When I was in Public Accounting, I quickly learned that when I found a problem during an audit, I would find lots of problems. Companies were either excellent in what they did or they were not (i.e. they stuck).
If they swept dirt under the carpet in one room, there was dirt under all the carpet, in every room. Look no further than Enron or World Com as real world examples.
It's clear in the case of Park West that they clearly stink (sorry for the lack of a more technical term) in the way they conduct business and have for a very, very long time based on the volume of complaints!
When you peel back the skin of this Park West onion you don't find another layer of onion, you find another layer of immoral, unethical crap based on all that's been printed about them.
If these pictures bare fake unauthorized signatures then there is every reason to believe many Park West pictures bare fake signatures by many artists as experts have already stated especially in the case of Dalis. Leopards don't change their spots nor should I say do Oselots to make Bernard Ewell happy.
If they would do this where only small dollars were involved, imagine what they would be willing to do when a signature might add thousands to a painting such as a Dali signature (or just a couple of hundred) by an art dealer who does not seem dedicated to being the biggest rip off since P.T. Barnum, who once said a sucker is born every minute. Park West's new motto is that P.T. Barnum was a master of understatement.
I can almost guarantee that for every conned artist you will find there are 30 more and for every conned customer, there is one hundred more... all believing it did not happen to them. It did.
The Con artist lives on the good nature of people who believe as they were smiled at and wined and dined...that they surely did not do this to me...just the other guy! They prey off the trusting nature of others.
WE are (all) the other guy. In our family it took a year to admit we were the other guy taken for about $800K. There are hundreds/thousands still out there saying...not me! It's the other guy who got conned, not me...Want to bet? Everyone can be the victim of a con.
WE are all the other guy SOMEDAY, whether the artist or the buyer, it's only the degree, the amount and the time before you get slapped on the face and say reluctantly, Me Too! They got me too!
The test of your character is not that you got conned, but what you do about it! The first time I got conned, I put the guys in jail so others would not be conned. And it felt damn good too by the way!
The entire art world has been hurt by this largest of art scams which will drive down the price of even honest work as all trust leaves the market place. The cost will go way beyond the losses at the hands of just Park West.
And remember those retail gallery prices that are often used to support a Park West "appraisal" are as phony as the Park West "appraisals". Try to sell your art work to the gallery for even half of what their retail price is! LOL... 20% is tops. They are over stated by up to ten times, so they can give a potential customer a "good deal also".
If you can find someone who will buy Park West art at all, you are lucky. The NY times has tried in their expose...no takers...just overpriced poster art poorly framed was the opinion. They were sent to Poster Art shops to see if they would buy the stuff by the respectable galleries that turned down the Park West stuff.
You will be lucky to clear ten cents on the dollar based on personal experience. Remember your appraisals, COAs, and provenance have no credibility at this point and must be re created at significant cost... more than the work is worth for the most part.
You can still find someone proud that his $4500 Kinkaid print is listed at a gallery for $7500, when prints go for $300 bucks framed at a shop at home! Modern prints almost never increase in value as the artist is no longer involved with the printing process and embellishments are not done by the artists for the most part, and are not worth anything more than if I or the buyer had added a brush stroke. It’s now just graffiti, assembly line art!
Great for your dining room. Enjoy it. But not as an investment. The highest price a modern print is likely to ever bring is its original purchase price per Bernard Ewell. That's the effect of high tech printing now. You are far better off buying original oils and etc.
Even so called modern originals are often assembly line with much of the work being done by an associate artist, each painting looking almost the same. The same port scene done ten different ways with a few different colors and a different port name or the same women with a different instrument sitting on a table with a different color dress or table cloth or my favorite the same view from a room with a different painting by a master on the wall with different color floor tiles.
Great paintings in relation to the level of skill, but hardly great art! What's the message? If one makes me money, two will make me more? The second is a copy that could be done by almost anyone or even an incompetent artist. Hardly original in thought or context, the things that add real value to an original and show the artist's development over time...it's more like painting by the numbers (and changing a few of the numbers) than an original composition. The semi copies could almost be done by anyone. It's like a Mustang coming off an assembly line, one painted yellow and the next red, painted by a robot…is that really art?
It's the same Hardy's boy mystery over and over again [formulaic or prescribed], not a series of Ernest Hemmingway novels, unique in the context that show his development and life experiences as he evolves as a man first and a novelist second.
It's the difference between an artist and a house painter. Who pays $100K to have their house painted a different shade than their neighbors? Tarkay "red" versus Tarkay "yellow"? But that's what you are getting.
Regards
THE VIPER
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