LAWSUIT ACCUSES GAGOSIAN OF SELLING LICHTENSTEIN PAINTING WITHOUT OWNER’S CONSENT

Randy Kennedy of the New York Times reports that Larry Gagosian is being sued by art collector Joan Cowles over a 1964 Roy Lichtenstein painting. Cowles claims Gagosian sold it without her consent. The suit was filed on Wednesday in state court in Manhattan and is, according to Kennedy, “part of a tangle of art deals that led to two earlier lawsuits against the dealer in federal court, one of which Gagosian settled for $4.4 million last year.”

In the latest suit, Cowles claims that her son, Charles Cowles, in “desperate financial straits, transferred the Lichtenstein painting to Gagosian to sell, despite the fact that his mother owned the painting and had not given permission for its sale. Gagosian, claiming the painting was damaged, sold it for $2 million, less than its market value, and received a $1 million commission. The suit seeks punitive damages of $10 million and accuses Gagosian of “such wanton dishonesty as to imply criminal indifference to civil obligations, with reckless disregard of Cowles’s rights.” The Gagosian Gallery has called these allegations “outrageous and baseless,” noting the entire dispute was the fault of Cowles’s son, who “never divulged that he had no authority” to dispose of the paintings.