This week: The extraordinary story behind what Canadian police called “the greatest artistic fraud in history”. Over 1,000 fake works believed to be by First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau are seized and eight people have been charged. The Art Newspaper’s Americas Editor Ben Sutton tells the extraordinary story, involving a rock star, a TV documentary and alleged counterfeit rings, and what it tells us about the art market of First Nations in Canada.
Photo: Marco Verch Professional Photographer by Flickr
A report on artists’ pay in the UK has revealed the disproportionately low sums paid to artists for their work by arts organisations. We speak with arts collective Industria, who authored the report, and Julie Lomax, CEO of The Artists’ Information Company, who published the study.
At Quinten Massys An old woman (The ugly duchess) (around 1513)
Bequeathed by Miss Jenny Louisa Roberta Blaker, 1947
© Photo: National Gallery, London
And this episode’s Work of the Week is An Old Woman (circa 1513) by Northern Renaissance artist Quinten Massys, a painting better known as The Ugly Duchess. A new exhibition at the National Gallery focuses on this work in its collection, exploring its origins in a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, and the combination of satire, folklore, humanism and misogyny from which it stems. Emma Capron, the show’s curator, tells us more.
• A PDF of Industry’s Structurally F–cked report is available at an.co.uk.
• The Industry website is we-industria.org.
• The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance, national galleryLondon, until June 11.
