When is a Warhol not a Warhol?

Books that open with mysterious phone calls are usually thrillers. Richard Dorment’s new book kicks off with just such intrigue. And yet, even though it involves a great deal of detective work, Warhol After Warhol is not a work of fiction.

Dorment has written a deeply researched and wellargued account of an art world scandal that is both informative and cracks along like Dick Francis.

It was 2003 when Dorment’s telephone rang and a ‘well-spoken, polite… voice’ asked for his help. The caller turned out to be a movie producer and art collector called Joe Simon. He wanted Dorment, then the art critic of The Daily Telegraph, to examine a couple of Andy Warhol pictures: Red Self-Portrait and a work Simon called a ‘Dollar Bill’ piece. A onetime groupie at Warhol’s New York Factory, Simon had paid good money for these pictures. Now, 16 years after the artist’s death, he was being told by the Andy Warhol Authentication Board that the pictures were phoneys.

Simon believed that the board had refused to authenticate the pictures he owned because it wanted to inflate the price of those pieces owned by the artist’s estate.

The heart of the book is an account of the case that ensued when he took the authentication board to court. It was, says Dorment, ‘an epic battle’ that helped create a new discipline for the legal profession: ‘art law’. In essence, the case came down to how involved Warhol had been in the creation of Simon’s two works. That the Red SelfPortrait hadn’t been signed by Warhol was the board’s chief line of defence. And while they acknowledged that the other canvas had been ‘signed, dedicated, and dated by him’, they said it was ‘NOT the work of Andy Warhol’. From here on in, the court case descended into a mud-slinging assault on Simon. And Dorment himself, who wrote about the case, was threatened with legal suits.

Warhol After Warhol is as terrifying as it is thrilling. Still, there is something missing. It is a question that haunts pretty much all of Warhol’s work: just how involved was he in any of it?

And while this is a very fine book, it won’t convince anyone who thinks Andy Warhol’s work worthless to modify their opinion.