The outcome of an ongoing legal battle pitting the artist John Chamberlain against Gerard Malanga, one of Andy Warhol’s principal assistants, could have an impact on the reputations of more than just those big-name players. At issue is the authenticity and multimillion- dollar sale of a work that may or may not be by Warhol. In late August, a judge determined that the suit, initially filed nearly three years ago, could move forward to trial.

The subject of the legal wrangling is the billboard-size 315 Johns—composed of 315 eight-by-eight-inch silkscreens of Chamberlain’s head—which Chamberlain, 81, says he sold as a Warhol to an unidentified collector in 2000, shortly after the Andy Warhol Authentication Board gave it a stamp of approval. The work is listed, with a date of 1967, in volume 2B of the Warhol catalogue raisonné, which contains other, undisputed portraits of Chamberlain.

In the lawsuit, which Malanga, who worked for Warhol from 1963 to 1970, initially filed in December 2005 in Brooklyn Supreme Court, the 65-year-old poet and photographer alleges that 315 Johns was not Chamberlain’s to sell and had merely been stored for years in Chamberlain’s Tribeca loft by mutual agreement. Malanga further asserts that it was not Warhol but he himself who created it—in 1971, when he was no longer working in Warhol’s studio—together with two other artists: Irene Harris and Jim Jacobs, who was then Chamberlain’s assistant and who has corroborated Malanga’s story. The suit seeks either the return of the painting or more than $250,000, as well as punitive damages of more than $3 million. Peter Stern, the New York lawyer representing Malanga, says problems with scheduling depositions and other procedural matters account for much of the delay between the original filing and the judge’s decision this summer to green-light the trial.

Malanga’s complaint also alleges that he and his helpers “created an excess of 320 canvases depicting defendant,” of which, according to Stern, “we are aware of the whereabouts of four.” One of these belongs to Irene Nolan, a friend of Malanga’s. For reference during the case, the lawyer has borrowed the panel, on whose back are inscribed the words “To Irene” followed by a message obscured by stretcher bars.

In an affidavit sworn before the court last March, Chamberlain disputes all these claims, asserting that 315 Johns “was conceived and created by Andy Warhol, in discussions with [myself] and Henry Geldzahler, and was given to me by Andy as part of an exchange for one or more of my sculptures.” Chamberlain is the lone surviving witness of that alleged episode, since Warhol died in 1987 and Geldzahler, the influential curator of 20th-century art, passed away in 1994.

Malanga says he found out about the sale of 315 Johns in February 2004 at the Art Dealers Association of America annual art show, in New York, where Chamberlain told him he had gotten $5 million for the piece, which he had presented as a Warhol. Why Chamberlain, an international art star, would risk either hawking an outright fabrication or claiming to have done so is unclear, but one prominent New York contemporary-art dealer familiar with the artist’s brash, rebellious manner and mercurial personality says such an action “would be very Chamberlain.”

Of course, questions of attribution are not at all surprising when dealing with Warhol—an artist who famously toyed with the very notion of authenticity and originality by relying on mechanical means of production and the help of assistants. In another illustration of the problems raised by this artistic process, the filmmaker Joe Simon-Whalen has brought suit against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the authentication board for refusing to authenticate a Warhol self-portrait he owns. He accuses them of trying to monopolize the artist’s market and is seeking $20 million in damages. It is ironic that Malanga, who has admitted forging Warhols in the past, is now claiming to expose Chamberlain for passing off a fake. Some following the case wonder if he is actually suing because he did not get a cut of the deal.