(opens in new tab) Keith Haring
A Keith Haring drawing deemed unsellable by its owner has been declared authentic by a judge. But auction houses still won’t touch it.
In 2018, Adam Hartung, a management consultant from Nevada, bought a Haring drawing from Martin Lawrence Galleries’ (MLG) Las Vegas location. The drawing is a chalk sketch on black paper depicting flying saucers, which the artist did on blank advertising space in the New York City subway in the early 1980s. According to Hartung’s later lawsuit, he paid the gallery $165K for the Haring.
However, sometime later, Hartung sold his home in Nevada and tried to sell off some of his assets, including the Haring. He attempted to consign the drawing to both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but both auction houses unfortunately declined. The work’s documentation fell short of their in-house standards for selling it as an authentic work by Haring. While some documentation attested to the work’s provenance, most major auction houses require the work to be included in reputable literature, a catalogue raisonné, or an exhibition catalogue.
MLG tried to help Hartung resell the work, but later told him they could only attract offers in the $20K to $30K range. Hartung then sued the gallery in Connecticut state court, as the gallery is headquartered in Greenwich. He alleged breach of contract, breach of warranty, misrepresentation, and violations of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Judge Robert Genuario of the Connecticut Superior Court in Stamford issued his ruling last Thursday, August 27th(opens in new tab). He wrote that the provenance documents for the work include a signed letter from Richard Hambleton, a friend of Haring’s who collected many of the artist’s subway drawings. The letter, dated to 2002, states that Hambleton removed the drawing from the subway sometime around 1982 or 1983. It had been in his possession until it was transferred to the German art dealer Hausewedell & Nolte, from whom MLG acquired it.
Judge Genuario further wrote that, to violate the law, MLG had to have known the Haring was inauthentic and that the provenance documentation would have been insufficient for a future owner to sell the work. But since the gallery possessed Hambleton’s letter, it can be reasonably supposed that the gallery did not intentionally mislead or make any false representation of the drawing. The contract’s authenticity warranty was therefore not violated. There was also “no evidence that any of the representatives at MLG were aware in 2018 of the difficulties that the plaintiff would encounter” when attempting to consign the work. The standards set and maintained by these auction houses are not publicly available. Therefore, none of the parties involved could have known that the drawing would be rejected. Judge Genuario also notes that the primary function of art purchased from a gallery setting is for display in one’s home. Although he recognized it is “reasonable to expect that at some point in time either the plaintiff or his estate would choose to sell” the drawing, it is not “the particular purpose for which the goods were acquired, and there is no additional warranty that arises” under the relevant laws. So Hartung’s allegations of breach of implied warranty of merchantability are likewise unfounded.
Hartung is in a very strange situation; the documentation he possesses is satisfactory to prove the Haring’s authenticity in court, but it is not enough for Christie’s.