian.”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Prcs feels phone vibratg beneath stack of mattrs" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoonptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptntext">“There’s a phone on vibrate somewhere this bed.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtooncred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptncred">Cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 13.009L5.53657 15.1278C4.432 17 5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">But wasn’t as straightforward as that. In 1985, Christie’s had accepted the patg for an upg ctn, only for Frd to reject the attributn. The reason appeared to be spe. Wirth-Miller and Frd had studied together at the East Anglian School of Patg and Drawg, Suffolk, durg the Send World War, and Wirth-Miller had owned the nvas sce then. Like Omar, Turner found the task of overturng Frd’s repudiatn virtually impossible. Pole phone lls went nowhere. “They said, ‘O.K., we’ll get back to you,’ ” Turner said. “Tumbleweed.”</p><p class="paywall">As Frd’s fame grew—and his pric rose—Turner’s relatnship wh the patg beme unfortably charged. “It’s a lot like gog through hell as you go through one recsn after another. I ed to thk to myself, Image if this is a Frd,” he said. “Image if this is worth lots of money.” Unlike Omar, however, Turner was close enough to the London art market to be sensive to s unspoken s. “A lot of people were ightened of him and they weren’t gog to go agast him,” he said, of Frd. “I am a sole dividual who go to a big ctn hoe. Which si is that ctn hoe gog to take?”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In 2015, the producers of a BBC arts program, “Fake or Fortune?,” agreed to vtigate Turner’s patg for the show. “I was full of trepidatn,” Turner said. “I also knew that, at the end of , if I did that myself, I will get nowhere.” Durg filmg, Diana Rawstron, Frd’s lawyer, revealed a note om a phone ll wh Frd, which he acknowledged startg Turner’s patg. Technil analysis of the nvas, pat, and bshstrok suggted strongly that the work had been pleted by a sgle hand. In 2019, Trev and Lampert agreed to clu Turner’s portra the talogue raisonné, as an unfished patg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="dvwk0c"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Three years later, Turner’s Frd remas unsold. He waed for the publicy around the TV show to fa and then offered to e to endow a scholarship at an art school. But the nversatns did not progrs. A uple of curators asked to borrow the patg for exhibns, but, siarly, did not follow through. When we met, Turner did not want to thk about why. “I have got no evince, no evince for anythg, but is history repeatg self,” he said. He wonred how the patg would be received by Frd’s circle if he put on the open market. “I’m still the outsir,” Turner said. “Let’s face . . . . They mt hate me, bee I did what they didn’t want. I won.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">You rry on, bee what else n you do? In November, 2021, Omar and Navarro lated their mpaign, sendg “Standg Male Nu” to the laboratory of Marc Rtelli, the surge of the Modigliani market. The Instut Rtelli charg up to thirty thoand ros to exame an art work. A specific type of rbon datg that has been recently applied to twentieth-century nvas allows them to be dated to wh a uple of years. Acrdg to the Instut Rtelli, the nvas of Omar’s patg dated om the early fifti, which led out a recent fery. In May, Navarro told me that Omar had unearthed a send wns, based Italy, who uld also attt to Ban spendg time Geneva the seventi. “Excellent news are on track and should be nfirmed soon,” Navarro texted.</p><p class="paywall">The longg is fect. One day, I remembered somethg that Harrison had said, at the Ban tate. A few years ago, he was sent a group of supposed Bans, which had origated Swen. He me to the ncln that they weren’t fak, as such, but had probably been ma by an art stunt the sixti or seventi, who had fallen unr Ban’s fluence; the patgs had later been mistaken for the real thg. I wonred if the same thg might have happened wh Omar’s nu. Frd supervised stunts sporadilly throughout his reer—at the Sla, London, and, the tumn of 1964, at the Norwich School of Art.</p><p class="paywall">I tracked down Roger Jam Elsgood, a rad producer his seventi, who was one of five stunts tght by Frd Norwich. One morng, the sprg, we met at the Royal Amy of Arts, on Picdilly. There was a major Ban show on display, which clud “Two Figur”—the masterpiece that had hung Frd’s bedroom—plete wh an image of the Muybridge reference on the wall next to . Elsgood didn’t thk that Omar’s patg uld have been done by a stunt. “It’s a relatively mature work by a very middlg figurative pater,” he said. “They were ten a penny.” Then he brought out his phone. He wanted to show me a patg that his wife, Jan, had bought the late sixti, om Ken Brazier, an artist whom Frd pated 1957. Elsgood had begun to thk that maybe they owned a Frd, too. “Of urse, when you start to wonr, you start to thk, Well, we’re rich,” he said. He was thkg about lookg to .</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">In July, I flew to Geneva to see “Standg Male Nu” for the first time. It was a swelterg day. Navarro met me at the railway statn, and we ate at a Lebane rtrant nearby. I asked him what he had learned about the art market durg his three and a half years of workg wh Omar. “There are two worlds: there is the art market and there is the scientific world,” he replied. “And I don’t know exactly why, but there are tangibl to that, where sometim they match and sometim they don’t.”</p><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Navarro, all the early signs om the Instut Rtelli were promisg. Omar was makg plans to sell the patg. We talked about s potential value. Navarro said uld be worth a falafel plate if turned out not to be a Frd. Or more than thirty ln dollars. “It’s a unique piece,” he said. “And, if you’re a llector, what are you lookg for? A basic patg, or a unique one wh a real story? The answer is there.” Navarro had wrten to Trev, vg him and Lampert to Geneva to see the work, but had not received a rponse. The ntug reluctance of the top Frd scholars to spell out their objectns to “Standg Male Nu” only nfirmed his belief that was genue. “There is never, all this story, any discsn, any talks, any tert,” Navarro said. “It is jt, <em>No</em>. That’s . . . . It means, you don’t want to see somethg. It’s somethg that you want to hi.”</p><p class="paywall">The patg was on display a nference room at Omar’s lawyers’ offic, the middle of town. It rted on a stand an alve. Omar had put the portra an elaborate gilt ame, which was distractg. Up close, I was stck by the patg’s tidy rrectns. The figure looked away. The patch of impasto on the flank was the artist’s only real flourish. The prev day, I had been to a small show of Frd’s patgs at the Frd Mm, the London home of Sigmund, and all the works there had seemed to posss more plexy, more problems, more life. “Everythg is fought over,” Feaver said, of Frd’s work. A home vio at the exhibn had showed the artist, his late teens and wearg a su, performg somerslts Sigmund’s garn.</p><p class="paywall">Moreno, the wns who remembered the patg and Francis Ban om the late seventi, was also at the meetg. He wore a Panama hat, silver reflective sunglass, and sneakers vered wh rhton. He said that he first met Ban at La Garçonnière, a dis bar. Moreno seemed totally plsible as someone who might have partied wh Ban almost fifty years ago. He said that Ban loved Geneva, bee of the anonymy and bee was the place where he first met Sophia Loren. (Her manager nfirmed this.) “He saw that people looked at her the street and no one bothered her,” Moreno told me. “He thought, I n do my private life here.” At the same time, there were gaps, and oddi, Moreno’s acunt. He claimed to have owned a Ban patg, and later sent me a vio of “Head,” a Ban work om 1962, whose recent owner said that the assertn was impossible. Moreno told me that he once had a photograph of Ban Geneva, but that might have been lost a flood. At one pot, for plited reasons, he showed me a pornographic vio on his phone.</p><p class="paywall">The margs of the multibilln-dollar art market are a bewilrg place. You are touchg immortaly, or you are touchg nothg at all. A few weeks after the meetg, Omar and Navarro fell out, over Omar’s plans to sell the patg and Navarro’s role the procs. (Neher man wanted to talk about the tails, for legal reasons.) In the nference room, there was an toxitg, disorientg atmosphere. I found myself doubtg everythg except the fact of the patg rtg agast the wall. When Navarro started talkg about his own forays as an artist, I even had the bizarre thought that maybe he had pated , or his father, who, as Navarro said, liked to make pi.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Across the table, Omar beamed. “I am proud to say I am the owner of a Frd,” he said. He repeated his offer to the tate, and to the thors of the talogue raisonné, to e and see “Standg Male Nu” for themselv. “It’s like sayg you don’t like an orange,” he said. “And yet you have never tasted one.” ♦</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS jyGBoi"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body bodyle-barrier articlebody articlebody--grid-margs"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-unslot nsumer-marketg-unslot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid 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class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">New Yorker rtoons about therapy</a>.</p></div></li></ul><div class="LkStackFooter-KfRyO ebnmps lk-stack--footer"><div><p><a href=">Sign up</a> for our daily newsletter to receive the bt stori om <em>The New Yorker</em>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu GWFsc ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBAvatar-bIGTqf eMWbvj"><a href="/ntributors/sam-knight"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" 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His first book, “<a href=">The Premonns Bure: A Te Acunt of Death Foretold</a>,” was published May, 2022.</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"></div></div></div><div data-ttid="ContentFooterBottom" class="ContentFooterBottom-jwWZfC kcbyiW"><div class="ContentFooterNewsletterContentWrapper-bmjtna kixtae"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper-fCqqkN jKSBhE newsletter-subscribe-form ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper-fpMElW eglIBL"><h3 class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDangeroHed-kRwWjt feDzQf newsletter-subscribe-formhed ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf">Weekly</h3><div class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDek-kXonvc grEaES newsletter-subscribe-formk">Your gui to the latt magaze and our biggt stori of the week, pl highlights om podsts, humor, and more.</div></div><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormInputsWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormInputsWrapper-keARJE hVWbzr"><form class="form-wh-validatn NewsletterSubscribeFormValidatn-iCYa-Dt dweEln" id="newsletter" name="newsletter" novalidate="" method="POST"><span class="TextFieldWrapper-Pzdqp hNhevp text-field" data-ttid="TextFieldWrapperemail"><label class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TextFieldLabel-klrYvg iUEiRd stdEm fvoOvz text-fieldlabel text-fieldlabel--sgle-le" for="newsletter-text-field-email" data-ttid="TextFieldLabelemail"><div class="TextFieldLabelText-cvvxBl eeDYTb">E-mail addrs</div><div class="TextFieldInputContaer-jcMPhb oFrOs"><put type="email" aria-scribedby="privacy-text" aria-valid="false" id="newsletter-text-field-email" required="" name="email" placeholr="E-mail addrs" class="BaseInput-fAzTdK TextFieldControlInput-eFUxkf eGzzTT lglhcT text-fieldntrol text-fieldntrol--put" data-ttid="TextFieldInputemail"/></div></label><button class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv dwpimO button button--utily TextFieldButton-csBrgY edxbrw" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="subm"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN hzwRuG button__label">Sign up</span></button></span><div id="privacy-text" tabx="-1" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDisclaimer-bTVtiV bsgLJZ"><span><p>By signg up, you agree to our <a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">User Agreement</a> and <a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement</a>. 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When I fally started “The Frd,” one prciple was clear: no Dickens.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-embyle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-embyle"><div class="summary-embylentent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle bylbyle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU bylename"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss bylepreamble">By </span>Zadie Smh</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-emasset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-emimage-lk summary-em-trackgimage-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-emimage"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-emimage rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Puzzle of Puttg Vio Gam a Mm" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-emntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-embric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">The Art World</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackghed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-emhed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">The Puzzle of Puttg Vio Gam a Mm</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-emk">After years of neglect, art stutns are g around to gam. Can they master the ntrols?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-embyle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-embyle"><div class="summary-embylentent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle bylbyle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU bylename"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss bylepreamble">By </span>Julian Lus</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-emasset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-emimage-lk summary-em-trackgimage-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-emimage"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-emimage rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Sam Kerr and the Dream of an Atralian World Cup Tle" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-emntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-embric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">The Sportg Scene</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackghed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-emhed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Sam Kerr and the Dream of an Atralian World Cup Tle</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-emk">The twenty-ne-year-old striker, one of the world’s great srers, has raised hop a untry where soccer was once an afterthought.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-embyle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-embyle"><div class="summary-embylentent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle bylbyle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU bylename"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss bylepreamble">By </span>Naaman Zhou</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-emasset-ntaer"><a 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lucian freud gay

25 Dec 2024

LUCIAN FRD’S GAY RELATNSHIPS EXPLORED NEW EXHIBN

Lucian Frd had a famoly plex love life fatherg children wh many women but before all that there was a passnate, secret and endurg gay relatnship volvg two other young artists, a new exhibn wrer and curator Julian Mach has pieced together a story the artist tried to supprs and one, he argu, which helps better unrstand the art of story volv Frd, Adrian Ryan and John Mton who as young, handsome artists their 20s had, Mach says, a closens and sexual timacy which is ltle known and Ryan self-portra.

Others, cludg the artist David Tdle, who beme a iend of Frd’s the 1940s, have nfirmed the has been said to have had a number of gay affairs, cludg wh the poet Stephen Spenr. “It was difficult bee of the tim [when homosexual acts were illegal] and of urse they were so young. Lucian Frds gay relatnships disvered latt nventn.

Lucian Frd had a famoly plex relatnship fatherg kids wh several girls before all those thgs there is a passnate, key and endurg homosexual mment volvg two more youthful artisans, a nventn reveals. Frd is nsired experienced some gay issu, cludg wh the poet Stephen Spenr. It was actually hard bee of the hours [when homosexual acts were illegal] as well as they certaly were therefore young.

LUCIAN FRDS GAY RELATNSHIPS DISVERED LATT NVENTN

’”“We’re lookg at art through social issu of today, and I thk ’s actually a one-dimensnal readg, ” said the gallerist, who met Frd when she was workg at Christie’s and saw him regularly until his ath: for breakfast, or lunch, and when his works me up ctns or exhibns that she llaborated Gayford, a Brish thor and cric who posed for Frd’s portra “Man Wh a Blue Srf” (2004) and wrote a book about , said misogyny was an unfair cricism of Frd, bee he picted men jt as harshly, and “regard himself as a femist. ”He was “tryg to see thgs tthfully, as they really are, ” said Gayford, who recently eded a pilatn of Frd’s exhibn is staged a few rooms away om some of the world’s ft old master patgs, and on the very spot where a Raphael retrospective was held.

Acrdg to wns, the nu self- portra hung a Geneva apartment equented by artists—cludg Francis Ban and, on ocsn, Frd—for gay liaisons. When the owner unveiled the patg a private exhibn, an dividual om Geneva’s gay muny remembered seeg the work hangg the apartment, and relled that was pated at the requt of Ban and displayed (along wh another work) at the entrance to be enjoyed secret by the visors.

WAS FRD “GAY-FRIENDLY?"

2020 also marks the 100th anniversary of his publitn, Psychogenis of a Case of Homosexualy a Woman, which he lays out a theory about what “” homosexualy. Jt for the rerd, still today, no one knows what “” eher heterosexualy or homosexualy. For much of the 20th century, the field of psychoanalysis was hostile to gay people, mostly characterizg them as mentally ill.

Fortunately, the last quarter-century, anizatns like the Amerin Psychoanalytic Associatn (APsaA), which I joed 2015, have bee more “gay-iendly. Yet, attempts to fd Frd’s support for ntemporary, tolerant analytic attus, some portray him as a historic ally of gay people.

GAY HISTORY: RONNIE KRAY – “THE QUEEN MOTHER”.

In makg this se, the field’s many years of anti-gay antipathy are treated as a viatn om Frd’s origal attu of acceptance. To start, while Frd did not believe homosexualy was an illns, he did not thk was entirely normal eher.

It was this belief that led Frd to sign a statement to crimalize homosexualy 1930s Germany and Atria.

Frd’s 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexualy is another example of how his wrgs n be misunrstood if taken out of their origal ntext and filtered through the lens of morn bat about the social stat of gay people.

LOVE LUCIAN BY DAVID DAWSON AND MART GAYFORD REVIEW

He add a footnote a 1914 re-edn statg, “Psychoanalytic rearch is most cidly opposed to any attempt at separatg off homosexuals om the rt of mankd as a group of special character.

BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM LUCIAN FREUD GAY

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How far would he go to prove ?</div><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl SplScreenContentHearByle-kvEhqE ejWxsm"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx byle__name-lk button" href="/ntributors/sam-knight">Sam Knight</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2022-09-19T06:00:00-04:00" class="SplScreenContentHearPublishDate-bMGEVk gvRvVr">September 19, 2022</time><div class="SocialInsWrapper-hKMEXV ffgPVr social-ins social-ins--standard SplScreenContentHearSocialShare-gSVclr kUKgnn"><ul data-ttid="socialInslist" 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class="SocialInNetworkInComponent-cZaKGz dlOAhZ in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save Story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z" fill="black"></path><path class="in-bookmark-stroke" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z" fill="black"></path></svg></div></a></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM eHLzLy grid--em"><div class="SplScreenContentHearLeadWrapper-jYfGAC kBeEbL"><div data-ttid="ContentHearLeadAsset" class="SplScreenContentHearLeBlock-nUOA cwQiEB"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh sxTal"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh sxTal rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="A patg a home." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SplScreenContentHearGrid-kFpOdh fLkIyA"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn SplScreenContentHearCaptn-iOfEOv ckLUKG"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">The llector claimed that, one day, he got a ll om Frd. “You will not sell the patg all your life,” the artist said.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Photographs by Lewis Khan for The New Yorker</span></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-body__ntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU cAHp"><div 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data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In the sprg of 1997, an art llector Geneva received a ll om a ntact at the cy’s office of bankptci and legal proceedgs. There was an ctn g up, of an tate that had gone unclaimed for ne years, and among the lots was a patg that the llector might want to take a look at: a nvas attributed to the Brish artist Lucian Frd. The llector was a bsman, origally om North Ai, who was ed to pickg up furnure and art works at petive pric om Geneva’s plentiful array of galleri, antique alers, and salrooms. He is keen to prerve his privacy, so I will ll him Omar.</p><p class="paywall">Omar went to see the patg that day, at the ctn hoe Carouge, a suburb to the south of the cy. The tate had belonged to a man named Adolfo di Calo, who died 1988. Acrdg to ctn rerds, di Calo appeared to have been a llector, too. In the seventi, he had sold a seventeenth-century patg of Pan, the Greek god of shepherds, that was once believed to be a Rubens.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The work attributed to Frd was a medium-sized, naturalistic oil portra of a naked man, pated om the si and om behd. Parts of the background appeared unfished, or hastily sketched, but the figure self was skillfully ptured, wh a certa power. “Oh, ’s tertg, ’s strong,” Omar relled sayg to himself.</p><p class="paywall">The bankptcy office had attached an timate of five hundred thoand Swiss ancs (about three hundred and fifty thoand dollars) to the work. At the time, a regnized Frd portra of a named ster uld fetch three tim that amount. Omar asked his ntact to hold back, as one of the fal lots of the sale, so that the room would be quieter. On the afternoon of March 7th, Omar bought the patg for ls than a hundred thoand Swiss ancs, or seventy thoand dollars. He also picked up one of di Calo’s si tabl, a lampsha, and a bronze sculpture the style of Giaetti.</p><p class="paywall">“After I bought the patg, I went home and put the rt of my llectn and I fot about ,” Omar told me French when we met, earlier this year, at an expensive hotel on the lakeont Geneva. He wore a Harrods baseball p and was rryg a plastic bag. For years, Frd’s searchg, ndid portras went agast the overwhelmg appete of the ntemporary art market, which was for abstractn. Although he was a famo pater England, part bee of his surname (Sigmund, his grandfather, went to London as a refugee 1938), Frd was a rpected rather than a fashnable artist Europe. In 2002, Omar watched a program about his reer on Swiss televisn, which prompted him to learn more about the patg. So he put on eBay.</p><p class="paywall">Omar posted the ad on the eveng of Saturday, November 30th. The em scriptn read “Lucian Frd Patg.” Omar told me that he didn’t tend to sell the work; rather, he hoped to flh out rmatn. “To do a rennaissance,” he said. Four days later, Omar got a msage om the ctn se: his em had been blocked bee of a pyright plat. He lled eBay’s office France, and was told that the plat had e om the artist.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Omar, a few days later the phone rang his apartment. It was early the afternoon. “I said, ‘Hello, hello,’ and after a long time I heard a voice: ‘I am Frd, Lucian Frd,’ ” Omar relled. The voice, speakg English, but wh a Germanic rasp, said that he was the rightful owner of Omar’s patg and that he wanted back. (Omar had put his phone number on the eBay ad.) Omar says that Frd offered him a hundred thoand Swiss ancs, which he cled.</p><p class="paywall">Three days later, the voice lled back. This time, acrdg to Omar, the man was angry. Frd was eighty years old at the time. The ller offered Omar twice what he had paid for the patg, but still the llector refed to sell. “ ‘No. Sorry,’ ” Omar remembered sayg. “ ‘I am lovg this patg. I am lovg this.’ He said, ‘Fuck you.’ He said, I remember, ‘You will not sell the patg all your life.’ And he hung up.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Omar has been tryg to unravel the meang of this ll—and have his patg thentited—for the past twenty years. Owng a disputed, possibly wildly valuable, art work is a cel tt of any person’s athetic valu, basic reason, and nate (often well-disguised) pacy for greed. Close your ey and there are lns of dollars hangg on the wall. Open them, and there is nothg to see. Hope flar, di for years at a time, then sparks aga, at odd moments. The qutn of thorship n be both madngly simple and ightengly difficult to rolve. Laboratori and lawyers might tell you what you want to hear, and charge you by the hour. Omar always projected nfince when we spoke. “There is a betiful story behd this patg,” he told me more than once. But there were days this year when I wished that I had never heard of at all.</p><le-embed name="feature-flt" attrs="[object Object]" childTyp="image" ntentType="llout:feature-flt"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Thierry Navarro" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">Thierry Navarro was asked to get to the bottom of the thentitn problem.</span></div></figure></le-embed><p class="paywall">In July, 2005, Omar shipped the portra to London, where was examed by Frd’s longtime nfidant and bgrapher, William Feaver. By this time, Omar was wonrg if uld be a self-portra, notg a siary between the face of the figure and photographs of Frd om the fifti and sixti. In ctoms documents, he clared the value of the patg to be a ln Swiss ancs.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">Feaver gave the thumbs-down: the feet were unfished, which was unlike Frd; the body was too heavily built for a self-portra; the background was stylistilly off. When I asked Feaver about the picture recently, almost seventeen years after the viewg, he had no memory of seeg at all. But after nsultg his diary he agreed wh his ial assertn, which was rerd by a gallery assistant at the time. “If this spectral me had gone , he would have said roundly that wasn’t by Frd,” Feaver said. “There’s nothg like Lucian’s work ever, anywhere, to survive. . . . Every sgle certifiable one is fundamentally que different om this rather reful, pastakg, rrect thg.”</p><p class="paywall">Frd was shown imag of the patg several tim, by his dghter Esther and by Pilar Ordovas, a former puty chairman of postwar and ntemporary art at Christie’s, who is now a gallerist. Ordovas grew close to Frd 2003, after she brought to market a rare urban scene of his, which he had not seen for thirty years. She beme a regular visor to his stud and handled his relatnship wh the ctn hoe. “The artist was alive. I was dog my duty of showg him this work, slightly embarrassed,” she told me. “He said, ‘Pilar, absolutely not.’ There was not even a moment’s thought or qutn.” After Esther showed her father imag of the patg, Frd asked for his name to be removed om the ame.</p><p class="paywall">Omar had more luck wh pennt experts. In the summer of 2006, Nicholas Eastgh, a world thory on pigmentatn analysis, travelled to Geneva. Eastgh examed the patg, which was now beg lled “Standg Male Nu,” wh a microspe, unr UV light, and took sixteen ty pat sampl. Eastgh found “a seri of pots of siary and rrponnce” between Omar’s patg and known Frd works: trac of charal the pat, the e of hog-hair bsh, which Frd favored startg the late fifti, and the prence of a loose preparatory drawg, pencil. On the bottom edge of the nvas, Eastgh also found a partial fgerprt, which uld pot to a more five nnectn wh the artist.</p><p class="paywall">In life, Frd was a keen guardian of his œuvre and of his privacy. He munited mostly by phone but did not give out his number, and he changed often. He was sensive to the market for his work and hated signg his name. “He was prepared to do whatever was necsary orr to protect what he thought was his right to be able to project to the world what he wanted,” Geordie Greig, a former edor of the <em>Daily Mail</em> and a iend of Frd’s, who wrote a book about him, told me.</p><p class="paywall">Most of Frd’s failed patgs never left the stud. “Lucian was an avid stroyer of works that went wrong,” Feaver wrote me, an e-mail. “I n remember many awag the cull. Generally, the—portras pecially—would be stiff and, more often, disproportnate.” Frd also kept an eye on patgs long after he ma them. Throughout his reer, he beme angry when substandard works found their way to the market or fotten nvas rurfaced. In the early fifti, the hoe of Gerald Garder, Frd’s lawyer at the time, was broken to and a sgle picture was taken: a portra of Carol, Garder’s dghter, which Frd had pated but didn’t thk much of. The story gave rise to a legend, enuraged by Frd, that he paid crimals to get hold of patgs that displeased him or that he regretted seeg out the world. Late his life, one of Frd’s dghters, Rose Boyt, hated to send him a patg for thentitn, for fear that he would punch a hole stead.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="89op67"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Everythg had to be <em>remarkable</em>,” Greig said. Frd was drawn to extrem, and to fights. In the early seventi, John Craxton, an artist and an timate iend of Frd’s, sold some of his drawgs to a llector. When a aler asked Frd to sign the sketch, he was fur, wrg, “John Craxton is a cunt” on one of them. Frd’s fight wh Craxton—a ms of legal letters and junctns—went on for years. At one pot, acrdg to Ian Colls, Craxton’s bgrapher, Frd managed to have a Craxton portra lled “Lucian” removed om an exhibn, by sayg was not of him. “They beme an art form,” Colls said of Frd’s fds. “He had this phenomenal energy. He actually need this to get him fired up. He need enemi.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Frd died 2011, at the age of eighty-eight. From then on, his tate, and his lawyers, took over the protectn of his name. Omar felt that every attempt to have his patg thentited, or even looked at, rulted a myster ad end. Cursy would turn to silence. A few months after Frd’s ath, a French nnoissr named Hector Obalk agreed to go to Geneva. Obalk prents an art-history show on French televisn. In the precedg , he had filmed two hundred and fifty-eight Frd works, llectg hours of footage llaboratn wh the artist’s stud. Obalk viewed the patg Omar’s office. “He had a pipe. He stood for half an hour like this,” Omar relled, strikg a pose of ntemplatn.</p><p class="paywall">Obalk had no doubt that the patg was by Frd. But he saw limatns, too. Like Feaver, he found the feet unnvcg. He thought the face showed poor technique. Moreover, he rpected Frd’s right to reject the patg. “Authentitn of an œuvre do not only pend on the realy of a piece of work, but also on an athetic cisn sanctned by a number of acts, such as s signature, the stud output, exhibn the artist’s lifetime, etc.,” Obalk wrote, a ne-page report.</p><p class="paywall">But the patg didn’t look like a fery, or a se of mistaken attributn. Obalk noted a patch of impasto on the figure’s flank—pat so thick that stands out om the nvas, a characteristic of Frd’s work—and a handlg of the flh ton that relled several of his other portras. In Obalk’s analysis, the patg was <em>by</em> Frd but not <em>a</em> Frd. “In our opn, <em>Standg Male</em> is a nvas which Lucian Frd pated, then abandoned and disowned,” he wrote. “It is always more lite to thentite an unfished work ( which the artist has h an impasse) than to thentite a roundg masterpiece.”</p><p class="paywall">Twelve days before he livered his verdict to Omar, the sprg of 2012, Obalk received a warng om Goodman Derrick, L.L.P., the law firm that reprented Frd’s tate. The letter reerated Frd’s disavowal of the patg durg his lifetime. “It seems unclear to why you may be g your extensive knowledge of the work of Lucian Frd to back an attributn you mt know mak no sense,” the letter said. The law firm asked Obalk not to thentite the patg but “to ny ,” and appeared to threaten any future öperatn by the tate on Obalk’s televisn work.</p><p class="paywall">Obalk thentited the patg anyway. He cled to speak for this article. “I have nothg to add,” he said. For several years, he was the only nnoissr willg to study Omar’s portra, let alone give a posive opn. The trail went ld until January, 2016, when Omar mounted a private show of his llectn at the Freeport, a huge storage facily for art works and other valuabl, Geneva. To his surprise, an acquatance named Ignac Moreno stopped ont of “Standg Male Nu,” and said that he had seen before.</p><p class="paywall">“It was a flashback,” Moreno told me recently. Moreno, who was born Cuba, is his mid-sixti. He remembered seeg the nu on the wall of the apartment of the prev owner, di Calo, where he ocsnally went as a young man, the late seventi. Moreno scribed the apartment as a gay oasis Geneva at the time. He showed me a photograph of himself stg near a fireplace, wh another nvas propped agast the wall behd him. Curly, Moreno said that the apartment was ed by Francis Ban when he stayed the cy: a place of ms and pat by day, and r gathergs by night.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The relatnship between Frd and Ban, two of Bra’s greatt twentieth-century artists, is one of the most excg and plex stori morn art. Durg the fifti, the two men saw each other almost every day. Ban was thirteen years olr: famo, more obvly transgrsive, gregar and , openly gay when homosexual activy was still illegal Bra. Frd was, many ways, an unlikely protégé. He was a social celebry—the weekend gut of aristocrats, turng heads grotty drkg ns Soho—magic to an almost tolerable gree. People kept fallg love wh him. But Frd was hnted by Ban’s geni: the olr artist’s willgns to embrace accint, his feel for pat self. “Real imagatn is technil imagatn,” Ban told <em>Time</em>, 1952. “It is the ways you thk up to brg an event to life aga.”</p><p class="paywall">Each was entranced by the other. Ban pated Frd at least seventeen tim. The younger artist had accs to Ban’s cramped, image-strewn stud. (Ban preferred to work alone, om photographs, often taken by the artists’ mutual iend John Deak, which he first cmpled up and threw on the floor.) There was a fierce attractn. A Ban patg, “Two Figur,” om 1953, which is based on an Eadweard Muybridge photograph of wrtlers but seems to show two men makg love, hung oppose Frd’s bed for fifty years. He was reluctant to lend for exhibns.</p><p class="paywall">Frd pated Ban only twice (an exquise, postrd-size portra, on pper, om 1952, was stolen Berl 1988 and has never been revered), but, of the two men, he owed the greater artistic bt. “I got very impatient wh the way I was workg. It was limg,” he told Feaver. “I thk my admiratn for Francis me to this.” In the late fifti, Frd moved away om his hyper-ntrolled, almost ert patg style to a looser, more baroque mo of portraure, which he ultimately realized wh his ndid, sprawlg nus of the eighti and neti. Frd pated om life, workg on some piec for years at a time. “My work is purely tobgraphil,” he said. “It is about myself and my surroundgs. It is an attempt at a rerd. I work om the people that tert me, and that I re about and thk about, rooms that I live and know.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">As Frd fully matured as an artist, he and Ban drifted apart, wh ocsnal spats until Ban’s ath, 1992. In 2008, Frd’s “Benefs Supervisor Sleepg” sold for $33.6 ln, makg him, for a time, the world’s most expensive livg artist. Both paters are now highly llectible, but works that rry a charge of their early love and rivalry are a tegory of their own. Earlier this year, a sgle panel of a Ban triptych, “Study for Portra of Lucian Frd,” om 1964, sold for fifty-two ln dollars.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Three mobsters seated around a table" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“Once he los the hat, he’ll be jt what the voters are lookg for an elected official.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Frank Cotham</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span 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class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">The possibily of a nnectn between Omar’s patg and Ban was tantalizg. Had Ban owned the work? What was he dog Geneva?</p><p class="paywall">In late 2018, Omar asked Thierry Navarro, a Swiss vtigator, to get to the bottom of the thentitn problem. An engeer by trag, Navarro is an alert, quietly stubborn man his early fifti, who wears half-rimmed glass and walks extremely fast, as if he were slightly late, which he often is. His other jobs have clud velopg puter gam and a new navigatn system for motorcyclists. His father, Pedro, was a landspe artist, and Navarro himself is a self-tght pater. “I’m a multidimensnal person, que a plex one, I gus,” he told me. Nohels, Navarro saw the qutn of Frd’s thorship bary, provable terms. “It has been nied. That is a fact. No qutn,” he said. “And there is another fact: the patg is on the table. I mean, exists. And nothg is agast the attributn to Lucian Frd.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="lepbyc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Studyg Omar’s file, Navarro noticed that Obalk had flagged the amic, formal pose of the subject as extremely unual for Frd. “Throw of disc?” Obalk had asked, parenth. One eveng, as Navarro read up on Ban, he found himself scrollg through an onle py of “The Human Figure Motn,” a llectn of Muybridge photographs om 1901. “Sudnly, I me to a seri of imag—then I went slowly,” he relled. The seri was lled “<em class="small">Athlete. tchg at a ball</em>.” Navarro stopped scrollg. “It was jt, like, That’s ,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">Navarro zoomed . To his eye, the pose of Omar’s portra matched a figure the third row of the Muybridge seri, down to the le of the wall and the floor the background and a blemish on the figure’s left buttock. “My md was, jt, Wow,” Navarro said. The only difference was that the imag were reversed—a discrepancy that uld be explaed if the artist had been patg a mirror, which, if the work was a self-portra, he might have been. “You get the dots and you start drawg a le,” Navarro said. “It’s probably not the entire le, but there are a lot of siari and nsistency, I would say, between all those dots.” If his theory was rrect, and Frd had worked om a key Ban reference, that would make the patg a remarkable artifact of the artists’ relatnship. “I thk this might have been a challenge requted by Ban,” Navarro said. “ ‘Can you pat yourself om the back? For me?’ ”</p><p class="paywall">In the sprg of 2019, Omar and Navarro approached Art Regnn, a tech pany outsi Zurich, and asked to evaluate the patg. Art Regnn artificial telligence to tect the bshstrok, lor palette, posnal choic, and other barely fable mannerisms of dividual artists. The C.E.O. is Cara Popovici, a theoretil physicist. She traed the first prototype of the system to regnize works by Max Pechste, the German Exprsnist, orr to weed out fak by Wolfgang Beltracchi, a notor fer, and has sce worked wh mms, galleri, and dozens of private llectors. In 2019, Art Regnn penntly thentited a van Gogh self-portra at the Norwegian Natnal Mm, Oslo. When she started out, Popovici worried about givg owners bad news. It turns out that most people are relieved, eher way. “They’re jt glad to have an answer,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">For Omar’s portra, Art Regnn ed data om two hundred and thirty-five known Frd patgs and more than three hundred patgs by other parable artists om the same perd. The were broken down to a total of some five thoand agments, which were ed to tra the A.I. to intify patch of nvas pated by Frd, and those by other artists. For each art work examed by the A.I., Popovici explaed, the mol is n forty-five tim, wh slightly different libratns, to make sure that the over-all rult is reprentative. Popovici’s team found that “Standg Male Nu” had an eighty-ne-per-cent chance of beg an origal art work by Lucian Frd. “From our pot of view, ’s a very, very solid rult,” she told me. I asked if, to her knowledge, her A.I. system had ever been wrong. “No,” Popovici replied. Then she lghed for a long time, as though this was somehow an appropriate qutn.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The A.I. report appeared to vdite Navarro’s technil approach to provg that “Standg Male Nu” was by Frd. “There is no feelg,” he said. “It’s jt facts.” Navarro me to perceive the rejectns of the artist and his tate as a matter of trigue, rather than facts wh meang of their own.</p><p class="paywall">“<em>Why</em> would the pater have nied this? That is really, for me, the pot,” he said. When I suggted that Frd may have nied the work bee he didn’t pat , Navarro shgged off the ia. Both Omar and his vtigator beme eply spic of what Navarro lled “the Frd environment”—the close group of experts, former assistants, bgraphers, and lawyers who guard his work, and s value— London. “Nobody’s gog to move,” Navarro said. “There is this kd of secret le. You don’t go agast the will of someone like Frd.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In time, Omar’s file of paperwork relatg to the patg grew thick, beg— the ey of many art-world sirs—a problem s own right. A New York-based art lawyer told me that he tun out whenever people start talkg about scientific reports relatg to disputed art works. “You n tell when somethg don’t feel right,” another aler said, of siar suatns, “when someone so sperately wants somethg.” The art market n’t stand doubt. Great art should be simple, agreed-upon, and expensive: visceral to the eye and to the wallet. Tth is more important than facts. “The moment the story is elaborated, the boredom sets ,” Ban once said, of plited patgs. “The story talks lour than the pat.”</p><p class="paywall">It didn’t help that Omar and Navarro were relative outsirs, wh no track rerd of owng or rearchg Frd’s work. Some of their attempts to make headway were touchg their naïveté. Navarro lled Stland Yard and the F.B.I., to see if they had pi of Frd’s fgerprts that they would be willg to share. (The thori cled.) Navarro was offend when experts seemed to skim through a dossier that he had prepared on the patg, or didn’t engage wh his Muybridge theory.</p><p class="paywall">One proment European aler, who went to see the patg at a private bank Geneva, told me that he had misgivgs as soon as he walked through the door. “I’m not an expert Frd,” the aler told me. “But I am an expert suatns.” “Standg Male Nu” was on an easel, next to another work om Omar’s llectn, which the aler believed was a reproductn.</p><p class="paywall">“It was jt a farce,” the aler said. “Everybody was talkg about lns of dollars. . . . And I was, like, What are we talkg about? We shouldn’t be talkg about money when we don’t even know what we have.” Acrdg to the aler, Navarro seemed to thk that was up to the Frd tate to disprove the attributn, rather than up to him to provi any proof that this uld be a Frd the first place. “There was nothg to substantiate anythg,” the aler said. “I’m not doubtg the good fah of everyone. But, basilly, when you’re outsi of the art world, you put the chart before the ttle. I don’t know how you say English, but you do thgs backwards.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="c0th2i"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Durg the meetg, the aler lled Ordovas, the former Christie’s expert, whom he knew, for her opn. She told him that Frd had nied the work durg his lifetime, which the aler said was the end of the matter. Navarro told me that he thought the ll was staged—a stunt signed to huiate him and Omar—and he lost his temper. “I was a b upset,” he said. He remd the aler of Obalk’s verdict, the A.I. report, and Eastgh’s posive pigmentatn analysis. “How n you say that? Do you have no rpect for those experts? Who are you?” Navarro relled sayg.</p><p class="paywall">The aler softened and, acrdg to Navarro, acknowledged, “<em>Ça pue Frd</em>.” “It stks of Frd.” (The aler disput Navarro’s acunt of the meetg.) But to what end? “Even if was the se, there’s nothg I n do about ,” the aler told me. Acrdg to Navarro, the aler offered to send the patg to London aga, to other experts that he knew, but there was a risk that might be stroyed, or disfigured, the procs. “Come on,” Navarro said. “It’s a joke.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">More than a hundred and fifty years after art historians began certifyg Old Master patgs (for a fee, of urse), the l for thentitg art works are the same as the l for the rt of the art market: strict, scholarly, and unrmed by human s.</p><p class="paywall">People talk about three pillars, or a triangle, of thentitn: nnoissrship (What do look like?), technil analysis (What is ma of?), and provenance (Where did e om?). But tth every major artist’s output is a fiefdom unto self, wh gt gatekeepers and unwrten l. There is no sgle thentitn procs. Some artists’ tat have a mtee, ma up of scholars and hangers-on, to evaluate possible works. Others have disband theirs, part bee of the risk of ligatn om rich llectors. (Sce 2012, mte for Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenste, Keh Harg, and Jean-Michel Basquiat have all stopped thentitg works.) Some artists have a sgle talogue raisonné—a five rerd of all their work, typilly chronologil orr—which acts as the reference for their œuvre. Others have none. Modigliani has five, and they are all different.</p><p class="paywall">Money mak everythg worse. “You n have good people at the begng. And then, you know, they beg to be fluenced for some reason,” a Swiss lawyer who works the field told me. At the top end of the market, the power to thentite a Pisso, a Rothko, a Hepworth, is a lambent, magil thg. Often to rt—by chance or by reful plottg— the hands of two or three people. Preparg a talogue raisonné is a project wh s own unique rewards, risks, and accs to privileged rmatn. Dealers have been known to fund the rearch, orr to fd out who owns an artist’s œuvre. Decidg what to clu, and what to leave out, n have huge fancial implitns. One aler scribed the rponsibily as a kd of curse.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Woman wearg baby rrier on red rpet" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“Who are you wearg?”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT 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5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">But the lure of beg an thentitor is strong. Sce the late neti, Marc Rtelli, a French curator and nnoissr, has been attemptg to sort out the Modigliani ms. He began work on a sixth (and prumably fal) talogue raisonné wh a rearch stute France, fund by the Wilnste fay, the legendary Parisian art alers.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In 2001, Rtelli psed his work on Modigliani’s drawgs after receivg ath threats. I asked him recently whether the threats had e bee he had been willg to clu prevly unregnized works (which n drive down pric) or bee he had taken out existg Modiglianis. “Out. Out. Out!” Rtelli replied. For the past twenty-five years, he explaed, his problem has been a talogue raisonné first published by Ambrog Ceroni, 1958. The Ceroni talogue has e to fe the market for Modigliani (the most expensive Modigliani nu sold for a hundred and seventy ln dollars) spe ntag obv omissns. Rtelli believ that Ceroni also clud feri and even touched up Modigliani’s patgs himself. (The talogue’s publisher did not rpond to a requt for ment.) “The market for me is jt mad,” he said. “Bee they are negatn of the tth for jt private and fancial tert.”</p><p class="paywall">It is unclear whether Rtelli will ever set the rerd straight. Sce 2020, he has been ligatn wh the Wilnste Plattner Instute over tellectual-property rights relatg to the latt talogue raisonné. Rtelli is himself an art-world player. He has been a curator and an entreprenr, as well as a scholar. He lends his name to a high-end art-analysis laboratory, the Instut Rtelli-Invtigatn, Geneva. He promised that his Modigliani-patgs talogue will be published next year. I said that the project sound like a nightmare. “Not so much,” he replied. “I thk I am the nightmare of many people.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Overturng an artist’s own verdict on a work—durg his lifetime or after his ath—is a tough move a tough game. In France, the moral right of an artist to whdraw or ny his work is perpetual, and passed on to his heirs. Disrdg art is an athetic gture self, the verse of the creative act. “Cuttg up the patgs was always an act of liberatn,” Gerhard Richter, the German artist, told the magaze <em>Der Spiegel</em> a few years ago. Richter is thought to have stroyed about sixty works om the early sixti, when he began to pat om photographs, that would now have an timated value of six hundred ln dollars. If an artist tts somethg he mak, particularly an early work or an experiment that failed, then the market tends to reflect that. “You wouldn’t want to own that, would you?” one aler said. “If you uld buy anythg?”</p><p class="paywall">But what about when artists lie, or muddy the waters for their own reasons? “I often pat fak,” Pisso is said to have said. In the sixti, he was shown a photograph of “La Doulr,” a patg that he supposedly ma 1902 or 1903. Pisso scribed the work as a “joke by iends,” and was ignored for s a storage room at the Metropolan Mm of Art until was fively thentited 2010. In 1995, a New York appeals urt overled a judgment that a work by Balth was a fake jt bee the artist said was. At the age of eighty-three, Balth had signed an affidav sayg that he was not bld and that “Colette Profil,” a portra om 1954, was a “<em>fx manifte</em>.” But the urt sid wh the work’s former owner and an expert om the Met, who suggted that Balth was tryg to get back at his ex-wife, who had thentited the first place.</p><p class="paywall">Along wh the moral and legal hazards, orphaned works are often difficult to intify bee they are simply not that good. “It’s slapdash,” Gary Tterow, a Met curator, told the <em>Tim</em>, 2010, of the thentited Pisso. Talkg to Frd experts, I noticed that even nnoissrs who were extremely disparagg about Omar’s patg often left the door open a ty crack. “I saw a photo of this a year or two ago and assumed ’s a dud,” Jam Kirkman, one of Frd’s former alers, told me an e-mail. “One is pable of beg proved wrong, I suppose,” Feaver said.</p><p class="paywall">One day Febary, I stopped by the Ban tate, which occupi Ban’s former stud, Reece Mews, Kensgton. I was lookg for evince that Ban spent time Geneva. Until 2016, the Ban tate had an thentitn mtee, which was chaired by Mart Harrison, the edor of Ban’s five-volume talogue raisonné. (The mtee stopped meetg after the talogue was published.) Like Frd, Ban stroyed or abandoned hundreds of patgs durg his reer, many of which then ped om his ntrol one way or another. (Ban’s stud was burgled three tim; roughly a hundred nvas that had been slashed by Ban survive.) When genue works have rurfaced, Harrison has had no choice but to regnize them as such. “If I believe a work to be by Ban, I have to say ,” he told me. “I wish weren’t, many ways. What am I gog to do?”</p><p class="paywall">Ban and Frd scholars mata a quietly bchy relatnship, and Harrison, who has a mischievo si, took an tert Omar’s patg. “It don’t stop beg a Frd jt bee ’s not good,” he said. “<em>I</em> wouldn’t dismiss .” In a recent bgraphy of Ban, the Amerin art wrers Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens suggted that he ma short trips to Swzerland the seventi, likely to llect money om a Swiss bank acunt. Harrison ved me to look at one of Ban’s two passports for the perd. I found only a few Swiss borr stamps, om Basel, 1969 and 1976.</p><p class="paywall">Harrison thought that Omar’s patg was petently done. “Some of the Bans that I had to reproduce were much more negligible than this,” he said. In the room where Ban ed to pat, Sophie Pretori, who manag the tate’s archive, magnified an image of “Standg Male Nu” on her puter. “I jt don’t thk the body is right,” she said. “There’s no distortn.” Harrison looked aga. “It looks like somebody else,” he agreed. “But who on earth is somebody else?” Harrison said he thought the patg had a thirteen-per-cent chance of beg by Lucian Frd. I uldn’t tell if he was teasg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="a4qtb"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The perils of the thentitn procs, and the slim chance of extreme rewards, mean that some quts never end. Eastgh, the pigmentatn expert, told me that he se a lot: the bulgg file, the flights om one European cy to another, the latt voice for a round of bomb-pulse radrbon datg. It’s ually a mpaign rried on by men and, when they die, Eastgh observed, ntued by their dghters. At a certa pot, stops beg about the patg and be a search for eper, and even more impossible, forms of validatn. Owng a work ma by a geni duc a feelg of nnectn—to somethg pure, and, perhaps, to the purer part of ourselv. “The obssive sire to prove parentage is que a strong psychologil state of md,” Feaver remarked. “Isn’t ?”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Seven years ago, Richard Polsky, a former Warhol aler, set up his own art-thentitn bs. He quoted a Talmudic ia to scribe an elisn of inty that n take place between owners and their unproven masterpiec: “We don’t see thgs as they are, we see thgs as we are.” (Polsky’s life has also been threatened, over a fake Basquiat). “When you make money, you feel smart. It’s as simple as that,” he told me. “It do sort of jtify who you are as a person—‘I’m a smart person, I ma a good cisn. I saw somethg others didn’t see.’ ” Unfortably, the reverse is also te. Fdg out that you didn’t, fact, buy a pricels art work om a bankptcy ctn n raise troublg qutns about whom you image yourself to be.</p><p class="paywall">When I first met Omar, over lunch Geneva, I asked him why he didn’t jt try to sell the patg s disputed state, and let someone else take on the problem. He ma clear that this wasn’t an optn. “It is a battle,” he replied.</p><p class="paywall">“I thk ’s about personal ego,” Navarro chimed across the table, ditg a gree of associatn that now existed between his client and one of the greatt twentieth-century artists. “I thk he has a personal feelg, or he wants to prove to himself that he n go over this cisn by Frd.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">There is no Frd thentitn mtee. In 2013, the Frd archive appoted Cathere Lampert, a curator and historian, who knew Frd, and Toby Trev, a former curator of twentieth-century Brish art at Tate, to wre his talogue raisonné. The first talogue, of Frd’s prts, was published the sprg. A send talogue, of about five hundred patgs, will appear next year.</p><p class="paywall">In May, I vised Trev at his home, Wt London. Although Omar and Navarro had not formally submted “Standg Male Nu” for the talogue raisonné, Trev had seen an image of the patg an article the <em>Observer</em>, last year. “I don’t need to see aga,” he said. “If we put that patg a le wh all the other patgs that he ma om 1939 to 2011, I thk pretty much everyone would thk, That looks like the odd one out.” The selectn for the Frd talogue raisonné was practilly plete. “The creria is certaty,” Trev explaed. “And, if we’re not certa, then that’s .”</p><p class="paywall">Trev acknowledged Frd’s unpredictable behavr toward attributn durg his lifetime. “Frd was an extremely knowg dividual,” he said. “And he knows about mythmakg.” But Trev also observed that Frd’s artistic output was well documented. He had the same stud assistant, David Dawson, for the last twenty years of his life. He worked extremely slowly, ually on three portras at a time, and was fairly static, makg almost all his patgs London. Durg ne years of rearch, Trev and Lampert turned up only four small patgs that they prevly hadn’t seen, and three belonged to the fay of one of Frd’s lovers. “People dog the projects would love to fd a new work,” Trev said. “That really is fdg a new poem by Keats.” But he add that the chanc of disverg a major portra at this stage were almost nonexistent. “I very much doubt ,” he said. “What you may fd is unfished, abandoned patgs. . . . That’s fely happened.”</p><p class="paywall">In 1997, the year that Omar bought his nu, a creative director named Jon Lys Turner hered another patg attributed to Frd which the artist had nied. Turner’s portra, of a young man a black cravat, belonged for many years to Denis Wirth-Miller, a bohemian landspe pater. Wirth-Miller and his partner, Richard (Dicky) Choppg, were among Francis Ban’s clost iends. But they uldn’t stand Frd. Frd lled Wirth-Miller Worth-Nothg; Choppg kept a handwrten list of reasons he hated Frd. Turner relled that Wirth-Miller had left the patg to him wh a specific stctn: “I want sold as loudly as possible to really upset Lucian.”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Prcs feels phone vibratg beneath stack of mattrs" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“There’s a phone on vibrate somewhere this bed.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 13.009L5.53657 15.1278C4.432 17 5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">But wasn’t as straightforward as that. In 1985, Christie’s had accepted the patg for an upg ctn, only for Frd to reject the attributn. The reason appeared to be spe. Wirth-Miller and Frd had studied together at the East Anglian School of Patg and Drawg, Suffolk, durg the Send World War, and Wirth-Miller had owned the nvas sce then. Like Omar, Turner found the task of overturng Frd’s repudiatn virtually impossible. Pole phone lls went nowhere. “They said, ‘O.K., we’ll get back to you,’ ” Turner said. “Tumbleweed.”</p><p class="paywall">As Frd’s fame grew—and his pric rose—Turner’s relatnship wh the patg beme unfortably charged. “It’s a lot like gog through hell as you go through one recsn after another. I ed to thk to myself, Image if this is a Frd,” he said. “Image if this is worth lots of money.” Unlike Omar, however, Turner was close enough to the London art market to be sensive to s unspoken s. “A lot of people were ightened of him and they weren’t gog to go agast him,” he said, of Frd. “I am a sole dividual who go to a big ctn hoe. Which si is that ctn hoe gog to take?”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In 2015, the producers of a BBC arts program, “Fake or Fortune?,” agreed to vtigate Turner’s patg for the show. “I was full of trepidatn,” Turner said. “I also knew that, at the end of , if I did that myself, I will get nowhere.” Durg filmg, Diana Rawstron, Frd’s lawyer, revealed a note om a phone ll wh Frd, which he acknowledged startg Turner’s patg. Technil analysis of the nvas, pat, and bshstrok suggted strongly that the work had been pleted by a sgle hand. In 2019, Trev and Lampert agreed to clu Turner’s portra the talogue raisonné, as an unfished patg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="dvwk0c"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Three years later, Turner’s Frd remas unsold. He waed for the publicy around the TV show to fa and then offered to e to endow a scholarship at an art school. But the nversatns did not progrs. A uple of curators asked to borrow the patg for exhibns, but, siarly, did not follow through. When we met, Turner did not want to thk about why. “I have got no evince, no evince for anythg, but is history repeatg self,” he said. He wonred how the patg would be received by Frd’s circle if he put on the open market. “I’m still the outsir,” Turner said. “Let’s face . . . . They mt hate me, bee I did what they didn’t want. I won.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">You rry on, bee what else n you do? In November, 2021, Omar and Navarro lated their mpaign, sendg “Standg Male Nu” to the laboratory of Marc Rtelli, the surge of the Modigliani market. The Instut Rtelli charg up to thirty thoand ros to exame an art work. A specific type of rbon datg that has been recently applied to twentieth-century nvas allows them to be dated to wh a uple of years. Acrdg to the Instut Rtelli, the nvas of Omar’s patg dated om the early fifti, which led out a recent fery. In May, Navarro told me that Omar had unearthed a send wns, based Italy, who uld also attt to Ban spendg time Geneva the seventi. “Excellent news are on track and should be nfirmed soon,” Navarro texted.</p><p class="paywall">The longg is fect. One day, I remembered somethg that Harrison had said, at the Ban tate. A few years ago, he was sent a group of supposed Bans, which had origated Swen. He me to the ncln that they weren’t fak, as such, but had probably been ma by an art stunt the sixti or seventi, who had fallen unr Ban’s fluence; the patgs had later been mistaken for the real thg. I wonred if the same thg might have happened wh Omar’s nu. Frd supervised stunts sporadilly throughout his reer—at the Sla, London, and, the tumn of 1964, at the Norwich School of Art.</p><p class="paywall">I tracked down Roger Jam Elsgood, a rad producer his seventi, who was one of five stunts tght by Frd Norwich. One morng, the sprg, we met at the Royal Amy of Arts, on Picdilly. There was a major Ban show on display, which clud “Two Figur”—the masterpiece that had hung Frd’s bedroom—plete wh an image of the Muybridge reference on the wall next to . Elsgood didn’t thk that Omar’s patg uld have been done by a stunt. “It’s a relatively mature work by a very middlg figurative pater,” he said. “They were ten a penny.” Then he brought out his phone. He wanted to show me a patg that his wife, Jan, had bought the late sixti, om Ken Brazier, an artist whom Frd pated 1957. Elsgood had begun to thk that maybe they owned a Frd, too. “Of urse, when you start to wonr, you start to thk, Well, we’re rich,” he said. He was thkg about lookg to .</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In July, I flew to Geneva to see “Standg Male Nu” for the first time. It was a swelterg day. Navarro met me at the railway statn, and we ate at a Lebane rtrant nearby. I asked him what he had learned about the art market durg his three and a half years of workg wh Omar. “There are two worlds: there is the art market and there is the scientific world,” he replied. “And I don’t know exactly why, but there are tangibl to that, where sometim they match and sometim they don’t.”</p><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Navarro, all the early signs om the Instut Rtelli were promisg. Omar was makg plans to sell the patg. We talked about s potential value. Navarro said uld be worth a falafel plate if turned out not to be a Frd. Or more than thirty ln dollars. “It’s a unique piece,” he said. “And, if you’re a llector, what are you lookg for? A basic patg, or a unique one wh a real story? The answer is there.” Navarro had wrten to Trev, vg him and Lampert to Geneva to see the work, but had not received a rponse. The ntug reluctance of the top Frd scholars to spell out their objectns to “Standg Male Nu” only nfirmed his belief that was genue. “There is never, all this story, any discsn, any talks, any tert,” Navarro said. “It is jt, <em>No</em>. That’s . . . . It means, you don’t want to see somethg. It’s somethg that you want to hi.”</p><p class="paywall">The patg was on display a nference room at Omar’s lawyers’ offic, the middle of town. It rted on a stand an alve. Omar had put the portra an elaborate gilt ame, which was distractg. Up close, I was stck by the patg’s tidy rrectns. The figure looked away. The patch of impasto on the flank was the artist’s only real flourish. The prev day, I had been to a small show of Frd’s patgs at the Frd Mm, the London home of Sigmund, and all the works there had seemed to posss more plexy, more problems, more life. “Everythg is fought over,” Feaver said, of Frd’s work. A home vio at the exhibn had showed the artist, his late teens and wearg a su, performg somerslts Sigmund’s garn.</p><p class="paywall">Moreno, the wns who remembered the patg and Francis Ban om the late seventi, was also at the meetg. He wore a Panama hat, silver reflective sunglass, and sneakers vered wh rhton. He said that he first met Ban at La Garçonnière, a dis bar. Moreno seemed totally plsible as someone who might have partied wh Ban almost fifty years ago. He said that Ban loved Geneva, bee of the anonymy and bee was the place where he first met Sophia Loren. (Her manager nfirmed this.) “He saw that people looked at her the street and no one bothered her,” Moreno told me. “He thought, I n do my private life here.” At the same time, there were gaps, and oddi, Moreno’s acunt. He claimed to have owned a Ban patg, and later sent me a vio of “Head,” a Ban work om 1962, whose recent owner said that the assertn was impossible. Moreno told me that he once had a photograph of Ban Geneva, but that might have been lost a flood. At one pot, for plited reasons, he showed me a pornographic vio on his phone.</p><p class="paywall">The margs of the multibilln-dollar art market are a bewilrg place. You are touchg immortaly, or you are touchg nothg at all. A few weeks after the meetg, Omar and Navarro fell out, over Omar’s plans to sell the patg and Navarro’s role the procs. (Neher man wanted to talk about the tails, for legal reasons.) In the nference room, there was an toxitg, disorientg atmosphere. I found myself doubtg everythg except the fact of the patg rtg agast the wall. When Navarro started talkg about his own forays as an artist, I even had the bizarre thought that maybe he had pated , or his father, who, as Navarro said, liked to make pi.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Across the table, Omar beamed. “I am proud to say I am the owner of a Frd,” he said. He repeated his offer to the tate, and to the thors of the talogue raisonné, to e and see “Standg Male Nu” for themselv. “It’s like sayg you don’t like an orange,” he said. “And yet you have never tasted one.” ♦</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS jyGBoi"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body article__body--grid-margs"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv jfHKjr"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG bGJnrW ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy fzwwkW article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo iZIuUU" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/2022/09/26" data-reactroot="">September 26, 2022</a>, issue, wh the headle “An Uncerta Image.”</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="LkStackWrapper-NFLYw kgtXXB lkstack" data-ttid="LkStack"><div class="SectnTleRoot-dBGvdq hpRFVl LkStackHear-lKjbE hejl 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class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">New Yorker rtoons about therapy</a>.</p></div></li></ul><div class="LkStackFooter-KfRyO ebnmps lk-stack--footer"><div><p><a href=">Sign up</a> for our daily newsletter to receive the bt stori om <em>The New Yorker</em>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu GWFsc ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBAvatar-bIGTqf eMWbvj"><a href="/ntributors/sam-knight"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></a></div><div class="ContributorBContent-ubQdr jZTSSi"><div class="ContributorBHear-ledood XOIEx"></div><div class="ContributorBB-fBolsO giFhKz"><a href="/ntributors/sam-knight">Sam Knight</a> is a staff wrer at The New Yorker, based London. His first book, “<a href=">The Premonns Bure: A Te Acunt of Death Foretold</a>,” was published May, 2022.</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"></div></div></div><div data-ttid="ContentFooterBottom" class="ContentFooterBottom-jwWZfC kcbyiW"><div class="ContentFooterNewsletterContentWrapper-bmjtna kixtae"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper-fCqqkN jKSBhE newsletter-subscribe-form ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper-fpMElW eglIBL"><h3 class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDangeroHed-kRwWjt feDzQf newsletter-subscribe-form__hed ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf">Weekly</h3><div class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDek-kXonvc grEaES newsletter-subscribe-form__k">Your gui to the latt magaze and our biggt stori of the week, pl highlights om podsts, humor, and more.</div></div><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormInputsWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormInputsWrapper-keARJE hVWbzr"><form class="form-wh-validatn NewsletterSubscribeFormValidatn-iCYa-Dt dweEln" id="newsletter" name="newsletter" novalidate="" method="POST"><span class="TextFieldWrapper-Pzdqp hNhevp text-field" data-ttid="TextFieldWrapper__email"><label class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TextFieldLabel-klrYvg iUEiRd stdEm fvoOvz text-field__label text-field__label--sgle-le" for="newsletter-text-field-email" data-ttid="TextFieldLabel__email"><div class="TextFieldLabelText-cvvxBl eeDYTb">E-mail addrs</div><div class="TextFieldInputContaer-jcMPhb oFrOs"><put type="email" aria-scribedby="privacy-text" aria-valid="false" id="newsletter-text-field-email" required="" name="email" placeholr="E-mail addrs" class="BaseInput-fAzTdK TextFieldControlInput-eFUxkf eGzzTT lglhcT text-field__ntrol text-field__ntrol--put" data-ttid="TextFieldInput__email"/></div></label><button class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv dwpimO button button--utily TextFieldButton-csBrgY edxbrw" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="subm"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN hzwRuG button__label">Sign up</span></button></span><div id="privacy-text" tabx="-1" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDisclaimer-bTVtiV bsgLJZ"><span><p>By signg up, you agree to our <a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">User Agreement</a> and <a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement</a>. 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When I fally started “The Frd,” one prciple was clear: no Dickens.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Zadie Smh</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Puzzle of Puttg Vio Gam a Mm" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">The Art World</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">The Puzzle of Puttg Vio Gam a Mm</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">After years of neglect, art stutns are g around to gam. Can they master the ntrols?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Julian Lus</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Sam Kerr and the Dream of an Atralian World Cup Tle" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">The Sportg Scene</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Sam Kerr and the Dream of an Atralian World Cup Tle</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">The twenty-ne-year-old striker, one of the world’s great srers, has raised hop a untry where soccer was once an afterthought.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Naaman Zhou</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Cuttg-Edge Image-Makers, “New Photography 2023”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Art</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Cuttg-Edge Image-Makers, “New Photography 2023”</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">The Mm of Morn Art’s program returns, after a hiat of five years, to celebrate seven photographers nnected to Lagos, Nigeria.</div></div></div><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj ad ad--read-more"><div class="ad__slot 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LUCIAN FRD’S GAY RELATNSHIPS EXPLORED NEW EXHIBN

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WAS FRD “GAY-FRIENDLY?"

GAY HISTORY: RONNIE KRAY – “THE QUEEN MOTHER”.

LOVE LUCIAN BY DAVID DAWSON AND MART GAYFORD REVIEW

BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM LUCIAN FREUD GAY

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Contents:

LUCIAN FRD’S GAY RELATNSHIPS EXPLORED NEW EXHIBN

LUCIAN FRDS GAY RELATNSHIPS DISVERED LATT NVENTN

WAS FRD “GAY-FRIENDLY?"

GAY HISTORY: RONNIE KRAY – “THE QUEEN MOTHER”.

LOVE LUCIAN BY DAVID DAWSON AND MART GAYFORD REVIEW

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* LUCIAN FREUD GAY

BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM LUCIAN FREUD GAY