The painting, which features Rothko’s iconic stacked rectangular blocks of color, bears the artist’s signature and the name of the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where Rothko taught in 1949.
A lifelong collector, Douglas Himmelfarb, spotted the painting at a South Los Angeles auction preview, and immediately did his research. When he made the connection between Rothko and the school, he knew he had to the buy the piece. After the sale, Himmelfarb traced the canvas to the collection of Mollye Teitelbaum, who had owned it since at least 1964. From there, Himmelfarb began the arduous process of finding proof that his auction find was the real deal.
In the years since, Himmelfarb has found little support from the art establishment, while his personal fortunes have taken a dramatic downturn: the government recently foreclosed on his Hawaii home. If his Rothko is real, it could be his salvation, but it seems that no one is willing to issue an opinion.
The authentications business, as another WSJ article recently highlighted, has become particularly fraught, as estate-run committees for artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol have shut down rather than face the threat of litigation as a result of issuing an unpopular or erroneous opinion.
Rothko expert David Anfam, who published the artist’s catalogue raisonné in 1998, has been familiar with Himmelfarb’s painting since the late 1980s. The scholar even discovered a black-and-white photograph of the work in the archives held by Rothko’s family, but still declined to include the work in his book.
by Sarah Cascone, Artnet | Read more:
Image: Mark Rothko?
