December 15, 2025 • 26 mins
Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy, Forged.
Rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things—like buying paintings. And what better painting for an iconic Canadian rocker to buy than one by Norval Morrisseau, one of the most iconic Indigenous artists in Canada? But when Kevin’s Morrisseau painting is featured in an exhibit, it gets taken down because the head curator says it’s “questionable.” Kevin tries to get some answers but every answer leads to more questions. Host Adrian Stimson traces Kevin’s dogged quest to find out the truth about his painting—and learns how this one painting is the key to cracking a whole underworld open.
Forged is a six-part series, from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia, host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world. More episodes of Forged are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/ForgedxDOAA
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Norval Morrisso is one of the most famous Indigenous artists ever.
His paintings are colorful, beautiful, spectacular. He was called the
Picasso of the North, but there are thousands of fake
Norval Morriso paintings. I'm Adrian Stimson and I'm an Indigenous
artist from the Sixica Nation, and I know every painting
(00:44):
that I've ever painted. The idea of somebody putting my
name on something that isn't mine, it's heartbreaking. In my
brand new six part podcast series Forged from CBC in
Canada and ABC in Australia, I explore how the legacy
of one of the most famous Indigenous artists got tied
(01:04):
up in the largest art fraud in the world. In
this first episode, I trace one rock star's quest to
find out the truth about his own Norvel Moriso painting
and learn how this one painting became the key to
cracking a whole underworld. Open. Have a listen.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We burned this sort of to prepare our minds. This
glass is used for a sacred purpose, and that purpose
is to clear away the aberrations of the mind, to
allow space to enter, so that spirit will space speaking.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
True that's the voice of Norval Morriso smudging at ceremony.
Somehow Norval led me here. I'm sitting in a police
(02:07):
station in thunder Bay. There's snow lining the parking lot
outside the window and inside across from me is Inspector
Jason Ryback. I'm not usually in police stations talking to cops.
I'm an artist, a painter, but I've got a lot
of questions these days. When you started this investigation, how
(02:28):
familiar were you with Norval's art? Well, when I started,
I didn't even know who Norvel was other than by name.
I knew he was a painter from the area.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
I couldn't have even picked out a Norval Morsel painting
in an art gallery unless someone told me it was
a Marvel Morsel. When we started, the hope was we
were going to get information to help us solve the
murder Scott Dove. But we started getting all this information
on an art fraud that happened, and I was like,
how has nobody ever looked into this?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
My name is Adrian Stimson. I'm a member of the
Sixeca Nation, and I know the work of Norval Morrissea
as an indigenous artist. I've never known the art world
without him. In Canada, he's called the grandfather of Indigenous art.
I see his work everywhere in galleries, in flea markets,
(03:19):
in kitchen gift shops. But when I see his art
now I see something else. Fakes.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
We believe it's the world's biggest art fraud. There's nothing
that even comes close to the magnitude of sure number
of paintings that were created. You're already up into the
hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's nothing that's even
remotely close to that that's ever happened in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Thousands of fakes and a cold case murder.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
The person who potentially suspect and this homicide is also
involved in this art fraud, and it's like, are the
two connected? And then I just started looking and kind
of the floodgates open.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Right, this is why I'm here. I keep trying to
figure out where is Norval in all of this.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The truth seemed to be screaming right at us. Very quick.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
It became clear that there were more and more fakes.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
I remember, I just given him, shoot, I want my
paint back.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I knew you killed that boy. I realized no one
on the other side cared about the truth. It was
more they were trying to stop me from proving it.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Any man who is attached to the senses and pleasures
of this world is just like a man was being
devoured by serpents. I say bullshit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
From CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia. This is Forged,
Episode one a painting. Let me paint you a picture.
(05:08):
It's a fall day and nineteen sixty two at a
small gallery on Elizabeth Street in Toronto's Greenwich Village.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
So at that time Elizabeth Street was the center of
an alternative scene and Jack Pollock had his gallery in
that area.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Women are in dresses, men are in suits. They're smoking
as they walk around the cramp space looking at the
paintings on the walls.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
It's great painting and definitely spectacular. Intense colors are intense lines,
almost like stained glass windows. You know, stained glass window
has intense color and then all the colors are separated
by lines. I don't want to paint it as being
strange or exotic. It was great art period.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
This is Gail dexter Lord. She went on to be
an art critic for the Toronto Star, but back in
nineteen sixty two. She was a teen.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
But you know, we're looking at these paintings and my
mom likes and my dad likes them. I like, that's unusual, right, Obviously,
your teenager you don't always like what your parents like.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
The paintings on the walls are so vibrant, so full
of energy, vitality and movement, crisp, bold black lines conjuring
these minimalist, almost abstract creatures, birds and snakes and bears
and symbols in reds and blues and yellows and white.
And this art lining the walls, it was painted by
(06:40):
an Indigenous artist. This wasn't the norm at the time.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
My parents were always very interested in art, and we
would go to museums on the weekend, and they go
to the Art Gallery of Ontario on the weekend. And
I think that Indigenous people were always presented as dead,
not as living people.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
The artist in this gallery is very much alive. There's
a real buzz about this show, a kind of spectacle,
the novelty of the quota quote Indian in the gallery.
Speaker 7 (07:12):
I remember everyone's wearing a coat, which is memorable because
when Norvel Morrisseau appears and he's extremely tall, and he
was wearing a you know, like a buckskin jacket with
fringes on it, as I remember, and so Outstrode, and
you have to say, Strode, this incredible tall man, and
(07:33):
he just really filled the room, let's put it that way.
And we were introduced, We shook hands, we chatted, we
talked about the art. I don't really remember what we said.
It was a very brief encounter, but it was very impressive.
And when you grow up with these ideas of a
dead culture, that really was impressive.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
This exhibit was a pivotal moment for indigenous artists. It
got national attention and it sold out immediately.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
One of the things that we were wondering about is
how you were feeling when the gallery show opened. The
people came in and looked to cho paints. I unfelt nothing, nothing.
Did you feel strange about them? Mine? In no way?
Speaker 5 (08:17):
I was a little strange.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I've been watching this archival tape from the exhibit opening.
Novel's being interviewed in the same gallery where he met
young Gail, talking with a CBC journalist named June Colwood.
The tape is black and white and the camera zooms
right in on Norvell's face so close that I can
see a bit of stubble on his chin.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
And so what happened to you here in the city.
The success seemed to you like part of what was
promised this week. I understand you made four thousand dollars.
What are you going to do with that?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I dont know?
Speaker 6 (09:00):
What have you wanted?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
What I wanted was people to know this ar. This
is all I ever wanted.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
It's a bit hard to hear Noval in this tape.
He seems almost shy, but what he's saying is big.
He says, what I wanted was for people to know
this art. This is all I ever wanted. And now
people do know him, know his art. But before this exhibit,
(09:33):
Noval was knocking on doors trying to sell his paintings
in the remote town he lived in in northern Ontario.
He sold his work to tourists at the general store.
He searched for supplies at the dump next to the
shack he lived in, salvaged Christmas crepe paper and wet
it to get the colors for his paints. And then
(09:55):
Jack Pollock, the owner of that gallery, heard about Norval.
He was floored when he saw his paintings. And he
arranged that exhibit for Norval at his gallery in Toronto.
Speaker 8 (10:06):
Remember his name, It's novel. Morisso, twenty one year older
Jibwe painter whose works were publicly displayed for the first
time last week. The Toronto art world responded warmly to
the showing, held at a small gallery in the city's
Greenwich Village. The collectors had heard the new name and
came in droves to see and buy his art. They
liked what they saw and snapped up all of his
(10:28):
thirty five pictures for a total of four thousand dollars overnight.
Normal Morissau, the shy, mystical artist, had found the acceptance
he always knew would be his.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
But nothing is so simple. After the show, Novale and
Jack Pollock, the gallerists and some others went to a
Chinese restaurant for dinner. Jack wrote about it in his memoir.
He wrote later that evening, with red soul stickers on
(11:01):
every painting, a drunken rage unleashed the penta hostility so
fiercely held in check throughout the earlier hours, the White
Man did not deserve his paintings. Many of Novell's elders
elders he greatly respected, did not want him sharing his work.
Norval was painting sacred symbols, stories, visions, things that weren't
(11:26):
shared much outside his Ojibwe community. Let alone sold at
an art gallery in Toronto.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
Am I doing the writing for my people by portraying
these things? This was the tableaus breaking to go ahead
and paint the concepts of my people, the religious aspects
of my people. It was a continuous struggle, a very
very very deep struggle within my soul.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That show at Pollock's gallery changed the course of Norval's life.
He went on to show his art at the Pompadou
in Paris, the National Museum of the American Indian in
New York, the National Gallery of Canada. His work sold
for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He created an entire
artistic movement known as the Woodland School. Norval became known
(12:21):
as the Picasso up the North. So how did he
become one of the most faked artists in the world.
To figure that out, we need to look at one painting,
the painting that a rockstar bought, The painting that cracked
this all open.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
This was one of the first things I saw as
a kid of Norval's work. It's the cover of Dancing
in the Dragon's Jaws. It's an album by Bruce Coburn.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I used to listen to Bruce Coburn all the time
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Bruce actually commissioned Norval to paint this for the cover.
It's greens, reds blues. It's sort of a like a
looks like a sea creature.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And it's sort of ominous figures at the back.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, they're kind of they look almost like skeletons.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yes, yes, this is Kevin.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My name is Kevin Hurt. I am a I guess
I'm an artist musician. Most people would maybe know me
from playing with the band Bar Naked Ladies.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It's a Sunday morning in Toronto. We're in Kevin's home,
sitting in his den. Kevin showing me the CD case
for Bruce Coburn's album, Oh.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
My gosh, you ever seen that?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
No, I've heard the some some of the music of
Bruce on that.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, this has his one of his most popular songs,
called Wondering Where the Lions Are? Yeah, suns up, looks okay.
The world survives into another day and I'm thinking about eternity.
Some kind of ecstasies got a hold on me, and
I'm more wondering where the lions are.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Norval's art on that Bruce Coburn album really stayed with Kevin.
When his band hit it big, he bought a new home,
this home we're in, and he wanted to put a
novel painting in it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I immediately thought of Norval and just thought, I wonder
if I could find one of his works, And so
I started sort of searching for galleries that sold his work.
And I read a few things like be careful, there's
fakes out there, and so I went to a gallery
in New Yorkville. Here in Toronto called the Maslek McCloud Gallery.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
The gallery was owned by this guy, Joe or Joseph McLeod.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I walked in and sure enough, there was some beautiful
Norvell Moriso paintings in the front room, you know, one
hundred thousand dollars, and you would, you know, your draw
would drop and say, oh my god, this is beautiful,
and Joe would say, oh, well, I have other ones
that aren't that expensive if you'd like to look at them,
(15:12):
and then you would be led to this other room.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Kevin and Joe chatted, got to know each other a bit.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You know, and I liked Joe. He was an English teacher.
At one point he wrote books of poetry that were published.
I really felt like, Oh, this is a guy who
cares and he's part of the family.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And Joe told Kevin that he knew the Moroso family.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I thought, okay, I'm not buying it from a stranger
online or something. And I asked him about it. I said, well,
I've heard there's lots of fakes out there, and he said, well,
you've come to the best place. This is the safest
place to buy a Morico painting, because I'm here to
guide you. The painting I bought was called Spirit Energy
(15:59):
of Mother Earth. It was mostly green and black. I
liked it originally because it had animals on it. It
had bear and like a sort of a sea creature.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's square, about five and a half feet wide, and
Novelle's signature is there increase allabics at the bottom of
the canvas. Kevin was excited about the painting. He wanted
to show it to people, and in twenty ten he
was asked to curate a show at the Art Gallery
of Ontario, the Ago.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So that show was up for a few days. I
had a great feeling about it. A lot of people
came out, we had a good time, and then I
got a call from the Ago.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
The display was on a couple of walls and displayed
in what in the museum world we might say the
salon style of hang. In other words, one painting over
top the other.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
This is Gerald McMaster.
Speaker 9 (17:00):
I am planes Cree from Saskatchewan, and I'm also a
member or citizen of the Sixica name of Alberta.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The same community that I'm from.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
He was a curator at the Ago, but he's also
an amazing artist in his own right.
Speaker 9 (17:18):
My position at the ARCHAOI of Ontario was the head
of Canadian Art, so I was familiar with both Canadian
art and all sorts of indigenous art, and so I
went over to see the exhibition was really quite interesting.
Mister Hearn was not present at the time. I didn't
(17:38):
know who he was, and so the manager asked me,
so what do I think about the works that? What
do I think of the display? I said to her.
The to me, they're questionable.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Gerald knows Norval's work well, and Kevin's painting something wasn't right.
His painting was dated to nineteen seventy four, and that
raised a red flag for Gerald.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
My writing is different than yours, and it's different from
someone else's writing. The withdrawing the same with painting. There's
a kind of visual signature in the work, and so
when you're studying his work enough from the fifties, sixties,
and seventies, you can immediately understand what I mean. And
(18:27):
it started to shift in the eighties and nineties into
two thousands, and I think that someone suggesting this was
work from the seventies. That's why I said it was questionable,
because it just didn't feel it was from that period.
It looked like something much much later. Whether it was
(18:48):
by Marrisso himself, it's hard to say, or someone imitating him.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Jerald told the Ago manager that he had his doubts
about Kevin's painting.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
And she passed the message on to him.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I was told Jerald McMaster had to take your painting down.
He feels it's questionable. And then I got a message
from Gerald saying, Kevin, would you like to meet for
coffee or tea? And so we met and that's when
it started sinking in for real.
Speaker 9 (19:23):
Well, I think meeting me was the first step. I
think that he was beginning to do his homework. When
someone who's just starting out collecting and you want to
put some money into collecting, and you're disappointed in the
fact that you may have purchased something that's questionable, it
(19:47):
can break your heart, you know, it makes you nervous,
it makes you anxious, and I think that that's what
Kevin was feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
My heart dropped. I was disappointed, as embarrassed. I wasn't
completely surprised, you know. I felt I felt disappointed in
myself for trusting people, and that was a hard thing.
I always used to trust people. I asked Joe if
(20:18):
I could come see him, and he said, yes, come
see me, and if you're unhappy with your painting, I'll
give you your money back.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So Kevin goes back to see Joe McCleod, the galleries
who sold him his painting.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And when I went to see him, it was like
a different person. He had us sitting in a dark
room and all the lights were off. Just everything sort
of flipped like I'd just suddenly gone down the rabbit
(20:52):
hole into darkness. And he said, Kevin, I can't give
you your money back. That would set off a chain
of events that would result in the closing of my gallery.
And he said, I either want an apology from Gerald
(21:19):
McMaster that says that he's sorry for taking the painting down,
or I want a written letter from Gerald saying that
he believes the painting is fake, in which case I
will sue the Ago. And I said, well, what does
that have to do with me, You know, like I
(21:40):
bought the painting from you, and why don't we explore
the painting together and prove it's real and we can
show that to the Ago. And he said, Kevin, have
you ever heard that saying have you stopped beating your wife?
And I said no. He said, well, if you say yes,
(22:02):
I've stopped beating my wife, you're admitting that you beat her.
And if you say no, you're still beating your wife.
And then he said, I'm sorry, I can't help you.
You have a beautiful Normo Morso painting.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I left his gallery and said, okay, I'm on my
own here. I either have to let this go or
try to find out what the truth is.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
The room that we've been sitting in Kevin and I
this den in his home. It's the same room where
his painting used to hang. It's not on the wall anymore,
but he thinks about it all the time because it
kind of changed the course of his life.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
There's an opening sequence in the film Blue Velvet. The
song Blue Velvet is playing. You see blue sky, you
see a picket fence, you see the traffic guard waving
their hands and motioning for the kids to cross the street.
I think a school bus goes by. And then you
start going towards the lawn. There's a sprinkler, there's a dog.
(23:19):
You go into the grass and the sound gets louder
and darker, and you go into the dirt, into the
wet mud, and then there's bugs and they're all eating
something or fighting. And that is a perfect metaphor for
(23:41):
this journey. It goes from an elite sort of art
gallery in Yorkville all the way to Thunder Bay into
this dark underworld. That's quite a journey.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'm in my studio, I have canvas on the wall
and I'm just kind of looking at it, thinking what
am I going to make of this? So I'm just
going to start jess Win, I have clear Jesso Jesso.
The wooden canvas is so I can start to start
the drawing process on them, and then from there I
(24:28):
start to paint. I'm an artist. The way I understand things,
make sense of them is to paint them, to create,
and there's a lot to try to make sense of
with Norval. In some ways I feel a kinship with him.
His work was bold, unapologetic, fierce, all things an artist
(24:51):
wants to be. But somehow his life, his work got
wrapped up in what's believed to be the biggest art
fraud in the world.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
So on another piece of paper, I just kind of draw,
you know, a basic sort of plan, And for this
one I have nor felt kind of in the middle
full body.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
When I set out to paint something, I look at
it closely, study it, break it down into the smallest parts,
and then try to put it back together again on
the canvas, kind of like a detective reconstructing a crime scene.
(25:41):
Over the next five episodes, I'm going to take you
into beauty and darkness here in Canada and in Australia.
Two we're heading into the underbelly of a devastating art crime,
one that is still unraveling.
Speaker 11 (25:55):
When Kevin came to me. I already had a sense
of the size of this fraud. This wasn't just some
little scam that had happened to one or two people.
That was much more, much bigger than that, so I
wanted to work on it. It looked like a huge injustice,
if nothing else than a huge mystery to be unraveled.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
That's on the next episode of Forged. That was the
first episode of Forged. If you like what you heard,
you can find episode two waiting for you right now.
Just search for Forged everywhere you get your podcasts, and
(26:40):
be sure to follow the feed so you don't miss
an episode.
Hushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Norval Morrisso is one of the most famous Indigenous artists ever.
His paintings are colorful, beautiful, spectacular. He was called the
Picasso of the North, but there are thousands of fake
Norval Morriso paintings. I'm Adrian Stimson and I'm an Indigenous
artist from the Sixica Nation, and I know every painting
(00:44):
that I've ever painted. The idea of somebody putting my
name on something that isn't mine, it's heartbreaking. In my
brand new six part podcast series Forged from CBC in
Canada and ABC in Australia, I explore how the legacy
of one of the most famous Indigenous artists got tied
(01:04):
up in the largest art fraud in the world. In
this first episode, I trace one rock star's quest to
find out the truth about his own Norvel Moriso painting
and learn how this one painting became the key to
cracking a whole underworld. Open. Have a listen.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We burned this sort of to prepare our minds. This
glass is used for a sacred purpose, and that purpose
is to clear away the aberrations of the mind, to
allow space to enter, so that spirit will space speaking.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
True that's the voice of Norval Morriso smudging at ceremony.
Somehow Norval led me here. I'm sitting in a police
(02:07):
station in thunder Bay. There's snow lining the parking lot
outside the window and inside across from me is Inspector
Jason Ryback. I'm not usually in police stations talking to cops.
I'm an artist, a painter, but I've got a lot
of questions these days. When you started this investigation, how
(02:28):
familiar were you with Norval's art? Well, when I started,
I didn't even know who Norvel was other than by name.
I knew he was a painter from the area.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
I couldn't have even picked out a Norval Morsel painting
in an art gallery unless someone told me it was
a Marvel Morsel. When we started, the hope was we
were going to get information to help us solve the
murder Scott Dove. But we started getting all this information
on an art fraud that happened, and I was like,
how has nobody ever looked into this?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
My name is Adrian Stimson. I'm a member of the
Sixeca Nation, and I know the work of Norval Morrissea
as an indigenous artist. I've never known the art world
without him. In Canada, he's called the grandfather of Indigenous art.
I see his work everywhere in galleries, in flea markets,
(03:19):
in kitchen gift shops. But when I see his art
now I see something else. Fakes.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
We believe it's the world's biggest art fraud. There's nothing
that even comes close to the magnitude of sure number
of paintings that were created. You're already up into the
hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's nothing that's even
remotely close to that that's ever happened in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Thousands of fakes and a cold case murder.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
The person who potentially suspect and this homicide is also
involved in this art fraud, and it's like, are the
two connected? And then I just started looking and kind
of the floodgates open.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Right, this is why I'm here. I keep trying to
figure out where is Norval in all of this.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The truth seemed to be screaming right at us. Very quick.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
It became clear that there were more and more fakes.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
I remember, I just given him, shoot, I want my
paint back.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I knew you killed that boy. I realized no one
on the other side cared about the truth. It was
more they were trying to stop me from proving it.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Any man who is attached to the senses and pleasures
of this world is just like a man was being
devoured by serpents. I say bullshit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
From CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia. This is Forged,
Episode one a painting. Let me paint you a picture.
(05:08):
It's a fall day and nineteen sixty two at a
small gallery on Elizabeth Street in Toronto's Greenwich Village.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
So at that time Elizabeth Street was the center of
an alternative scene and Jack Pollock had his gallery in
that area.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Women are in dresses, men are in suits. They're smoking
as they walk around the cramp space looking at the
paintings on the walls.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
It's great painting and definitely spectacular. Intense colors are intense lines,
almost like stained glass windows. You know, stained glass window
has intense color and then all the colors are separated
by lines. I don't want to paint it as being
strange or exotic. It was great art period.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
This is Gail dexter Lord. She went on to be
an art critic for the Toronto Star, but back in
nineteen sixty two. She was a teen.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
But you know, we're looking at these paintings and my
mom likes and my dad likes them. I like, that's unusual, right, Obviously,
your teenager you don't always like what your parents like.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
The paintings on the walls are so vibrant, so full
of energy, vitality and movement, crisp, bold black lines conjuring
these minimalist, almost abstract creatures, birds and snakes and bears
and symbols in reds and blues and yellows and white.
And this art lining the walls, it was painted by
(06:40):
an Indigenous artist. This wasn't the norm at the time.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
My parents were always very interested in art, and we
would go to museums on the weekend, and they go
to the Art Gallery of Ontario on the weekend. And
I think that Indigenous people were always presented as dead,
not as living people.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
The artist in this gallery is very much alive. There's
a real buzz about this show, a kind of spectacle,
the novelty of the quota quote Indian in the gallery.
Speaker 7 (07:12):
I remember everyone's wearing a coat, which is memorable because
when Norvel Morrisseau appears and he's extremely tall, and he
was wearing a you know, like a buckskin jacket with
fringes on it, as I remember, and so Outstrode, and
you have to say, Strode, this incredible tall man, and
(07:33):
he just really filled the room, let's put it that way.
And we were introduced, We shook hands, we chatted, we
talked about the art. I don't really remember what we said.
It was a very brief encounter, but it was very impressive.
And when you grow up with these ideas of a
dead culture, that really was impressive.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
This exhibit was a pivotal moment for indigenous artists. It
got national attention and it sold out immediately.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
One of the things that we were wondering about is
how you were feeling when the gallery show opened. The
people came in and looked to cho paints. I unfelt nothing, nothing.
Did you feel strange about them? Mine? In no way?
Speaker 5 (08:17):
I was a little strange.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I've been watching this archival tape from the exhibit opening.
Novel's being interviewed in the same gallery where he met
young Gail, talking with a CBC journalist named June Colwood.
The tape is black and white and the camera zooms
right in on Norvell's face so close that I can
see a bit of stubble on his chin.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
And so what happened to you here in the city.
The success seemed to you like part of what was
promised this week. I understand you made four thousand dollars.
What are you going to do with that?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I dont know?
Speaker 6 (09:00):
What have you wanted?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
What I wanted was people to know this ar. This
is all I ever wanted.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
It's a bit hard to hear Noval in this tape.
He seems almost shy, but what he's saying is big.
He says, what I wanted was for people to know
this art. This is all I ever wanted. And now
people do know him, know his art. But before this exhibit,
(09:33):
Noval was knocking on doors trying to sell his paintings
in the remote town he lived in in northern Ontario.
He sold his work to tourists at the general store.
He searched for supplies at the dump next to the
shack he lived in, salvaged Christmas crepe paper and wet
it to get the colors for his paints. And then
(09:55):
Jack Pollock, the owner of that gallery, heard about Norval.
He was floored when he saw his paintings. And he
arranged that exhibit for Norval at his gallery in Toronto.
Speaker 8 (10:06):
Remember his name, It's novel. Morisso, twenty one year older
Jibwe painter whose works were publicly displayed for the first
time last week. The Toronto art world responded warmly to
the showing, held at a small gallery in the city's
Greenwich Village. The collectors had heard the new name and
came in droves to see and buy his art. They
liked what they saw and snapped up all of his
(10:28):
thirty five pictures for a total of four thousand dollars overnight.
Normal Morissau, the shy, mystical artist, had found the acceptance
he always knew would be his.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
But nothing is so simple. After the show, Novale and
Jack Pollock, the gallerists and some others went to a
Chinese restaurant for dinner. Jack wrote about it in his memoir.
He wrote later that evening, with red soul stickers on
(11:01):
every painting, a drunken rage unleashed the penta hostility so
fiercely held in check throughout the earlier hours, the White
Man did not deserve his paintings. Many of Novell's elders
elders he greatly respected, did not want him sharing his work.
Norval was painting sacred symbols, stories, visions, things that weren't
(11:26):
shared much outside his Ojibwe community. Let alone sold at
an art gallery in Toronto.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
Am I doing the writing for my people by portraying
these things? This was the tableaus breaking to go ahead
and paint the concepts of my people, the religious aspects
of my people. It was a continuous struggle, a very
very very deep struggle within my soul.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That show at Pollock's gallery changed the course of Norval's life.
He went on to show his art at the Pompadou
in Paris, the National Museum of the American Indian in
New York, the National Gallery of Canada. His work sold
for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He created an entire
artistic movement known as the Woodland School. Norval became known
(12:21):
as the Picasso up the North. So how did he
become one of the most faked artists in the world.
To figure that out, we need to look at one painting,
the painting that a rockstar bought, The painting that cracked
this all open.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
This was one of the first things I saw as
a kid of Norval's work. It's the cover of Dancing
in the Dragon's Jaws. It's an album by Bruce Coburn.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I used to listen to Bruce Coburn all the time
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Bruce actually commissioned Norval to paint this for the cover.
It's greens, reds blues. It's sort of a like a
looks like a sea creature.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And it's sort of ominous figures at the back.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, they're kind of they look almost like skeletons.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yes, yes, this is Kevin.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My name is Kevin Hurt. I am a I guess
I'm an artist musician. Most people would maybe know me
from playing with the band Bar Naked Ladies.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It's a Sunday morning in Toronto. We're in Kevin's home,
sitting in his den. Kevin showing me the CD case
for Bruce Coburn's album, Oh.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
My gosh, you ever seen that?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
No, I've heard the some some of the music of
Bruce on that.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, this has his one of his most popular songs,
called Wondering Where the Lions Are? Yeah, suns up, looks okay.
The world survives into another day and I'm thinking about eternity.
Some kind of ecstasies got a hold on me, and
I'm more wondering where the lions are.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Norval's art on that Bruce Coburn album really stayed with Kevin.
When his band hit it big, he bought a new home,
this home we're in, and he wanted to put a
novel painting in it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I immediately thought of Norval and just thought, I wonder
if I could find one of his works, And so
I started sort of searching for galleries that sold his work.
And I read a few things like be careful, there's
fakes out there, and so I went to a gallery
in New Yorkville. Here in Toronto called the Maslek McCloud Gallery.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
The gallery was owned by this guy, Joe or Joseph McLeod.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I walked in and sure enough, there was some beautiful
Norvell Moriso paintings in the front room, you know, one
hundred thousand dollars, and you would, you know, your draw
would drop and say, oh my god, this is beautiful,
and Joe would say, oh, well, I have other ones
that aren't that expensive if you'd like to look at them,
(15:12):
and then you would be led to this other room.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Kevin and Joe chatted, got to know each other a bit.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You know, and I liked Joe. He was an English teacher.
At one point he wrote books of poetry that were published.
I really felt like, Oh, this is a guy who
cares and he's part of the family.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And Joe told Kevin that he knew the Moroso family.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I thought, okay, I'm not buying it from a stranger
online or something. And I asked him about it. I said, well,
I've heard there's lots of fakes out there, and he said, well,
you've come to the best place. This is the safest
place to buy a Morico painting, because I'm here to
guide you. The painting I bought was called Spirit Energy
(15:59):
of Mother Earth. It was mostly green and black. I
liked it originally because it had animals on it. It
had bear and like a sort of a sea creature.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's square, about five and a half feet wide, and
Novelle's signature is there increase allabics at the bottom of
the canvas. Kevin was excited about the painting. He wanted
to show it to people, and in twenty ten he
was asked to curate a show at the Art Gallery
of Ontario, the Ago.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So that show was up for a few days. I
had a great feeling about it. A lot of people
came out, we had a good time, and then I
got a call from the Ago.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
The display was on a couple of walls and displayed
in what in the museum world we might say the
salon style of hang. In other words, one painting over
top the other.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
This is Gerald McMaster.
Speaker 9 (17:00):
I am planes Cree from Saskatchewan, and I'm also a
member or citizen of the Sixica name of Alberta.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The same community that I'm from.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
He was a curator at the Ago, but he's also
an amazing artist in his own right.
Speaker 9 (17:18):
My position at the ARCHAOI of Ontario was the head
of Canadian Art, so I was familiar with both Canadian
art and all sorts of indigenous art, and so I
went over to see the exhibition was really quite interesting.
Mister Hearn was not present at the time. I didn't
(17:38):
know who he was, and so the manager asked me,
so what do I think about the works that? What
do I think of the display? I said to her.
The to me, they're questionable.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Gerald knows Norval's work well, and Kevin's painting something wasn't right.
His painting was dated to nineteen seventy four, and that
raised a red flag for Gerald.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
My writing is different than yours, and it's different from
someone else's writing. The withdrawing the same with painting. There's
a kind of visual signature in the work, and so
when you're studying his work enough from the fifties, sixties,
and seventies, you can immediately understand what I mean. And
(18:27):
it started to shift in the eighties and nineties into
two thousands, and I think that someone suggesting this was
work from the seventies. That's why I said it was questionable,
because it just didn't feel it was from that period.
It looked like something much much later. Whether it was
(18:48):
by Marrisso himself, it's hard to say, or someone imitating him.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Jerald told the Ago manager that he had his doubts
about Kevin's painting.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
And she passed the message on to him.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I was told Jerald McMaster had to take your painting down.
He feels it's questionable. And then I got a message
from Gerald saying, Kevin, would you like to meet for
coffee or tea? And so we met and that's when
it started sinking in for real.
Speaker 9 (19:23):
Well, I think meeting me was the first step. I
think that he was beginning to do his homework. When
someone who's just starting out collecting and you want to
put some money into collecting, and you're disappointed in the
fact that you may have purchased something that's questionable, it
(19:47):
can break your heart, you know, it makes you nervous,
it makes you anxious, and I think that that's what
Kevin was feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
My heart dropped. I was disappointed, as embarrassed. I wasn't
completely surprised, you know. I felt I felt disappointed in
myself for trusting people, and that was a hard thing.
I always used to trust people. I asked Joe if
(20:18):
I could come see him, and he said, yes, come
see me, and if you're unhappy with your painting, I'll
give you your money back.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So Kevin goes back to see Joe McCleod, the galleries
who sold him his painting.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And when I went to see him, it was like
a different person. He had us sitting in a dark
room and all the lights were off. Just everything sort
of flipped like I'd just suddenly gone down the rabbit
(20:52):
hole into darkness. And he said, Kevin, I can't give
you your money back. That would set off a chain
of events that would result in the closing of my gallery.
And he said, I either want an apology from Gerald
(21:19):
McMaster that says that he's sorry for taking the painting down,
or I want a written letter from Gerald saying that
he believes the painting is fake, in which case I
will sue the Ago. And I said, well, what does
that have to do with me, You know, like I
(21:40):
bought the painting from you, and why don't we explore
the painting together and prove it's real and we can
show that to the Ago. And he said, Kevin, have
you ever heard that saying have you stopped beating your wife?
And I said no. He said, well, if you say yes,
(22:02):
I've stopped beating my wife, you're admitting that you beat her.
And if you say no, you're still beating your wife.
And then he said, I'm sorry, I can't help you.
You have a beautiful Normo Morso painting.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I left his gallery and said, okay, I'm on my
own here. I either have to let this go or
try to find out what the truth is.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
The room that we've been sitting in Kevin and I
this den in his home. It's the same room where
his painting used to hang. It's not on the wall anymore,
but he thinks about it all the time because it
kind of changed the course of his life.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
There's an opening sequence in the film Blue Velvet. The
song Blue Velvet is playing. You see blue sky, you
see a picket fence, you see the traffic guard waving
their hands and motioning for the kids to cross the street.
I think a school bus goes by. And then you
start going towards the lawn. There's a sprinkler, there's a dog.
(23:19):
You go into the grass and the sound gets louder
and darker, and you go into the dirt, into the
wet mud, and then there's bugs and they're all eating
something or fighting. And that is a perfect metaphor for
(23:41):
this journey. It goes from an elite sort of art
gallery in Yorkville all the way to Thunder Bay into
this dark underworld. That's quite a journey.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'm in my studio, I have canvas on the wall
and I'm just kind of looking at it, thinking what
am I going to make of this? So I'm just
going to start jess Win, I have clear Jesso Jesso.
The wooden canvas is so I can start to start
the drawing process on them, and then from there I
(24:28):
start to paint. I'm an artist. The way I understand things,
make sense of them is to paint them, to create,
and there's a lot to try to make sense of
with Norval. In some ways I feel a kinship with him.
His work was bold, unapologetic, fierce, all things an artist
(24:51):
wants to be. But somehow his life, his work got
wrapped up in what's believed to be the biggest art
fraud in the world.
Speaker 10 (25:02):
So on another piece of paper, I just kind of draw,
you know, a basic sort of plan, And for this
one I have nor felt kind of in the middle
full body.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
When I set out to paint something, I look at
it closely, study it, break it down into the smallest parts,
and then try to put it back together again on
the canvas, kind of like a detective reconstructing a crime scene.
(25:41):
Over the next five episodes, I'm going to take you
into beauty and darkness here in Canada and in Australia.
Two we're heading into the underbelly of a devastating art crime,
one that is still unraveling.
Speaker 11 (25:55):
When Kevin came to me. I already had a sense
of the size of this fraud. This wasn't just some
little scam that had happened to one or two people.
That was much more, much bigger than that, so I
wanted to work on it. It looked like a huge injustice,
if nothing else than a huge mystery to be unraveled.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
That's on the next episode of Forged. That was the
first episode of Forged. If you like what you heard,
you can find episode two waiting for you right now.
Just search for Forged everywhere you get your podcasts, and
(26:40):
be sure to follow the feed so you don't miss
an episode.
Host
Helen Molesworth
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