Driven to Abstraction

Knoedler Gallery was the longest operating art gallery in New York, the world art capital, until charges came that the gallery was selling forgeries as original works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and other great modern icons for millions of dollars. The creator of those paintings was a Chinese immigrant who produced the “masterpieces” in secret. Invented stories of how those paintings surfaced after decades accompanied the fakes. Collectors and some experts were fooled.

Driven to Abstraction follows the legal drama that ensued when the fakes were exposed, and the moral drama of selling forgeries when demand for those works sends prices into the millions. Knoedler has since closed. The forger fled to China.

Filmography: Out on a Limb (2013).