“PEEL AND STICK” IT: FedEx Instructions Appear On FRONT Of An Orlando “Basquiat” Painting

“One clue to the paintings’ authenticity may lie with the cardboard on which Basquiat would have applied his layers of paint, crayon, and oilstick. Mangin said he consulted several paper experts to confirm its age, but was told that the composition of cardboard from the 1980s was impossible to differentiate from that of recent years. “Nobody had an answer,” Mangin explained. “Cardboard is cardboard.”

New York Times; February 16, 2022

Aaron, let me be the first to say it: the paintings are not by Basquiat.

And here’s another discovery: while one of the men behind the “collection”, John Leo Mangan III (AKA Lee Mangin), asserted in a New York Times article that “cardboard is cardboard”, a lie is also a lie.

As the Times article stated, flip over one of the works and you’ll find that it was painted on the back of a shipping box with a clearly visible company imprint: “Align top of FedEx Shipping Label here.”

Well, you don’t have to “flip over” the painting “Untitled (One More King/Czar)” to look for FedEx label instructions on the back — they’re right there on the front.

And FedEx doesn’t print label placement instructions inside a box!

Here it is below in a close-up, in the original vertical orientation.

Now closely at the area circled in red, in reverse orientation of the original as shown in the exhibition’s catalog.

You’ll see the FedEx instructions to “Peel Off”, like to “peel off label and attach here”.

Your Honor, I rest my case.