We kindly invite Mr. Lippert to visit our Museum and the exhibition to find out the value of our paintings.

http://www.falsosfrida.blogspot.com

Carlos Phillips Olmedo, director of the Museo Frida Kahlo and a member of the executive committee of the trust that oversees the artist’s copyrights, has stated that the Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo trust does not recognise the Noyola collection as authentic works by Kahlo. Kahlo catalogue raisonné co-author Grimberg, speaking to the press last month, stated: “I have over 40 years of looking at the works of Frida and I can say that this is grotesque and vulgar.”

James Oles, an art historian based in Mexico City who has done extensive work on Kahlo’s surviving archives, says: “It’s the formal quality of the drawing and the writing that seems to me completely wrong. The subject matter is besides the point.” He says that fake works attributed to Kahlo, Siqueiros, Tamayo, Gerszo, Merida and other Latin American artists are not uncommon. “There’s more demand than there is supply in the market for Latin American modern art—and the academic market, as well—so a lot of things get by. Something like this by Picasso would never make it.”

Noyola is not dismissing the possibility that the works are false. “We aim to present this material and the data gathered from our investigation without making any assertions,” he says. “After all, authenticity is never certain. At present, we can say that we believe this collection {{{contains authentic articles that belonged to Frida Kahlo.}}}”
*Parenthesis mine
To Jed – what is your connection to this material?
You are all over the internet defending it…..
for my part, I agree with ABI. To me, these pieces look embarassingly wrong.

The work involved in forging all the ephemera is just too daunting plus the artificial aging that would be required, the distressing of materials, etc. The luggage with its labels, all the recipes(!). Who would think to do that? It’s much too improbably even given the creativity of the forger.

While the artistic work itself is not super high quality, Kahlo was not technically that evolved but the imagery makes sense. Plus the book on amputation-who would go to that trouble?”

I find the idea that this is all a fraud of Borgesian complexity almost as interesting as the idea that these are Kahlo’s most personal archives. Why go to all this effort as a forger, when presumably a big portrait would net you a lot more at auction? Of course it raises the obvious questions of who, how, and why somebody would construct such an elaborate fiction… If it is a hoax, there’s still a great story to be unraveled and told, but those who leapt so quickly to dismiss the collection now seem to be tempering their views a bit—too much at stake, I guess.
Too, I misquoted my museum director friend who said that the use of “licensed replicas” is “not uncommon,” and not “common” as I transcribed it. Sorry if I gave the impression that our art musems are filled with carefully made and sanctioned fakes.
Enjoying the dialogue here on your site, feels like what Vera calls “team internet” can do best. — Kevin

Hi Jed,
I’m sorry if I mischaracterized the Noyola policy towards research on the objects. ’I got my information from the NY Times. Their June 2009 article implies that scholars may not handle the objects. If this is incorrect, it may not be too late to run a correction.

“The Noyolas display the objects “in a guarded and restrained area,” they wrote in an e-mail message. “Curators, investigators, dealers, collectors, etc.,” can make appointments to browse but must be content with handling photocopies of the papers, not fragile originals.”