Parisian gallery-owner Daniel Templon barred the entry of his exhibition space at ArtBasel to a journalist from Le Monde daily on the opening day of the fair on June 23rd 2000. The reason for such rancour was Le Monde's coverage of the suing of Templon for defamation by French collector Richard Rodriguez whom he had called an "idiot" in a TV film. Rodriguez told a Paris court that he had been defamed by Templon some months after he had told the latter that some of the works by Jean-Michel Basquiat he was exhibiting at the 1994 FIAC in Paris were in fact forgeries.
Rodriguez had nevertheless made no mistake in detecting these fakes but Templon had roughly told him to mind his own business and went on to sue him. Still, the gallery-owner lost this first court case but continued to treat Rodriguez as a foe.
Templon, who was sentenced on June 19th 2000 to pay a 10 000 FF fine and
50 000 FF damages to Rodriguez, was quite furious about Le Monde's coverage of this new court case and thus avenged himself in evicting the journalist working for that daily from his exhibition space.
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