STEVE MARTIN BAMBOOZLED BY FORGED MODERNIST PAINTING
Must be nice to be able to purchase great art from the 20th century. Steve Martin has been an avid and smart collector for years, but even he was fooled by this bogus painting. Martin bought German-Dutch modernist Heinrich Campendonk’s 1915 painting “Landscape with Horses” from a French gallery in 2004. He had it confirmed as authentic by an expert and paid $850,000 for it. In 2006 he sold it at a loss for $650,000. It was later revealed to be an expert fake and was part of the biggest German art forgery scandal since WWII. Which just goes to show that even Steve Martin, who published a novel about the New York art scene, “An Object of Beauty,” can be fooled.