The extraordinary inside story of the $100m Andy Warhol Foundation fraud that shook the art world

Part detective story, part art history, part gripping courtroom drama, art critic Richard Dorment’s new book, ‘Warhol after Warhol’, tells the spellbinding tale of corruption and lies surrounding the most famous American artist of the twentieth century

Andy Warhol in December 1980 (Getty)

This excerpt documents the bombshell moment when, through his lawyer Brian Kerr, Joe Simon uncovered the scale and scope of criminal wrongdoing by the Andy Warhol Foundation and Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. My initial investigation focused narrowly on whether Warhol’s 1965 series of Red Self-Portraits were authentic, as Simon, who owns one of the paintings believed, or worthless ripoffs that had nothing to do with Warhol.

Early on, he had been warned by the Warhol Foundation’s sales agent, Vincent Fremont not to mount a legal challenge to the Board’s decision to deny the authenticity of his painting. “Don’t even think about it. They’ll drag you through the courts until you bleed. They never lose,” Fremont had told him.

It is typical of Simon that he ploughed ahead anyway, armed only with the absolute certainty that he was doing the right thing. This excerpt takes place during the pre-trial hearings. Simon’s lawyer is cross–questioning employees of the Warhol Authentication Board and the Warhol Foundation. Simon is sitting right behind his attorney, passing him yellow Post-it notes, telling him what to say next.