“Two White Dots” stands near a river bend in Washington Depot. The 12-foot abstract sculpture seems to play with space and balance amid the bucolic hills of Litchfield County — perhaps as Alexander Calder had imagined.
But the simplicity of the piece belies its tangled origins. “Two White Dots” is a fake.
Calder designed and made a small model of the sculpture in the early 1970s, but a Waterbury ironworker actually constructed it in 1982, six years after the renowned artist died.
In one of the art world’s quietest cases of fraud, “Two White Dots” was then bought and sold by prominent art dealers and collectors — at ever higher prices — as an authentic Calder. A New York dealer finally tracked down the truth about the sculpture in 1995, shortly after former Microsoft President Jon Shirley paid nearly $1 million for it.
A lawsuit alleging the fraud was settled out of court, and out of public view, in the late 1990s. Until now, the only other public mention of the case has been in law journal articles discussing obscure legal aspects of fraud and bankruptcy proceedings.
Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said he isn’t surprised by the long hush. That’s the nature of the business, Hoving said. For all those years, no one in the art market bothered to authenticate the piece because no one wanted to know it was a fake.
“Who wants to screw up a deal?” Hoving asked. “They don’t care to look because they don’t want to know.”
And fraud is commonplace, said Hoving, author of “False Impressions — The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes,” because the provenance of artworks can easily be forged, as it was in the case of “Two White Dots.”
“Unless you get into it like a scholar,” Hoving said, “you take it for granted.”
An Authentic Relationship
In a converted barn in Roxbury, a few miles from the Shepaug River where “Two White Dots” stands today, Calder worked on his famous mobiles — sculptures that philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote were “a spectacle of pure movement.”
In the 1950s, when Calder began designing larger abstract outdoor pieces, he turned to several ironworks companies in the Waterbury area for construction. He relied primarily on Segre’s Iron Works, a nonunion shop run by Italian immigrant Carmen Segretario and his son Stephen Segretario.
The Segretarios constructed many of Calder’s designs under the artist’s supervision, including the 50-foot “Stegosaurus” that graces the grounds of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. They worked with Calder for almost 30 years. It was a fruitful relationship for both. Calder, like many artists, was generous with his works. He donated about 20 pieces to the family before his death in 1976.
The tight relationship between the sculptor and Segre’s Iron Works was widely recognized, but Stephen Segretario took advantage of it when he sold “Two White Dots” as an authentic piece, according to a lawsuit filed by one of its final owners.
Stephen Segretario insists that the piece is as good as any other Calder constructed in Segre’s while Calder was alive. He has no regrets about claiming its authenticity.
“It’s not a fake. It’s Calder’s. It was made from an original work. The foundry drew up the drawings from the maquette,” or model. “It wasn’t conceived in his lifetime, but it was done in the same process as everything was done in the foundry,” Segretario said.
In fact, Segretario said, the furor over the piece would have stunned Calder.
“Sandi [Calder] would be pissed,” Segretario said.
The evidence, however, directly contradicts Segretario’s claim.
$70,000 To $700,000
In 1973, Calder gave Segretario a 1-foot-tall model of “Two White Dots.” Calder would often build his sculptures first on a maquette made of sheet metal on a smaller, manageable scale.
Segre’s Iron Works would weld larger final versions, under Calder’s supervision and approval. In some cases, Calder himself assisted in the construction of the full-size sculptures. Calder would initial the piece in white chalk, and a welder would then burn the initials into the metal.
In 1982, Segretario constructed a 12-foot rendering of “Two White Dots.” A year later he sold the sculpture, and the model, to art dealer Shirley Teplitz for $70,000.
Documents attached to the piece stated it was never signed but “had been fabricated in or about 1974” and “under the supervision and direction of Artist.”
“I had no qualms about buying it,” said Teplitz, a dealer in Woodmere, N.Y. “It came from the Calder foundry. I thought it was authentic. [Segretario] gave me the papers.”
In 1984, Teplitz consigned the piece at the famed Sotheby’s auction house. The Sotheby’s contemporary art catalog stated it was “executed in 1973-1974.”
It sold for $170,000 to Knoll International, a private corporation.
Over the next decade, a number of New York art dealers and collectors purchased and resold “Two White Dots.” Its price increased with each sale.
Six years after the Sotheby’s sale, Knoll International, known today as 21 International Holdings, sold the piece to the Jan Krugier Gallery, a prominent Manhattan gallery specializing in 19th- and 20th-century art.
The bill of sale repeated Segretario’s representations that the sculpture was made “under commission and supervision of Alexander Calder.”
With each sale, the provenance — the place of origin that shows a work of art’s proof of authenticity — was never questioned or researched. Each seller was eager to make a profit.
Matthew Weigman, a spokesman for Sotheby’s, said the auction house sold “Two White Dots” because it believed it was an authentic Calder.
“Outside authority wasn’t available at the time. There was no authority in the field of Calder, no catalog raisonne project, no Calder estate,” Weigman said.
In 1990, the Krugier gallery sold it to Andre Emmerich, a New York City gallery owner, for $700,000 — and the truth behind “Two White Dots” soon began to unfold.
Catalog Concerns
In the years since Calder died, interest and research into his work had grown. By the time Emmerich bought “Two White Dots,” a catalog raisonne — a definitive listing of an author’s authentic works — had been developed.
Emmerich wanted “Two White Dots” included in the catalog, and he contacted the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation. But the foundation did not immediately include the piece in the catalog.
In 1992, Shirley, the ex-president of Microsoft and a Seattle art collector, bought the piece from Emmerich for $900,000.
Shirley, who owns a number of Calders, said shortly after he bought “Two White Dots,” he was contacted by Alexander Rower, Calder’s grandson, who was compiling Calder’s catalog raisonne. Shirley sent him a picture of the sculpture.
After seeing the photo, Rower told Shirley that “Two White Dots” was a fake.
“We had no suspicion that it was created posthumously, until Rower began cataloging all [Calder’s] works,” Shirley said.
“We felt very surprised and shocked to learn it wasn’t real,” he said. “That’s the art world.”
In 1994, Rower contacted Emmerich’s gallery and told him that both Carmen Segretario and his son Stephen told him that “Two White Dots” had been constructed in 1982, according to Emmerich’s lawsuit. For that reason, the piece would not be included in the catalog raisonne, Rower told Emmerich.
Emmerich began to investigate, and he soon learned that he and all of the previous owners had been deceived.
Emmerich, an art dealer for 50 years who specialized in Classical, pre-Columbian and contemporary art, met with Klaus Perls, Calder’s art dealer for more than 20 years, according to the lawsuit.
Perls, who is 94, sent Emmerich a photograph of “Two White Dots.”
On the back of the photograph he wrote, “I happened to be along when Calder gave the Segres [father and son] the small model for the mobile on the reverse. He specifically authorized them to make a large-scale outdoor mobile from that model,” according to Emmerich’s lawsuit.
Emmerich tried to get Stephen Segretario to explain the inconsistencies. But Segretario didn’t respond, and Emmerich hired a private investigator to track him down, according to the suit. Segretario admitted to the investigator that “Two White Dots” was made in 1982, according to the lawsuit.
In 1995, Emmerich refunded Shirley his money and took back “Two White Dots.”
Now referring to the sculpture as the “White Elephant,” Emmerich sued Stephen Segretario for fraud.
“[Segretario] took advantage of me and other people in a cruel fashion,” Emmerich said.
Emmerich and Segretario settled the lawsuit out of court. In the deal, Segretario took back “Two White Dots” and gave Emmerich two original — and authentic — Calders.
Hoving said “Two White Dots” exposes the waywardness of the art market and said that despite Segretario’s arguments to the contrary, “Two White Dots” is a fraud.
“It’s as crooked as a ram’s horn,” Hoving said. “It may be the spirit of Calder, or the spirit of ‘Two White Dots,’ but [Calder’s] hands were not on it, his sweat wasn’t on it.”
A Gallery Of Gifts
Stephen Segretario, a short and stocky man with curly grayish hair, doesn’t look like a man who would defraud the art world.
Three decades after Calder’s death, Segretario’s working and personal relationship with Calder is enshrined in his Middlebury office.
The office is a gallery of gifts the artist gave him. Whimsical red and white mobiles hang from the ceiling. They suspend in a dance of weight and balance. Colorful lithographs and signed exhibit posters grace a wall. Photographs of Segretario and his father and Calder line his desk.
Mixed in with Calder’s work are Segretario’s own abstract sculptures. They resemble Calder’s pieces in design and color, techniques passed from master to pupil.
Segretario considers himself “the only living student of the artist.”
He filed for bankruptcy protection in 1996 after Emmerich filed suit against him and closed the ironworks shortly after. His father, Carmen, died in 1999.
Segretario still owns “Two White Dots.” It is on loan to a friend, who is displaying it outside an office building in Washington Depot. Segretario said he plans to reclaim it.
Segretario insists the piece is as authentic as any sculpture Calder designed in his lifetime. He points to “Mountains and Clouds,” a 51-foot-high stabile Calder designed for the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building in Washington.
In 1976, Calder brought a 20-inch maquette for “Mountains and Clouds” to Washington along with his plan for the sculpture’s placement. He died shortly after.
Ten years later, after the government raised enough money, Segretario’s business constructed and installed the stabile.
“It doesn’t matter if he was dead or alive,” Segretario said.
