Intrestingly the newspapers did not mentioned, how police got to know that this gallery was dealing in fakes. I think it is quite difficult to spot fakes unless the artist himself mentions it. As it is there is there is already a dearth of art historians/research scholars who would study and verify the artist with the study of his brush strokes or the pigment quality.(There is someone in Pune Maharastra who is a pro but I do not think there are many like him).
Concept of ARN number.
ARN number (Artist Reference Number) is unique Artist reference number that is to be assigned to every painting that goes out of the studio. Image of painting in my website has same name (and tooltip)as the ARN. The same number is written behind the painting also. (More details on the nomenclature later)
The basic fact that this is on net allows a person to have a second opinion apart from the authenticity letter for the work he/she has bought.
We have tried to keep it there for all the new paintings since Nov 2007. Slowly we are trying to incorporate it with all the past paintings too. It is a long and arduous process. But in the end it guarantees, paintings that I have made are properly catalogued. I intend this information on internet to be available free of cost to anyone who wants to verify works made by me.
This is not a silver bullet for fake paintings, but I think it makes sense.
