It started in 1995 with what was presented as a Mark Rothko painting. It grew into a yearslong con that fooled the art world and the dealer who represented the paintings (thought to be by the hands of some of the East End's most famous artists), or so she would have you believe.
If it sounds familiar, it's the tale of the downfall of the Knoedler Gallery at the hands of Ann Freedman and Glafira Rosales, the Long Island woman who led Ms. Freedman into dealing faked Abstract Expressionist paintings made in Queens by a convincing forger for more than a decade.
It's also the subject of a slick, quick, cheeky, and eminently watchable Netflix talking-head documentary on the subject called "Made You Look," directed by Barry Avrich, and a scripted limited series he is now developing from the same story. (The documentary may also be familiar to some from its HamptonsFilm SummerDocs drive-in screening last July.)
The fraud resulted in a guilty plea by Ms. Rosales in 2013 to nine counts of conspiracy, fraud, and other crimes. It forced Ms. Freedman to step down and led to the closure of the Manhattan gallery in 2011 in the wake of several lawsuits relating to the matter. Ms. Freedman was never criminally charged, but was sued personally by former clients who accused her of selling paintings she knew to be fake.
Mr. Avrich, who spends part of every summer in East Hampton, received astonishing access as he doggedly traced the thread of the story. He seems to have tracked down nearly everyone involved, from the perpetrators, two of whom fled the country before they could be arrested, to Ms. Freedman herself, someone who likely had a lot of reasons not to want to speak candidly on this topic.
In order to tell the story, he said recently by phone, "I knew I needed a journalist, a victim, the police, perpetrators of the con, and lawyers." He ended up with all of those and more.
When the film premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival last year, it actually broke news in papers like The New York Times. The documentary boasts the first in-depth interview with Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, Ms. Rosales's fugitive boyfriend and assumed partner in crime, aside from a Vanity Fair Spain piece that was little known here. In 2014, he was charged with wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, and other crimes.
"We knew Bergantinos was in Spain and we tracked him to Lugo," Mr. Avrich recalled. They found his lawyer through filings that had prevented his extradition to the United States. "His lawyer said he wasn't giving any interviews," but Mr. Avrich pointed to the Vanity Fair piece. "I don't think he expected I would find it." The lawyer said yes, but only if the filmmaker was prepared to meet with his client in a remote medieval walled city in Spain. "I did get there and I did find him . . . which they also didn't expect."
He traced the forger, Pei-Shen Qian, back to China, where he had fled after he was indicted, "through immense research and detective work" and tracking a cellphone to an address. Paintings attributed to artists that he had faked such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and Rothko all passed through the gallery, and it was not the only one dealing in them.
Those interviews took the most footwork, but the most challenging of all may have been the "get" of Ms. Freedman, who had already turned down several requests, including from Anderson Cooper and "60 Minutes," Mr. Avrich said.
The director had previously made an unflattering film on the art world, "Blurred Lines," that he thought would be held against him. "Journalists and lawyers always want to talk," he said, but those in the art world tend to be discreet. Yet the collectors who were defrauded and those who had authenticated the phony paintings, whether tacitly or explicitly, "felt really burnt and wanted to tell their side of the story."
Ms. Freedman is widely believed to be part of the con, but she maintains her ignorance. Her involvement "took some persuading and a lot of expensive French white wine, but we got there," Mr. Avrich recalled. "My pitch to her was that I promised her a larger canvas to tell her story. It was not going to be 'American Greed' or a '60 Minutes' sound bite. This was going to be bigger."
He showed her a number of his documentaries. His subjects might take a couple of hits, "but ultimately I let the audience decide. I want them to debate the films in theaters and at home and make up their own mind." He added, "Ultimately, she trusted me."
They filmed more than 40 hours of footage of her. "At every meeting she would bring dozens and dozens of newspaper and magazine clippings showing other people had been fooled with very pithy and insightful quotes from famous people on getting conned," he said. "Ann is very focused on trying to convince people she was a victim in this. . . . She truly believed she was conned and wanted that to come across in the film."
At dinner every night, the crew would vacillate, but in the end came away with the feeling that "she did not go into it with the intention to deceive," he said. "She thought that she had discovered something unbelievable" when the height of her career was likely behind her and the gallery itself was struggling. "She wanted it to be real. Should she have known a quarter of the way in? Absolutely."
Although it was in her best interest to perceive the works as real, Mr. Avrich pointed out that everyone else involved was similarly motivated. "The scam worked well for the art collectors who were getting art they would not have normally seen on the market, at better prices in some cases." The experts were making money on authenticating the art, and the art consultants showing the astonishing discoveries to their jaded clients could hope for their own cut. He said members of the last group "have taught collectors to buy with their ears and not their eyes," which adds to the problem.
He said the film might remind people to "check their receipts, check the provenance more closely, and look at a piece of art more closely." Eventually, something similar will happen again. "If you want a piece of art you tend to overlook flaws." It's like a relationship: "If you have to have it, you're going to have it. That's why everybody is sort of guilty."
As for Ms. Freedman's role, "It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback when other people are saying it looks good and collectors are lining up to pay top price." On the other hand, "all of that art came from one source and there were red flags."
Instead of confronting Ms. Rosales, she pleaded with her in letters to help her fix the mess as the issues became apparent. When she says, "I need you to get me the provenance and the records I need. I believe in you, Glafira," that's a problem, said Mr. Avrich.
"Some reviews have given Ann the benefit of the doubt, and others have not." He added, "I know she's seen the film. I know she doesn't like it."
She may like the series better. Mr. Avrich said it will resemble a "Catch Me If You Can" caper with a lot of drama over five or six episodes, "beautifully shot internationally."
"The good thing is, with this story we don't have to create a lot of drama. It's already there, so we'll run with that." Like his films, he works fast and hopes to have it completed within a year. "This is my rallying cry to Meryl Streep to play Ann Freedman," he said. Other than that, "it has everything it needs."
This article has been altered from its original print and online versions to add that the film was screened as part of HamptonsFilm's SummerDocs series.
