US Tech Company May Have Tried to Exhibit Unauthenticated Basquiat Painting at Major Museums

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

An intermediary said to be acting on behalf of the American tech company Co2Bit Technologies was reportedly planning to exhibit an unauthenticated Jean-Michel Basquiat painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York without the institution’s permission.

Co2Bit privately exhibited another painting of dubious provenance as genuine in a major museum. ARTnews reported last month that the company helped to show a painting with disputed attribution to Russian modernist Kazimir Malevich at the Centre Pompidou in January. The Centre Pompidou told ARTnews last month that it had not granted permission to exhibit the artwork.

Thiago Piwowarczyk, the CEO of New York Art Forensics, a Brooklyn-based art authentication laboratory, told ARTnews that an intermediary, who claimed to work for Co2Bit, hired him to authenticate and appraise the Basquiat painting last year.

“[The intermediary] asked me if I wanted to be involved in [exhibiting the painting at MoMA], and I said, ‘Negative. I don’t want to be involved in this,’” Piwowarczyk said. “’I don’t think you should be doing this. You can’t go around talking about something that isn’t [authenticated].’”

MoMA told ARTnews that “for-profit and nonprofit organizations” can rent certain spaces, but that the museum is “unable to accommodate personal events.” When asked if those renting such spaces could hang artwork on the wall, MoMA said, “Unfortunately not. The Museum does not permit any outside artwork in any situation.”

Co2Bit’s stated mission is to use AI and blockchain technology to assess environmental impact. The company purchased the supposed 1915 Malevich painting, titled Suprematism, for a price “in the seven figures” from disgraced Israeli art dealer Itzhak Zarug before hiring several experts to authenticate it. However, one of the experts, Patricia Railing, denied this, claiming she’d never heard of Co2Bit.

A series of now-deleted press releases published by Eminence Rise Media, a New York PR firm, on GlobeNewswire promoted Suprematism, stating that it was due to be “unveiled by museums around the world.” The same PR firm also promoted the supposed Basquiat painting, titled 200 Yen, in three releases posted between December 2023 and February 2024 that have also been deleted. One release said that New York Art Forensics appraised the artwork for $90 million and claimed it was set to “be unveiled in top museums across the United States soon.” Neither of the press releases for Suprematism or 200 Yen mentioned Co2Bit.

Eminence Rise Media declined to comment on if it had been hired by Co2Bit and said that it would only comment on 200 Yen if ARTnews deleted mention of the PR firm in the publication’s reporting on the Malevich-Pompidou story.

“It has come to our attention you [sic] slandering and accusing this company in regards to the Malevich painting, where we had nothing to do with that painting,” the company wrote in an email. “In spite of you confirming Co2Bit as the company responsible for it, your false and phony accusations is [sic] unethical on your end as a journalist. If you have some integrity, you must delete our name from it. Please make it right and we will be willing to communicate further.”

In the first of three phone calls with ARTnews, Piwowarczyk said the intermediary was a French man who claimed to be “an associate of Co2Bit.” He said the man paid in full before Piwowarczyk and his colleague at New York Art Forensics, Jeffrey Taylor, authenticated and appraised 200 Yen. However, during the second call, Piwowarczyk backtracked, saying he had been paid only half the fee, which the intermediary managed to negotiate down from $12,000 to $6,000 because Piwowarczyk said he “felt sorry for him.” In the final call with ARTnews, Piwowarczyk said he had received the full $6,000.  

Despite telling ARTnews several times that he would divulge the name of the intermediary, in the end Piwowarczyk refused to do so. He added that the authentication of 200 Yen was “conditional” and said that the appraisal remained unfinished because the intermediary failed to provide any provenance records.

“Technically, we finished the authentication, but it doesn’t authenticate it positively,” Piwowarczyk said. “There is no provenance—they don’t have a signed appraisal.”

(Piwowarczyk declined to provide ARTnews with any reports or documentation he had given the intermediary.)

Faked Basquiats Proliferate

The title of 200 Yen appears to be a reference to a phrase that appears in the 1983 Basquiat painting Hollywood Africans, which is in the collection of the Whitney Museum in New York. 200 Yen portrays the black outline of a head and two golden crowns against a pale green and brown background. The work also contains the word “SAMO”—a reference to Basquiat’s graffiti tag, which was short for the phrase “same old shit.” Press releases for the painting highlighted these motifs, which recur frequently throughout Basquiat’s oeuvre. One release referred to the “signature” crown imagery portrayed in 200 Yen.

Basquiat’s oeuvre has in recent years become a battleground as the authorship of works in his name receives widespread scrutiny. In 2022, for example, the FBI raided the Orlando Museum of Art after it was accused of exhibiting fake Basquiat paintings. A Los Angeles auctioneer later admitted to the FBI that he and a partner created the paintings. The museum went on to sue its former executive director and other staff members, claiming they were involved in a plan to profit from the eventual sale of the bogus artworks. That former director, Aaron De Groft, has claimed that the Basquiats were real; he countersued the museum last year. A verdict in the cases is not expected until August 2025 at the earliest.

In 2002 artist Alfredo Martinez forged 17 Basquiat paintings and tried to sell them. He was arrested and received a 27-month prison sentence. He later described his attempts to find buyers for these faux Basquiats as a “gag.”

There is no longer a Basquiat authentication committee. In 2012 it was disbanded after 18 years of operation. Several lawsuits over the legitimacy of certain paintings had hit the committee, which was run by the Basquiat estate, and those legal actions ultimately led to its closure. Three months before that, the Andy Warhol Foundation shut down its own authentication committee after spending millions on legal disputes.

Richard Polsky, the founder of Richard Polsky Art Authentication, which specializes in Basquiat paintings, told ARTnews that he is surprised New York Art Forensics tried to appraise 200 Yen. “How can someone appraise something if they don’t even know if it’s genuine or not? I don’t get it, it’s like the cart before the horse,” he said.

Polsky said that his company and the nonprofit International Foundation for Art Research are the only ones in the US qualified to authenticate Basquiats. He added that there are many companies claiming to do art authentication without the expertise, and many pitfalls to be avoided with forgeries.

“If I see a situation [as an authenticator], like money laundering, and know it’s illegal, you gotta say no,” he said. “You gotta think about the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is that your reputation is everything.”

Promotional Materials That ‘Misrepresented the Facts’

Piwowarczyk said Eminence Rise Media deleted the press releases promoting 200 Yen after New York Art Forensics complained about how they “misrepresented the facts.” But a website for the painting remains online. In a cached version of the website from April, it states that Piwowarczyk and his colleague Taylor, “shed light on the profound themes embedded in 200 Yen.” The same sentence was included in an Eminence Rise Media Press release published in December, which also mentioned “an upcoming bid by top museums in the United States to feature [200 Yen] in their prestigious displays.” That sentence has since been removed from the website.

Despite the PR firm promoting Co2Bit’s Malevich painting, Co2Bit chairman Ronald Wilkins told ARTnews he had “no idea” what Eminence Rise Media was. Piwowarczyk told ARTnews that, according to the supposed Co2Bit intermediary, Eminence Rise Media was hired to write the press releases for the company.

One of Eminence Rise Media’s press releases stated that 200 Yen was sold on the LiveAuctioneers website on April 21, 2020. A search on the auction website revealed that the artwork was sold by Bill Hood and Sons Art and Antiques Auctions in Delray Beach, Florida, for $3,300. In its listing, the painting was not attributed to a specific artist, but its description reads “Jean-Michel Basquiat oil stick canvas Abstract Painting,” adding “Mahala Estate Oxford Pa. Said to have been a driver for Andy Warhol.”

Chris Hood, a cofounder of Bill Hood and Sons, told ARTnews that he “forgot” to attribute the painting before it was sold. Hood said a man brought the painting in and “gave a story about the guy he got it from. He somehow hooked up with this guy who said his dad was a courier or driver in New York years back, and that’s how he acquired it.”

Hood added he didn’t think it was a real Basquiat painting but set the estimate at $2,000 to $3,000 and said he would “let the world decide” how much it was worth.

He claimed that a woman he’d never heard of—“some kind of decorator,” Hood said—purchased the painting on behalf of a man named Danny and spent up to $20,000 on several items from the auction house. Hood added that he didn’t have the woman’s name in his records and that she shipped the items to California.

Meanwhile, the identity of the intermediary is still unclear, as is his relationship to Co2Bit. Piwowarczyk said the intermediary’s relationship to Co2Bit only came up when he asked for the company’s name to be included in the final report.

Wilkins, the chairman of Co2Bit, told ARTnews via WhatsApp that he knew nothing about 200 Yen. “With all of Co2Bit’s investors/token-holders, I have no way of knowing who says their intent is to use the proceeds of their art sale to support our philanthropic efforts,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Piwowarczyk said he had never heard of Wilkins before. “I really don’t want to be associated with this,” he said. “This is something that is going to kill us… go easy on me.”