[Евгений]

Questions answered by Elena Basner, a renowned expert on Russian avant-garde, a consultant auction house Bukowski's, one of the authors of a new method for determining the fakes.
- Indeed among the Russian avant-garde many fakes? What is the scale of disaster?

- To date, they have devastating. Russian avant-garde began to falsify, as soon as there was demand for it. He appeared in the early 1960's after the first Western show of Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich. A few years later there were fakes. Rapid growth has occurred at the turn of 1980 - 1990's, when we were big exhibition of Malevich, Kandinsky and other artists with major directories. The quality of counterfeits has improved markedly.
When in 2000 the State Russian Museum we have been preparing major exhibition catalog Malevich, I had my doubts about whether to publish the enlarged fragments, the reverse side of the canvas and the details of the painting technique. Seeing the thing to get an eye "in the paint, you can, but be aware of counterfeiting technology artist. The Museum has decided that for scientific publications should be radically disclose any basis artist's creative method, and took a new leap in the production of fakes.

- What the researchers - they know exactly where the original, and where a fake?

- In our eyes, born some alternative history of art: a vanguard of so many donapisali that there was a divergent range of options already on the not entirely reliable things. Researchers unable to verify the entire chain, according to their originals. Reference base owned by only a few museums in the world and go there to work with her, is not easy.
More recently, this year in Finland, Turku hosted an exhibition "Circle - Line - Point. Russian avant-garde from private collections, where there was no real work.

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- but the biography of the leading avant-garde artists have been thoroughly investigated by experts.

- Yes, you create Malevich first, historical, versions of "Black Square" is known to date - according to Alexandra Shatskih is June 8 (Old Style), 1915. But the artists in the early twentieth century was not the secretaries, who recorded their livelihoods on the clock. Of course, some work behind the scenes.

- Which of the Russian avant-garde counterfeited most?

- Malevich, Kandinsky, Popova. However, now fake almost all the classics - Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Cluny, Rodchenko, Stepanova. And the next round - and Nina Kogan and Vera Ermolaev. In general - is all of whom survived at least a name.

- Who is easier to fake, someone difficult?

- A misconception that non-objective painting is easier to forge. Specialist, knowing how this artist has built a space of his paintings as he worked with the texture, always feel falshaka. For example, in certain cases, Malevich worked as a thin brush as a chaser. Do not expect me to detail. I'm not going to help manufacturers fakes.

Russian avant-garde attitude to his work as a ministry, and it is felt in the paintings. For me, Popov - always recognizable. Another matter that is difficult to formalize their feelings. And then come to the aid of technology. But even here the traditional methods of research has its own complexity. And now there are pigments that are identical to the same. So you can catch poddelschikov mainly from their mistakes. For example, cadmium red was used in the manufacture of paint since 1909, and it can not be in the picture, say, 1905.
Or the notorious titanium white, which in the West began to be used in the 1930's, but to us they got somewhere in the fifties. Some insolent use acrylic, widely spread in the paint as a binder of about 40 years ago. Or more fresh PVA.
But if "falshivoizgotovitel" did not take komprometantnyh paints, then falshaka catch much harder. Eye sees a fake, and personal experience says the same thing, but to explain in words I can not do.

- And as if that be?

- I have long been interested in the objective criteria for dating the paintings of the twentieth century. My colleague Anna Vasilieva shared with me the thought that the important thing here - not a pigment and binder. Measure of destruction of oil gives information about the time of painting. Over a hundred years, it dries completely, and further has not changed. For dating the paintings of the twentieth century, it can be used, making the table destruction of known standards.

And then I turned to Andrew Krusanovu, archivist, historian, author of several volumes of scientific work "Russian Avant-Garde." He is a chemist by education first, and for him the main argument - the document and chemical analysis. He came to the conclusion that the naturally aged and artificially aged thing does not have any objective, the essential differences. That is, if artificially sostarivayut thing - hair dryer, in the oven, on the balcony and then in a circle - the destruction of oil is basically the same, although, of course, poddelschiku difficult to get a date, and it can be detected.

- In other words, this method does not work.

- But with Sergei Felitsynym, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, they found a sure method - the isotopic composition of the binder. After the start of nuclear testing (1945) Isotopes unnatural origin spread all over the world. For man-made isotopes are strontium-90 and cesium-137 and purified from them impossible. Flax, from which the oil binders in paints, collects these isotopes from the environment. They should be in the paint, produced since the second half of the twentieth century.
We conducted the experiments about 400 reference samples - precisely dated fragments of paint. And in only one case could not determine the date of the isotope method. If the picture is not related to the restorers, the earliest samples no strontium and cesium.

- You have received a patent for his invention?

- In 2007.

- Someone is interested in these jobs?

- First, we worked only for personal funds. Now roused auctions and some collectors, funky roller fakes. But I naively thought that the major auction houses rushed to our work.

- Why do not rush?

- In my opinion, for the reason that the stream dries up perfectly authentic works of the Russian avant-garde. The appearance of unknown works from the triple - Malevich, Kandinsky, Popova, and other authors of the first level - a sensation. Over the five years since the beginning of "isotope method, I know only three such cases.

- Your method is suitable for oil painting. How to deal with other techniques?

- Made some elaboration on watercolor and tempera. But to create isotope "lines" that are suitable for other techniques that need huge databases of reference materials. Them how and equipment for research, can provide only the state.
Next idea - to see how the impact on the composition of industrial revolution abroad XVIII - XIX centuries. Then, probably it will be possible to date the works and, consequently, to identify fakes in the past 200 years.
But during these five years I have not noticed the interest in our work by officials.
http://www.online812.ru/2009/10/26/014/