CBS “Sunday Morning” Art Authentication Story Was One Collector’s Fraud Infomercial; Who’s Up Next…Pierce O’Donnell?

Using a version of the story art fraudsters know as “the naïve seller strategy,” Massachusetts painter Kevin Doyle found his niche — selling fake Basquiat postcards on eBay under the name ‘gentleman_collector.’

In 2017, Tracey Finch (the New York woman featured in the “Sunday Morning” segment) purchased more than 100 works of “art” from Doyle in Cape Cod and believes they are Basquiat’s “early works”. (Pause for me to laugh myself silly!)

In my opinion, she knows better…and I have proof.

In November 2020, I received a series of emails demanding that I revise the “opinion” I expressed in this 2018 report on my former crime/fraud blog, “Glistening, Quivering Underbelly”. Based on my research, I alleged that Doyle could have been the “artist” behind a fake Basquiat used in a scam by convicted felon David Damante.

In the report, I revealed Kevin Doyle was a close associate of Taryn Burns and “Billy” Force — two art fraudsters who, along with Los Angeles attorney Pierce O’Donnell, John Leo Mangan, and Aaron De Groft, scammed the Orlando Museum of Art into exhibiting a group of “lost Basquiats”.

In case you’ve been napping, the FBI raided the Museum on June 24, 2022 and seized the so-called “lost” Basquiats.

Doyle’s “origin story” is even more ludicrous than the BS Tracey Finch tried to sell on CBS Sunday Morning.

THE CASE OF THE SUBWAY PORTFOLIO CASE: “Piece offered here from portfolio of drawings left on subway car.”

Doyle’s version of the story, taken from this July 20, 2018 eBay listing, goes like this:

“American author Kevin Doyle became friendly with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in the early eighties when Doyle, then unpublished, sought attention from the New York literary world by sending Greenwich Village “street art” to agents and editors.

Andy Warhol’s business manager and nightlife character Fred Hughes, who often socialized with Doyle, suggested Basquiat’s postcards as highly-noticeable intro mailers for sending queries to the Paul R. Reynolds Literary Agency and others.

As a result, Doyle developed a relationship with Reynolds’ agent Sabina Iardella. Although the Agency never succeeded in placing Doyle’s first manuscript, Ms. Iardella often traveled with Doyle to meet Basquiat in the Village.

Doyle enjoyed the highly toned atmosphere that seemed to surround Basquiat at the time. Sometimes Doyle gave money to the artist to help him pay off drug debts and was remunerated with gifts of artwork.

On one occasion Basquiat and Doyle rode the subway together, and the artist departed the train first leaving behind a large art case full of drawings. Doyle made several attempts to return this artwork, but never managed to bring the artist together with it again.

Basquiat seemed almost apathetic toward Doyle’s efforts to return the lost drawings and simply shrugged when Doyle brought the subject up. The portfolio was left in various houses owned by Doyle over the years and was long forgotten until recently re-discovered during house cleaning at Doyle’s daughter’s house in Vermont.”

That’s a helluva story.
And, with the exception of Doyle, everyone else mentioned is dead — Basquiat, Warhol, Hughes and Iardella.

Makes it tough to fact-check, right?

Beginning Thursday, November 12, 2020, and continuing for nearly a week, I received a series of emails from a woman I’ll call “Mrs. E”.

My response?

My response to “Mrs. E” listed links to exclusive reports from “Glistening, Quivering Underbelly” about Doyle, and asked her if Pierce O’Donnell was involved.

Here’s the response.

My favorite line?

“My rudimentary understanding is that Doyle, while a bit of a character and rather shift, neither would be so incredibly capable nor have been able to have done all this during the time Basquiat was young and when the works were verified as to the date of the materials.”

Oh, and she has “paperwork” on that, coming from Tracey Finch! (Who I’m told would “grant me an audience”!

I asked “Mrs. E” to send me some photos, and she forwarded them the next day with this email. Note the “rethinking your point of view” the “your work available on the Internet really cast aspersions on this, so I’m digging.”

Here’s one of the photos:

“Mrs. E” was working had to get me to change my position on Kevin Doyle producing all these “works of art”.

But Doyle, who claims to have a found “2000 JMB souvenir doodles, drawings and postcards” on a subway in New York City in a case left behind by Basquiat, and sold Tracey Finch her “collection”, has sold crap like this on eBay since at least 2013.

Don’t believe me?

Just scroll down for more.

Tracey Finch admitted Kevin Doyle sold her the “artworks”, but the fact is, the works are fake.

They are inconsistent with Basquiat’s work and, most important, Doyle’s provenance changes and it’s ludicrous.

Initially, Doyle said he got them from the artist himself and an assistant witnessed the transaction. Then he claimed Basquiat left them on the train, and event he claims in a current eBay listing was “mentioned publicly” by artist Julian Schnabel.

It never was.

That’s all you need to know to make a judgment here.

After I watched the “art forgery” Sunday Morning segment, I reached out to Albert Diaz — as I had back in 2018 — and he graciously responded.

Although Diaz is best known for his collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat on SAMO©, graffiti that appeared in lower Manhattan from 1977 to 1979, his career spans five decades.

An influential, first generation NYC graffiti artist, who later became a text-oriented street artist, Diaz currently works with the WET PAINT & Service Change Alert signs used throughout the New York City subway system.

His visual style uses cut out individual letters from multiple signs to create clever, surreal and sometimes poignant anagrams. The reworked signage is then posted back onto subway walls.

Diaz’s response about Tracey Finch and her “Basquiats”?

“Anyone with such an uninformed and amateur eye for art, deserves to own this garbage. They probably thought they were getting a great deal.”

Yes, that’s Al Diaz, posing with his own Kevin Doyle original…or should I say fugazi Basquiat?