Is social networking killing off art criticism?

A few days ago, the Australian writer and broadcaster Marcus Westbury blogged a piece about art criticism following the Australia Council’s annual arts marketing summit in Brisbane, which posed the question: 'Whose the critic now?' (Now Everyone's A Critic, Who's A Critic Now?)

The unanimous conclusion the panel reached was: "We all are." The era of social networking, of the free and instantaneous digitized flow of opinions and shared experiences across geographical and other boundaries has done for the art critic.

That's it. RIP. Here's Marcus Westbury describing how the murder was committed:

"The internet has created a plethora of blogs, email lists, social networking, and marketing strategies that are cheap, easy to access, and bypass the traditional critic entirely. Word of mouth — long the holy grail of marketing people everywhere — has become massively amplified by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. We’re all critics the moment we see a show, read a book, watch a film and share our reactions to it. Many of us are creating our own criticism, commentary and feedback without thinking about it."

So, perhaps it's not a murder after all, but a redundancy notice: "Sorry, Smithers, we're going to have to let you go. Here's your P45."

A more disturbing development, however is the conscious decision by younger artists to avoid the attention of professional critics. Westbury claims to know "many" artists who prefer not to be publicized in that way:

"Their assumption, rightly or wrongly, is that they have much better conduits for establishing a reputation or building an audience and they don’t need the 'authoritative' attention of someone who isn’t their audience and may not understand their work."

Or are they, perhaps, fearful of proper, searching criticism and the rigorous testing of their work against a range of exacting aesthetic criteria?

The discourse of social media is predominantly frivolous, mutually congratulatory, obsessed with the fleeting nature of social life, fixated on the ephemeral, surface qualities of fashion, travel, music, and indeed art. It's the economy of the degraded attention span.

Then up popped Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times, who posted an item on a similar topic (Did Bravo TV's 'Work of Art: The Next Great Artist' really redefine art criticism?) about the eponymous TV game show (by all accounts not unlike the BBC's 'School of Saatchi' programme that aired in the UK a few months ago.)

Knight was responding to an item posted a few days before on New York magazine's Vulture blog which suggested that 'Work of Art: The Next Great Artist' had created a new way to practice art criticism. "In online forums and the comment sections of blogs and across Facebook pages, 'people who would otherwise have no access to art-world opinion, criticism or power were given voice.'"

Knight took issue with this, countering that most of these Facebooked and Twittered 'criticisms' were penned without their writers ever having seen the works in any form other than mediated through a TV set. More importantly, he concludes, "To confuse social networking, which can be fun (and certainly useful), with art criticism is quite a blunder. It's probably to be expected, however; Bravo's savvy integration of cable television reality-contests with the Internet hasn't happened before for art, artists and art enthusiasts. The new often disorients."

The Australian panellists, meanwhile, didn't seem remotely disorientated, but they may not have looked critically enough at the topic they came together to discuss.

According to Marcus Westbury, the Australian panel comprised writers, critics, broadcasters and arts marketing people. But where were the artists?

I had an idea that my many professional artist friends might look differently on this topic compared with broadcasters and marketing people, so I polled them. The question I put to them was this:

If you had a say in it, would you prefer your exhibitions to be viewed and written about by well-informed, experienced, professional art critics (whether or not their conclusions were positive or constructively negative), or would it be enough that friends and other 'lay' visitors might mention your work in some way via Facebook, Twitter, etc., which may reach a different, but potentially much broader audience?

I too found a consensus, but not the same one as Marcus Westbury's panel outcome. Here's a small, but representative sample of the responses I received:

"I have been fortunate enough to receive a huge amount of press coverage in the world media and I strongly believe the art critic's opinion is the only one of relevance. Comments on Twitter & Facebook tend to have no weight behind them; on the other hand the art critic helps to contextualise the artist's practice within the broader debates of contemporary art but also, and perhaps even more importantly, from an historical perspective. The absence of the informed opinions of the art critic would create a huge void in the art world.

The art critic is crucial and the more critical the better. Social networking sites will rarely offer the high level of criticality which is essential for an artist to constantly push their practice forwards...constantly challenging preconceived notions and moving forwards with as open a mind as possible. Long live the art critic!" 

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"To quote Malcolm Muggeridge talking about television in 1959 I think social networking sites are 'a social menace of the first order' and don't in any way deliver an alternative to an informed debate about art or any other subject for that matter. That notwithstanding, it is inevitable that the vast free availability of the written word has hugely cheapened it and will continue to erode the livelihood of writers in the same way as it does that of photographers and musicians."

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"I am more on the side of the 'professional art critics'. As an artist I may enjoy Twitter comments etc. — comments off the hat even — can be pithy and fresh — even fun — open forum for everyone; anything goes. The broader audience could have its value, but it does not kill true art criticism.

On the other hand, the professional art critic carries with him/her: knowledge, scholarship, a trained mind and eye, true service to the art community worldwide.  Imagine a person who jumps up onto the concert hall stage, sits down in front of a Steinway grand and plays chopsticks. Then think of the 'players' who have 'paid their dues', who have studied for years — developing enduring excellence. Art critics' opinions are still relevant, and 'how.' Preserve them."

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"The problem should not be pitched in terms of serious art criticism versus casual mention on social networking sites, but should rather focus on the impact of market forces on the quality and content of writing about the arts. To put it bluntly, art critics of whatever calibre seem only to be interested in, or else are encouraged by their editors only to take an interest in, the major, money-making shows.

In the 1980s and 1990s, when I was able to attract 'serious' art criticism for my shows, this swing towards "blockbuster criticism" was not as yet apparent. Nowadays, as most PR agencies engaged in the art world will tell you, it is extremely difficult (almost impossible) for smaller organizations or galleries to attract anything in the way of lengthier pieces containing detailed analysis. In view of these circumstances it is no wonder that most artists would be (sadly) only too grateful if their friends and supporters would spread the word about their work via social networking sites.

Another related observation: an art critic friend of mine, taking the very brave step of openly criticizing her own profession, once remarked on the at times very apparent pressure placed on critics by those organizing exhibitions to follow a prescribed script provided in the form of a Press Release. Demands on the critic's time mean that much of these texts will be transcribed verbatim instead of being viewed and assessed critically.

Art criticism is not in decline because of social networking sites but rather because of its loss of independence from the market and the money imperative. Critics write to sell newspapers, art or tickets to exhibitions. Most artists would love to have their work viewed and written about by well-informed, experienced, professional art critics (whether or not their conclusions were positive or constructively negative), but the reality is that most will not unless or until they join forces with a powerful enough institution."

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"In terms of critics – their comments are highly influential and for my forthcoming show I proactively sought out a critic, who I knew had some knowledge of my work and commissioned him to write a text for my catalogue.  This I consider to be money very well spent as critical text can introduce art audiences (of varying knowledge) to new ways of viewing work(s) or raise issues about, and associated with, the artist/their research/their painting methodology and so forth.  His critical text also benefited me directly providing a fresh perspective…quite valuable when most of one’s life is spent in isolation in the studio!

Over recent years, I find that articles on painting in some media are fairly lacklustre and unsubstantial – could it be that we are losing a generation of critics who understand how paintings are conceived and developed, the materials and techniques used and references to art historical contexts?  Some articles seem to skim the surface referring to the work in the context of an overall ‘image’ or the concept alone or, even, the celebrity of the artist(!)...perhaps this is part and parcel of the dumbing down of painting in favour of conceptual art over the years…who knows?

A good article/essay/book is worth its weight in gold and our shelves are heavy with the weight of these which are part of our lives both within our practice/research and also teaching."

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"If you rave and praise, even to an obvious and ridiculous degree people would believe you, if you venture to say anything less you get the thumbs down. I feel that good art criticsm is especially important now that the goal posts are staked on Everest and beyond. We live in times where only the superlative counts - maybe good art criticism can help people understand what is going on."

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"I would prefer my exhibitions to be viewed by all and written about by well-informed, experienced, professional art critics. (If I could choose one it would be Clement Greenberg but unfortunately he is no longer with us.) Positive or negative criticism is a good thing providing it is understandable and makes sense. This is what you should expect from a professional art critic. The professional art critic's opinion in my view is still relevant and valued enough to be preserved.

On the other hand a broader audience like the man in the street or on social network sites are also important because one never knows what can be gained by those thoughts, good or bad. Like Robert Rauschenberg once said, “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics."

I am sure that every artist would appreciate the comments of a knowledgeable art critic. Comments on Facebook and Twitter are unlikely to replace a thoughtful essay.

Thinking about write ups of exhibitions I made the observation that newspapers in the UK are less interested in reporting about venues which are not at the top end of the market. When I have a show in Germany local and regional newspapers write regularly about my work on show. Showing in the UK for the last 15 years  I got once a proper article in our local newspaper. Galleries in London are employing public relation agencies to receive the attention of the press. Newspapers in both countries seem to have a different approach to report about the visual arts.

With the decline of the newspapers their influence will vanish and the internet will provide even more fractured and .incomplete information. Artists and galleries being able to master the technicalities of the internet will be the winners in the future."

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"At my stage of career the idea of having an art critic write and talk about my work whether positive or negative still seems like bit of a holy grail. It would be amazing to have a 'well informed' person analyse it, and I'm sure would be a learning experience.

Last summer when I organised a joint show with a group of other early stage artists, we tried a few avenues to get someone to write about it (inviting a writer from the writers guild, contacting a curatorial assistant with an art history background we knew...) but none of or efforts came to fruition. We might have tried a bit harder and it was just one of a number of activities, but we didn't really know how to go about it. So in the end our efforts did revolve a lot more around marketing. We did have a press release that we sent to a number of newspaper and art organisations, but no one picked it up. The only success we got was with a few listings websites where we were included in 'things to do'. Great, but not really critical assessment of the show or work. If we had managed to get an art critic to write about our show, we would probably then have used our network of online methods to publicise that further.

I do think the art critic's opinion is still important, and adds (at least the perception of) an unbiased underwriting of the quality/importance of an artist's work. However, I do have to admit that I don't actually read enough of the art press, and couldn't say that I really know much about who the current art critics are or their particular points of view. (I know more about past art critics!) I seem to know more about who the big collectors are, as they seem to be more prominent in popular press as well as the specialist art market press."

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Melting point: Scrap metal dealers can be art thieves too

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure

In antiquity they used to tie sculptures down for fear that they would walk or fly away of their own volition. Such superstition eventually gave way to a grimmer reality governed by economic rationale. Public sculptures no longer move of their own accord — now they're stolen and melted down for scrap.

One of the most interesting items posted to the Museum Security Network in recent days was the Guide to the Problem of Scrap Metal Theft published by The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (POP Center).

Although only a relatively small aspect of a larger problem, the theft and subsequent melting down of bronze and other metal statues is a branch of art crime that seems to be on the increase. The social impact of these losses is often more acutely felt than thefts of paintings from museums since public sculpture is highly visible, shares our social space, helps local people relate to their environment, and fosters social cohesion. 

Only this morning, an item in the Lancashire Evening Post (also circulated via the MSN digest) reported on the recent theft of two popular bronze animal sculptures from a public park in Cottam in Preston, Lancashire (Fury as bronze statues stolen from city estate). The works were by Dutch-born artist Marjan Wouda, who lives in Darwen, East Lancashire. Such thefts have a deleterious effect on the quality of life of local communities.

"It's such a shame," said one local resident, appalled at the way the sculptures had been crudely hacked off at their bases. "We’ve shown friends them as we’ve walked round the area. They were a local feature." A town councillor added, "It was just something you used to come across and it was quite nice. It was like a focal point."

The POP Center Guide referred to above suggests that scrap metal crimes are often committed by drug addicts and other petty criminals seeking access to quick cash. Some scrap metal merchants, it seems, are only too happy to turn a blind eye to the origin of the material they're melting down, just as many provincial auctioneers used to ask no questions when interesting and valuable consignments turned up straight off the back of a Volvo.

The importance of instilling Due Diligence procedures into the art and antiques trade is by no means complete, but at least most auctioneers are now aware of the risks of handling unprovenanced material and are more scrupulous about what they accept for sale. The broader trade seems to be a harder nut to crack.

It would be interesting to know what measures police and law enforcement agencies are taking to target the scrap metal merchants who are helping turn these objects into hard cash. One suspects it's not easy encouraging the adoption of a rigorous code of conduct in an informal trade that still has about it the whiff of the Victorian rag-and-bone man.

The scrap value of stolen sculpture — which is governed by prices on the London Metal Exchange — is a mere fraction of its true art market value. The Henry Moore Reclining Figure (above left) stolen in December 2005 may have been worth around £3 million on the open market, but its scrap metal value was estimated at just £1500.

Perhaps what's needed is a cost-effective solution to securing sculpture in public spaces. The Pangolin Foundry in Stroud, Gloucestershire, which casts all work by the late Lynn Chadwick, now strives to attach to its public sculptures large armatures that are deeply embedded in the ground, in an attempt to minimize the chance of theft.

I can think of something else that deserves to be deeply embedded in the ground — scrap metal dealers who melt down public sculptures.

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Recent UK Statue Thefts

December 2005 — A Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Reclining Figure, valued at £3 million, stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire.

January 2006 — Part of a Lynn Chadwick bronze, The Watchers valued at around £600,000, stolen from Downshire House in the grounds of Roehampton University.

May 2006 — A bronze statue of a First World War soldier on horseback by Henry Pegram, valued at around £30,000, stolen from its plinth at St Leonard's Church in Semley, Wiltshire.

May 2006 — A bronze statue in memory of First World War veteran Sydney Mason Collins, valued at £15,000, stolen from St Mary's Church in Chedzoy, Somerset.

April 2009 — A bronze sculpture of a horse by British sculptor Elisabeth Frink, valued at more than £200,000, stolen from a garden in Surrey.

December 2009 — An unusual steel sculpture of two deer leaping over a fence stolen from a garden in Somerset.

March 2010 — A bronze statue commemorating Camilla Hamilton, a young girl killed in a car crash, stolen from the grounds of her Essex school.

Is the world-famous Wedgwood Museum under threat as a result of ill-drafted Pension Fund legislation?

Wedgwood's Portland Vase, 1789

It's a familiar scene in those wildlife documentaries on the Discovery channel — a pack of mangy, slavering hyenas lope around a herd of wildebeest, eyes glued to the frailest family member as it struggles to keep up with its sturdier older relatives. The wildebeest herd senses danger, gets skittish and starts to canter away; the hyenas sniff fear and close in. The young wildebeest panics, staggering around in circles, helplessly isolated. A couple of seconds later he's on the ground being dismembered by ravenous predators.

When it comes to the modus operandi of your average private equity group, I prefer this analogy to the heroic sporting metaphors trotted out by the likes of Michael Psaros of US-based private equity group KPS Capital Partners, who recently waited in the long grass while Ireland-based ceramics and glass business Waterford Wedgwood struggled to stay on its feet. At the given moment, KPS moved in. Blood everywhere.

"We are a hard-core, full body contact, operations-driven turnaround operator," a triumphant Psaros told the Telegraph in March 2009, doing his best to sound like a gung-ho marine in a war movie. The KPS "turnaround" meant picking the flesh from the insolvent Wedgwood Waterford and leaving the carcass of debt for others to worry about (standard practice out in the corporate bush).

Among the bones left behind was a pension fund deficit of around £134 million.

It subsequently emerged that five employees of the Wedgwood Museum Trust Ltd., (a wholly separate charitable entity that runs the Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, Stoke on Trent), had their pensions in the Wedgwood Waterford pension scheme. It now seems that the the Wedgwood Museum itself might be vulnerable.

A royal visit to the Wedgwood factory

Evidently an obscure and complex piece of pension fund legislation — (ironically originally drafted to protect pension funds from fraudulent practices) — means that the Wedgwood Museum Trust could be liable for the whole £134 million pension deficit left over after the sale of the Wedgwood Waterford business.

I'd spell this out for you, but I'm not too strong on particle physics. Even Simon Wedgwood, a descendant of the great Josiah Wedgwood, was at something of a loss to explain the masonic intricacies of the legislation when we spoke earlier today.

But what it means, in essence, is that the future of the Wedgwood Museum could be endangered if the Pension Protection Fund (the body established to provide a guaranteed minimum level of pension payments to members of eligible pension funds in cases like this) refuses to bail out the pension fund deficit.

In such an eventuality, the Wedgwood Museum collection — an unrivalled collection of ceramics and glass — could be lost to the nation and its assets sold to meet the pension deficit. Or, perhaps more likely, the nation might be asked to stump up to buy the collection in order that the Pension Protection Fund is spared having to foot the bill. Either way, the outlook seems bleak.

The Wedgwood Museum website recently posted the following comment:

"Five of the Wedgwood Group Pension Plan's 7000-member scheme were employees of the Museum Trust when the Wedgwood companies became insolvent last year, leaving a large deficit in the Pension Plan. As a result, the Museum Trust is now deemed to be liable for the shortfall. The Museum's Trustees are in discussions with a wide range of stakeholders as to how the Trust's internationally renowned Designated Collections can be preserved, and are determined to ensure the survival of the Wedgwood Museum."

Meanwhile, one assumes that Wedgwood Waterford is now benefiting from the €100 million that its new owners KPS Capital Partners promised to inject into the company, which includes not only Waterford crystal glass and Wedgwood ceramics, but historic brands such as Royal Doulton china.

Having bought it out of administration, Michael Psaros reckoned the business would be profitable in twelve months. "The team will expand Waterford Wedgwood into 'huge untapped' emerging markets – India, China and Russia," Psaros told the Telegraph. "Administration is a pedestrian event, not even worthy of being talked about."

It is when a historic museum collection is under threat of extinction.

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Images
Top left: Josiah Wedgwood's copy of the Portland Vase, 1789.
Lower right: A royal tour of the Wedgwood factory

Researching the history of collections: America forges ahead as the UK lags behind

An article by Suzanne Muchnic in this weekend's Los Angeles Times — American art collectors ripe for study — focuses on the fertile research resources open to those interested in the modern history of collecting in the United States.

Muchnic's piece makes clear that researching the history of the art market — who bought what, where, when, and why — is now viewed by American scholars as a noble pursuit that interlocks constructively with the established discipline of art history. The number and range of significant archives available to scholars is expanding all the time. Well-heeled foundations like the Getty Research Institute and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Collection in New York, to name just two, offer increasingly rich opportunities to mine historical auction catalogues and the manuscript and business archives of former dealers.

As questions of provenance and due diligence become ever more important within the art trade and among collectors, so the importance of these archives grows accordingly.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great American industrial and financial barons began drawing on the services of British über-dealer Joseph Duveen (above left), to help them build their art collections. With his assistance, they went on to amass extraordinary holdings of the finest art Europe had to offer, which provided the foundations of some of the greatest art museums in North America.

In recent decades, American institutions have hoovered up a host of business archives of important dealers and collectors in an approach that mirrors the art-collecting activities of Frick, Morgan, Mellon, Stotesbury, et al, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Back then, the rich craved art; today, as Google has shown, information is an equally prized commodity and many of the institutions that now collect art business archives are digitizing them as well. Indeed there is a delicious irony in the fact that the Getty now holds the vast Duveen archive, which is in keen demand as scholarly interest in the history of collecting grows.

Duveen's brilliant insight was that America had money but wanted art and Europe had art but wanted money. He exploited that simple equation with staggering success. As a result, if today you want to see many of the great paintings Duveen transacted, you will need to travel to America to do so. However, the same is not true of the digital information relating to those transactions, much of which is being gradually made available to scholars via the internet.

Given the increasing accessibility of that information, there is no excuse for Britain to lag behind the US in developing the history of collections into a scholarly discipline. Sadly, however, with the exception of Sotheby's and Christie's Fine Art courses — which chiefly serve their own business interests — few UK universities look positively on the history of the art market, instead treating it with sneering disdain. This is all the more lamentable given that the vast majority of young art history graduates will go on to work in the art market in some form or another, be it in a museum, an art dealership, an auction house, or even an archive.

Having just returned from my annual stint teaching a course on the history of the art market for the ARCA Masters Course in International Art Crime Studies in Italy, I can vouch for the keen interest in the history of collecting shown by the many graduate students and established art professionals who enroll on the course each year. The vast majority of those students, however, are North American.

If we want a better understanding of how today's art market evolved — to say nothing of clearer insights into what motivates collectors and indeed art criminals to do what they do — we need a more scholarly approach to the history of collecting. America is lighting the way.

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Useful archives and other resources
Durand-Ruel (The archives of 19th century French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel)

The Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance (PSCP) (The Getty Research Institute's Provenance Database)

Center for the History of Collecting in America (Frick Collection, New York

Smithsonian Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC)

Journal of the History of Collections (Oxford University Press)

The Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art (Yale University)

The 'Universal Museum': an anthropological perspective

Dr Magnus Fiskesjo of Cornell University's Department of Anthropology has kindly sent me a link to his recent paper, Global repatriations and 'Universal' museums, published in a special repatriations issue of Anthropology News (51.2, March 2010, pp10-12), which can be found online here.

Thanks, Magnus

Encyclopaedic museums and the 'Primitive Accumulation' of cultural heritage

An abridged version of my paper on the Universal Museum is to be published by the House of World Cultures (left) in Berlin in October to coincide with an event exploring current thinking on 'encyclopaedic' or 'universal' museums. I'll be giving a paper on the Universal Museum at the panel discussion in Berlin on 9th October.

Among the topics slated for discussion at the conference is the theory of 'primitive accumulation' (of capital) — a notion derived from classical economics, which seeks to explain how a small percentage of the population came to control, at the expense of the majority, a disproportionate amount of wealth.

I've been pondering this in the context of the universal museums and their own 'primitive accumulation' of the world's cultural heritage. Whether one can helpfully map a theory from classical economics onto the history of museums is a moot point, but there are interesting crossovers.

Following Adam Smith's concept of 'previous accumulation' of capital, Karl Marx illustrated his theory of 'primitive accumulation' by reference to the theological notion of original sin. Extrapolating from that, Marx goes on to sketch an economic process that might equally be applied to the development of the great universal museums, often at the expense of colonized peoples who were left correspondingly impoverished:

"In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal élite; the other, the lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. [...] Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work." (Karl Marx, 'The Economics: 1857-1867', quoted in McLellan, D, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, OUP, 1977, p483).

That contrast between the "diligent, intelligent, frugal élite" and the "lazy rascals" (the subaltern Other, for our purposes) echoes the rhetoric used by the "civilizing" imperial powers to justify their accumulation of the material resources and cultural treasures of colonized nations during the nineteenth century. (See, for example, Sharon Sliwinski's excellent paper, 'The Kodak on the Congo: The Childhood of Human Rights', published by Autograph ABP to coincide with 'Mémoire', the recent exhibition of video work and photographs by Congo-born contemporary artist Sammy Baloji at Dilston Grove, London).

If you missed Sammy Baloji's 'Mémoire' at Dilston Grove, it's worth looking out for at other venues. Yet how ironic that so much contemporary art of this kind now finds itself in the collections of the new economic élite, rich on the fruits of their own primitive accumulation of capital.

Italy 1 Spain 0 — Madrid museum shown red card for acquiring looted objects

If UNESCO showed red cards for cultural heritage misdemeanours, it would surely be Spain taking the long walk back to the changing rooms this week after Madrid's National Archaeological Museum was found in possession of a bunch of Attic hot pots acquired in 1999 in clear defiance of the UNESCO 1970 Convention. Sadly, unlike FIFA, UNESCO doesn't hold disciplinary panels. It was left to The Art Newspaper to blow the whistle.

In an article in this month's paper, Fabio Isman focuses on a number of Attic amphorae in the collection of Madrid's National Archaeological Museum that bear a striking resemblance to pieces discovered in Giacomo Medici's Geneva warehouse during the now famous Italian/Swiss police raid in 1999 (Watson, P & Todeschini, C., The Medici Conspiracy 2006) (see image above left). No, hold on, let's not beat about the bush. They're the same pots.

"Is it right, or moral," Isman asks, "for museums (places established to conserve and exhibit objects, but also to educate and promote culture) to display artefacts plundered after the 1970 Unesco Convention, (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) rather than, as in centuries past, during wars and conquests? What type of 'culture' are these museums exhibiting, promoting and teaching: the culture of clandestine excavations and fraud?" Good question.

But to imply, as Isman does, that the objects acquired by museums "in centuries past" were acquired exclusively "during wars and conquests" is simply factually incorrect. More importantly, his sentence seems constructed in such a way as to absolve museums of earlier collecting strategies, by implying that war and military conquest represent legitimate circumstances in which to loot countries of their material heritage.

Anyone caring to scrutinize the circumstances in which most of the great encyclopedic collections were formed would have to conclude that very significant quantities of objects in those collections were acquired unethically (whether one judges one's ethics by 19th century or 21st century standards).

I'm often criticized for conflating pre- and post-1970 museum acquisitions and I can understand Paul Barford's constructive criticism of my recent blog posting (Tom Flynn Blames the Museums) that it is not always helpful to mix the question of post-1970 (ie post-UNESCO Convention) acquisitions with acquisitions made prior to that, particularly those made during the age of imperialism.

Nineteenth-century acquisitions are too hot a potato to handle and condemning them probably doesn't help clarify the more pressing and demonstrably unethical post-1970 acquisitions of the kind Isman refers to.

But like an oncologist looking to your family DNA for the cause of your illness, I have good reason to continue conflating these issues.

As Paul Barford points out in his comments on the Madrid affair, the archaeological museum’s then director, Miguel Angel Elvira Barba, said of his 1999 acquisition: “We have taken an enormous step forward both in terms of quality and quantity; [this] collection now puts us among the ranks of the greatest museums in Europe and the US”.

Here, then, is further telling evidence, if any were needed, that European and North American museums remain locked in the same competitive race towards an encyclopedic embrace of the world's material culture, no matter what the consequences might be for archaeology.

That is why I continue to focus on the underlying modus operandi of our museums — namely the Enlightenment-born idée fixe that seeks to place the whole universe "'neath one roof".

And as I said in my earlier piece, that macho museum model is what inspires the private collectors to do what they do. We won't beat the looting and the private collecting of illicitly acquired antiquities until we reform the museums.

Senegalese slave trader: Should he stay or should he go?

The portrait, left, of the 18th century Senegalese Muslim aristocrat, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (1701–1773), by the British painter William Hoare, was recently sold at auction in the UK. Its export has been stopped while the National Portrait Gallery tries to raise the necessary £550,000 to keep it in the UK. The Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund have already provided grants, but £100,000 is still needed if it is not to leave the country.

Should it stay?

Diallo, also known as Job ben Solomon, was from a family of aristocratic Muslim clerics who traded on the west coast of Africa in the early 18th century (that's a Qur'an around his neck). He was also a slave trader. In 1730, while conducting family business, he was himself mistaken for a slave and shipped to America, where he was bought by a Maryland plantation owner and set to work in the tobacco fields. After his escape and subsequent recapture and imprisonment, he was finally recognised by a British lawyer who sponsored his passage to England where he was welcomed by aristocratic British society.

This immediately brings to mind the case of Omai, the Tahitian who also fascinated British society after being brought to England by Captain Cook in 1774 and whose portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (right) was sold at Sotheby's in November 2001 for £10.3 million.

While unquestionably a compelling image, Hoare's half-length portrait of Diallo has none of the dramatic swagger of Reynolds's full-length portrait of Omai, which has the Tahitian swathed in billowing drapery and wearing a turban, strolling through an extensive English landscape like a tattooed Roman orator. It's not a fair comparison, but while the Reynolds image combined great painterly qualities, art historical importance and an intriguing subject, the image of Diallo is altogether more problematic.

Recent discussions of the painting have focused on Diallo's victim status as a slave, despite the fact that he was himself, first and foremost, a slave trader. Indeed on his return to Africa, Diallo resumed his privileged lifestyle, which included keeping his own domestic slaves.

His obvious 'Otherness' notwithstanding, Diallo was embraced by British aristocrats who identified with his aristocratic bearing and sophistication. Should the National Portrait Gallery be seeking to raise public money for an image of a slave trader whose passage into polite society was secured first and foremost by his privileged background?

One would have to conclude that it is.

Diallo's predicament, if one can call it that — his misfortune at being mistaken for a slave — has a particular resonance in this increasingly globalised world where the currents of late capitalism are rendering growing numbers of people immiserated and powerless.

We in 'the West' are all, in our way, beneficiaries of the many contemporary versions of slavery taking place in developing nations where bonded labour, child labour, and forced labour are used to produce the commodities we take for granted. To say nothing of sex-trafficking, which is arguably one of the worst blights on humanity and to which we all but turn a blind eye.

For these reasons alone, the portrait of Diallo is more thought-provoking than one may at first realise and for that reason ought to be saved for the nation. In 1772, a year before Diallo died (presumably peacefully in his comfortable West African home), a black slave composed a poem which was published in the New London Gazette. Even today, it stands as an eloquent reminder of how conveniently compromised are our attitudes to slavery and other forms of oppression:

Is not all oppression vile?
When you attempt your freedom to defend,
Is reason yours, and partially your friend?
Be not deceiv'd — for reason pleads for all
Who by invasion and oppression fall.
I live a slave, and am inslav'd by those
Who yet pretend with reason to oppose
All schemes oppressive, and the gods invoke
to Curse with thunders the invaders yoke.
O mighty God! let conscience seize the mind
Of inconsistent men, who wish to find
A partial god to vindicate their cause,
And plead their freedom, while they break its laws.

(Quoted in Albert Boime, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, Thames & Hudson, 1990, pp29-30)

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Anti-slavery website

National Portrait Gallery Appeal

La Bella Principessa’s cheerleaders have been in touch

I’ve just been sent one of those rude comments that bloggers like me tend to attract from time to time. As usual, it comes from someone called ‘Anonymous’, which indicates that whoever has an axe to grind, they’d prefer not to be identified as the one grinding it.

This most recent communication concerns my comments (here) about the so-called ‘La Bella Principessa’ – an unprovenanced drawing on vellum (above) which some people, including the renowned Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp, are convinced is an autograph work by Leonardo.

I happen to disagree with him, not on forensic grounds, but because, like Carmen Bambach, curator of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I just don’t think it looks like a Leonardo. That’s not an art historical opinion. It’s just an instinctive response.

But it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not writing in The New Yorker as David Grann just has in a piece of investigative journalism about a shady Hungarian-born Canadian art restorer that seems to cast the whole La Bella Principessa affair as yet another typical art world scam (The Mark of a Masterpiece: The Man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art – New Yorker, 12 July, 2010).

I don’t normally publish rude anonymous blog comments, but I make an exception in this case as the correspondent seems strangely emotionally invested in the whole rum affair, which is itself revealing:

Dear Mr. Flynn, I really think that your comments are so stupid, and that is better (sic) if you go back to school to study art starting from the contemporary period...you might understand something I hope...
Speaking on the Bella Principessa you are not a specialist on Leonardo, and you are not a in title (sic) to judge if the piece is good or not....did you seen it? (sic) Did you kept it in your hands?? (sic) Did you had a look (sic) at the carbon test results and all other analisis?? (sic) Or you are just saying stupid things for attract attention of people on your blog....why you don't proof (sic) that is NOT by Leonardo...come on, tell me something more of what you know...proof that is not a Leonardo and let's talk later....

Well, it’s true, I am not a Leonardo specialist, but the available evidence would suggest that such expertise is not quite as reliable as many assume. It’s also true that I did not kept it in my hands, but David Grann’s New Yorker piece offers more than a suggestion that one or two of those who have kept it in their hands might not be as disinterested as they pretend. Granted, I did not had a look at the carbon test results, or any other analysis for that matter. But again, given the circumstances in which these seem to have been carried out, what value do they have? Very little, it seems. Moreover, once art goes down the road of fingerprint-dusting, DNA analysis, and multi-spectral imaging cameras as the most reliable means of establishing authorship, we’re doomed. It’s not as if these are being marshalled in the cause of art history. Rather it’s the whiff of money at the end of the rainbow.

I cannot prove that La Bella Principessa is not by Leonardo and nor do I have any incentive to do so…unlike those seeking to prove that it is. But I stand by my earlier comments. This is not an autograph work by Leonardo.

National Gallery in Dublin affirms authenticity of its Caravaggio

The National Gallery in Dublin has reaffirmed that its version of Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ is the original, documented work of 1602 and that the version stolen from a museum in Odessa in 2008 and recently recovered by police in Berlin is one of several copies of the Dublin work.

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Update, 5 July 2010:
And now it seems German prosecutors have conceded that the painting they recovered is not the original autograph work by Caravaggio, but a copy of significantly less value (which is not the same as a fake or forgery). It will be interesting to hear how this news is received by the Museum in Odessa, from which the painting was stolen.

More Artknows posts on this:
Caravaggio copy snatched from Odessa (5 August 2008)

Now you see it, now you don't: 'Caravaggio copy may still be missing (9 December 2008)

Organised crime? Odessa Caravaggio copy recovered in Berlin (29 June 2010)

The Mythology of the Antiquities Market: Reading Ricardo Elia

Ricardo Elia, professor of archaeology at Boston University, recently published a characteristically combative paper in the journal Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legacy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce. His article, entitled 'Mythology of the Antiquities Market', rehearses a now familiar argument from the archaeology camp that all antiquities collectors are rogues and there is no such thing as a "reputable dealer" in such material.

"I would like to suggest," he writes, "that the collector community operates on the basis of a particular mythology that explains, justifies, and validates the collecting of antiquities. The essential elements of this mythology have been in place for the better part of half a century and constitute a bulwark against outside criticism and an increasingly inconvenient corpus of facts."

He proceeds to cite the denial on the part of antiquities collectors of the true provenance of ancient objects (what he calls "the myth of the 'old collection'") and their prejudice towards a stuffy community of archaeologists.

The Mythology of the Museum
He is, however, overlooking an important factor in what encourages collectors to do what they do. The precedent for their collecting was set long ago by the real collectors — the museums. We can't turn the clock back, but there is no denying that the history of collecting prior to the modern era of UNESCO Conventions and export restrictions is one of institutionalised looting, the fruits of which ended up in western encyclopaedic museums. This is why, in the eyes of many developing nations, it is not only the activities of the Fleischmans, Ortizs and Levy-Whites of this world that are to blame for the impoverishment of many nations' cultural heritage through looting and smuggling, but our encyclopedic museums as well.

This may not seem to be saying much; after all, doesn't Peter Watson point an accusatory finger at the Met, the Getty and a host of other museums in his exhaustive Medici Conspiracy? Well, up to a point, but it's the epistemological foundations of the great encyclopedic museums that are the real issue, not just the post-1970 Apulian pots and Euphronios kraters.

As Dr Kavita Singh, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, pointed out in a 2008 article in The Art Newspaper, outside the west, Western museums are seen "as terrifying places with insatiable appetites for works of art."

She goes on to say, "They are also seen as the arm of a more powerful state, with infinite funds and power at their command. To tell a Bangladeshi protestor that universal museums 'build bridges across cultures and promote mutual understanding' would only provoke anger or derision."

In his article, Professor Elia goes on to develop an anthropological, socio-functional mythography that draws on Durkheimian/Malinowskian methodologies to outline a series of myths upon which collectors draw to justify their collecting activities. These include The Myth of the Old Collection; The Myth of the Chance Find; The Myth of the Reputable Dealer, and so on.

He forgets an even more structurally supportive myth, however; namely The Myth of the Encyclopaedic Museum. The Museum's claim to legitimate right of possession, to ethical custodianship of objects and to coherent communicator of meanings and narratives about human origins comprises the fragile superstructure upon which modern antiquities collectors construct and justify their own raisons d'être. It was the museum tradition that taught them to do what they do.

As long as encyclopedic or universal museums remain intransigent in the face of claims for the return of cultural objects — many of which were looted at the expense of the archaeological record — the looting and collecting of antiquities will continue (as will the arrogant denial of the implications). Museums are, by definition, and certainly in practice, the institutional face of 'culture without context'.

The encyclopaedic museum may be all we have, but in its present form it is both disreputable and unsustainable. Can it be made over? What can the great encyclopedic museums do to transform themselves from symbols of overweening power and acquisitiveness into forces for good in a rapidly changing world?

They could start by setting a better example to collectors of antiquities. Not by giving things back — although a genuinely well-meaning, selective approach to that would help — but rather by rethinking their prejudiced and anachronistic condemnation of a notional 'nationalism' as the main motivation of source nations seeking dominion over their own heritage. Until that happens, the History of the World in 100 Objects will remain what many already see it as: wretched propaganda.

Not all of Elia's arguments seem particularly well-thought out. If 'chance finds' do occur, as he seems willing to concede, how can they be described as a myth? The quotes he cites don't refer to specific numbers of chance finds, but to the 'occasional' nature of the chance find. That surely needs to be set alongside wholesale looting as another source of unprovenanced material. It is therefore not a myth.

What emerges most clearly from Elia's piece is the trill of self-regard that is a familiar note in the archaeologist vs collector debate. If the archaeologists haven't bent their backs into the subterranean pit, shone their torches into the Stygian gloom of the tomb and sensitively brushed the grime of ages from the krater, everything is untouchable and of negligible value to humankind. That's clearly not good enough. Until one of them comes up with an alternative solution to the problem of 'orphaned' objects, the mighty encyclopaedic museums will continue to win adoption rights over the Heimatlösen.

Moreover, for every university professor who pours scorn on the utterances of reputable dealers like James Ede (a 'reputable dealer' is an oxymoron in Professor Elia's gloss) there is a Cerveteri archaeologist who is only to happy to count Mr Ede among his colleagues and friends. Who is right?

To paraphrase Professor Elia, I would like to suggest that it is first and foremost the museum community that operates on the basis of a particular mythology that explains, justifies, and validates the collecting of antiquities. The essential elements of this mythology have been in place for the better part of two centuries and constitute a bulwark against outside criticism and an increasingly inconvenient corpus of facts.

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Sources
Ricardo Elia, 'Mythology of the Antiquities Market' in Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legcy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce, Ed. A.R.Nafziger & Ann M. Nicgorski, Martinus Nijhoff Publications 2008, pp239-255.

(Dr Kavita Singh, 'Do we really want the freer circulation of cultural goods?' in The Art Newspaper, Issue 192, June 2008: Link here)

Recovered Caravaggio copy: The Taking and Rolling of Christ

If the image (left) of the recovered copy of the Caravaggio work The Taking of Christ circulated by the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, German Federal Criminal Police Office) is an image of the actual painting, it would seem that Sergio Benedetti, the world's leading Caravaggio conservator and restorer, may be on a plane to Odessa before too long.

The image seems to show a network of cracks and creases as if the painting had been scrunched into a ball. We know from the original police reports following the theft in 2008 that the thieves cut the canvas from its frame before making off with it. It seems they may have rolled it up for easy transport, causing significant damage to the paint surface.

Any future volume on art theft might do well to invite papers from conservators about the sort of damage that pictures suffer as a result of thefts like this. The failure to treat the picture with even a modicum of respect also tells us something about the criminals concerned.

Organised Crime? Odessa Caravaggio copy recovered in Germany

Back in 2008, a copy of 17th century Italian painter Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ of 1602 was stolen from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa, Ukraine (see my earlier blog entries on this in 2008 here and here). Back then, I hinted that this might be another case of organised crime rearing its ugly head. I've subsequently learned that this is unlikely to the be the case.

A little afternoon archaeology in the archives of The Burlington Magazine in 2008 offered enough evidence to show that the Odessa picture was not in fact the autograph work by the artist but rather a copy, albeit a very good one, possibly contemporaneous with the original, and perhaps even by Caravaggio himself. The autograph work is in the National Gallery of Art in Dublin.

Now it seems the stolen Odessa picture has finally turned up in Berlin, reportedly in the possession of three Ukrainians and a German. Some news wires (Reuters here, for example) continue to refer to the painting as the original work by Caravaggio, based on the opinion of "Soviet art experts in the 1950s" (They were referring to research by X. Malitskaja and Victor Lasareff).

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, no mention of the rather more authoritative Burlington article which showed that in 1993, new documentary evidence and thorough archival and technical research by the expert restorer Sergio Benedetti, one of the world's leading Caravaggio scholars, firmly established the Dublin picture as the original autograph work.(Another version is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Something like a dozen copies of the Dublin original exist.)

The investigation into the theft is at an early stage (the recovery took place on Friday, June 25th), but already a familiar narrative is taking shape in news reports. According to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, it was carried out by "a gang, which focused on high-value thefts," including more than 20 in Ukraine. It will be interesting to see whether this prompts the usual extrapolation (of which I too have been guilty in the past) which attributes such thefts to organised crime. Stealing a Caravaggio from a museum clearly requires a certain amount of organisation, but whether that makes it an example of 'organised crime' is a moot point.

For an indication of how complex and nebulous is our current understanding of the concept of organised crime, see Klaus von Lampe, 'Definitions of Organized Crime', here (www.organized-crime.de/OCDEF1.htm).

What did the thieves intend to do with the picture? They've had it for two years and clearly haven't moved it on. Perhaps they're using it to gain a better understanding of chiaroscuro, the art historical term denoting the dramatic use of tonal contrasts, of which Caravaggio was the greatest exponent. What other concept so aptly evokes the shadow world of art crime?

I've just spent another enjoyable fortnight teaching a course in art crime studies organised by ARCA — the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art in Umbria, Italy. The two dozen bright, motivated students who had enrolled on this year's course spent a good deal of time beyond the lecture hall meditating on the possible motives behind such high-profile heists as the Odessa theft. A broad consensus was rapidly emerging that ascribing such thefts to 'organised crime' is perhaps too pat and all too often based on assumption rather than scholarly research.

Will this Berlin recovery throw up the sort of hard evidence art crime investigators and criminologists require in order to better understand why thieves target such high-profile pictures? After all, unlike more common or garden works of art, documented masterpieces by Caravaggio or the Caravaggisti are too well known to convert into ready cash, which is what most criminals crave most.

The Berlin recovery may remind us of one thing — that there are few if any reliable general patterns one can apply to art crime. Each case needs to be viewed on its own 'merits' and its circumstances carefully parsed and analyzed.

One thing that is often overlooked is that art historical scholarship benefits when a painting of this importance is recovered. Comparison is everything in art history and we need the Odessa picture if only to remind us that the authentic work is the one in Dublin.

But then how many art thieves subscribe to the Burlington Magazine?

Sources
Sergio Benedetti, 'Caravaggio's Taking of Christ, a Masterpiece Rediscovered', Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No. 1088 (Nov 1993), pp. 731-741.

Francesca Cappelletti and Sergio Benedetti, 'The Documentary Evidence of the Early History of Caravaggio's Taking of Christ', Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No. 1088 (Nov 1993), pp. 742-746.

Sergio Benedetti, 'Caravaggio's Taking of Christ', Burlington Magazine, Vol 137, No. 1102, (Jan. 1995), pp. 37-38.

See also, Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting (left), an account of how the Dublin picture was discovered in a Jesuit monastery in Ireland and subsequently restored by Sergio Benedetti.

Paris art heist: who cares?

Yesterday's theft from Paris's Musée d'Art Moderne of five important masterpieces by Picasso, Léger, Matisse, Modigliani and Braque, made headline news around the world. Is this a cultural loss, or a financial loss? And in any case, who cares?

BBC 2's Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark seemed to find the theft a source of unbridled mirth last night. Throughout the programme, Newsnight's editors and designers used the stolen Picasso Cubist painting (above left) as running gag, a visual metaphor for the jumbled complexities of the international financial crisis and the incomprehensible mysteries of the Conservative Lib-Dem coalition. To cap it all, the programme wheeled in the Guardian's 'art critic' Adrian Searle, who obligingly sneered at the stolen pictures as if they were vulgar daubs by the reviled Jack Vettriano. Searle effectively told the thieves they were welcome to them.

With the international banking system still teetering close to meltdown thanks to the sub-prime mortgage debacle, serious news programmes have clearly got better things to do than ponder a few stolen paintings. But when did they ever?

The media's blithe dismissal of art theft as a trifling peccadillo might be seen as another version of the museum world's careless attitude to the cultural objects in its care. The Paris theft has all the marks of an inside job (anyone who keeps a weather eye on international art crime will testify to how frequently this is the case in major art thefts). Meanwhile, closed circuit television cameras may have recorded an action-packed video of the heist, but what good it will do beyond make for some Thomas Crown-like entertainment is a moot point. CCTV is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

And apparently a motorbike was used in the Paris theft. If the early reports are correct, it would seem that the heist was undertaken by a single thief working alone, although how much prior assistance he received from an insider is yet to be discovered. One is reminded of the one-man theft of Cellini's gold salt cellar from Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum in 2003 and of the bizarre case of Stephane Breitwieser in the 1990s.

I spend two days each week writing and researching at the National Art Library at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Entering the museum one is required to submit to a perfunctory bag check. Quite what the well-meaning guards are looking for as they pretend to shine their little torches into my rucksack is a mystery to me. Guns? Banksy spray-cans? Razor blades? Weapons-grade plutonium? Cheese and pickle sandwiches? Who knows? Once you're in, you're in, and you are not checked on exit. I often reflect on how easy it would be to wander out with some small Renaissance treasure (the inventory of objects stolen from that great museum over the decades would make your eyes water). This goes for any number of museums here and abroad.

Regrettably, art thefts offer yet another illustration of how fundamentally unsustainable the encyclopedic museum has become in the twenty-first century. How to strike a balance between the costs of security and the need to maintain free and unfettered access to the public? To say nothing of the extent to which security costs eat into acquisition costs, staffing, training, conservation, education, heating, lighting, and so on. Something's got to give. More often something's taken.

Perhaps it's time the world's major museum directors organised an international conference to crunch the thorny issue of security? Instead of meditating on devious new ways to stop source nations reclaiming their cultural heritage, perhaps they should be pondering how to keep their collections secure. In fact, those two considerations may not be entirely unconnected. If you can't look after stuff properly, then give some of it back. That might be one way to reduce costs.

Meanwhile, what's the difference between a multi-million dollar Picasso stolen in Paris, and a multi-million dollar Picasso sold at auction in New York? The Picasso stolen yesterday has disappeared into the netherworld of international crime, while the Picasso sold last week in New York has entered a similar abyss — that of the super-rich private collector. In both cases the pictures have been removed from view for an indefinite period and in both cases their new owners will look upon them not so much as art but as a form of collateral.

The paintings stolen in Paris, if they don't become the subject of a ransom demand will doubtless be used to finance other criminal activities — drugs or arms deals, perhaps. As art crime specialists always point out on these occasions, the pictures were not ordered by some exotic Dr No figure and nor will they be saleable on the open market. But given that the art world's most significant heist to date — the theft in March 1990 from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — still remains unsolved and the pictures still at large, it could be years or even decades before the Paris pictures re-emerge.

The question is, who cares?

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For more details of the Paris theft, read Catherine Sezgin's helpful piece on the ARCA blog here

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The stolen works, illustrated above, are (top to bottom):
Le pigeon aux petits-pois (The Pidgeon with Peas) by Pablo Picasso
La Pastorale by Henri Matisse
Nature-more aux chandeliers (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Léger
La femme à l’éventail (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani
L’olivier prés de l’Estaque by Georges Braque

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Civil servants on the price of Picasso

With the UK's budget deficit making the Grand Canyon look like a mere hole in the road and the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government lying in its incubator being carefully tended to by civil servants and watched by a concerned electorate lest it expire at any moment, one hardly expects Whitehall's attention to turn to the art market.

But following the recent New York sale of Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust for $106m (£70m), the civil service intranet has just conducted a brief online survey of its employees to ask "Do you think it's worth it?"

My spies inside DWP inform me that a staggering 4183 votes were cast. The results were as follows:

— There's a need to draw a line, this is too much — 60%

— The price is Surreal [note the capital S], but you can't put a price on great art — 18%

— I wish I had the money to buy it! — 20%

Hard-working mandarins at DWP clearly have better things to do than specify what "drawing the line" might actually entail, but I think we should be told.

Ooh...Aah! The erotic frisson of high-end art auctions

Roberta Smith has just filed a diverting little piece for the New York Times concerning our perennial curiosity about the likely buyer whenever an astronomical price is paid for a work of art at auction.

"If you follow art auctions even peripherally," writes Smith, "you know that each one leaves a trail of question marks. Who bought the van Gogh? Who bought the Johns? We would very much like to know. Sooner or later we usually do."

That 'usually' should read 'occasionally', because more often than not we don't. Generally speaking, the buyers of so-called 'blue-chip' works such as Picasso's Garçon à la pipe ($104m/£58m), Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) ($71.7m/37.7m) and Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust ($106m/£70m) remain shrouded in mystery.

Bloomberg's art market reporter Scott Reyburn recently scooped the buyer of Giacometti's ($103 million) Walking Man at Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern sale in London on February 3rd, revealing it to be London-based Brazilian-born billionairess Lily Safra.

Reyburn succeeded in locating two dealers who corroborated each other's version, a minimum prerequisite if a story is to hold water. Otherwise, it remains pure speculation, as with the unsubstantiated 'rumour' that Paris-based Philippe Niarchos was the buyer of Warhol's Green Car Crash (above left) at Christie's New York in May 2007.

Clearly there are plenty of reasons why purchasers of expensive prestige objects choose to remain anonymous and Roberta Smith helpfully outlines a few, security and privacy being the obvious ones, tax dodges and other financial incentives perhaps also occasionally playing a part.

An arguably even more interesting question is why the rest of us are so curious. What's to be gained from knowing that Lily Safra has a Giacometti parked in her living-room? Would it matter more, or less, if the buyer had been Roman Abramovich? Or Steve Cohen? Or Eli Broad?

Smith's article playfully rehearses the bizarre notion that our curiosity about these matters may have libidinal roots: "Strictly enforcing one’s privacy — at a time when so much goes public as fast at it happens — may be the ultimate public display of power, and thus the most erotic," she writes. This is a kind of exhibitionism, Smith suggests, in which anonymity becomes, for those watching, "pleasurable and voyeuristic," the spending of money "a turn-on."

There is another reason why some of us want to open the auction kimono and it has less to do with a notional eroticism and more to do with the increasing opacity of auctions. The problem with high-end art auctions is that nobody knows what kind of deal has been stitched together behind the scenes beforehand. Sotheby's and Christie's glitzy evening sales might look like spontaneous theatre but they are more studiously choreographed than many people realise.

And there's the rub. The day fine art auctioneers ceased operating solely as agents and became principals in the transaction was the day the 'public auction' relinquished any last claim it had to transparency and openness. How much of what goes on is ethical business and how much of it is the art world equivalent of insider trading?

This might sound like a classic Us and Them conspiracy theory, but it's a serious issue when nine-figure sums are changing hands. We're encouraged to believe that because it's art rather than, say, ethanol futures, credit default swaps or an exotic mortgage derivative, it doesn't matter. But in any other trading arena the structuring of such transactions would be subject to a minimum of external regulation. What, precisely, is the extent of the auctioneer's involvement when the hammer falls at these head-spinning prices? Is the auction house a site of sensuality, or the locus of hocus pocus?

Hats off to Roberta Smith for putting a whole new gloss on the stultifying boredom of evening art auctions. Next time I drop down to Sotheby's or Christie's for one of their glitzy Imp and Mod sales I'll keep a beady eye out for the gavel-grinding voyeurs and the scopophilic saleroom swingers.

I've nothing against a bit of harmless rostrum frottage, you understand. It's the bean-counting that concerns me.

Christie's face lawsuit over 'misattributed' Leonardo drawing

The picture illustrated left is not a work by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. But if you could get the right people to say it is, it could be worth...ooh... think of a number and add six or seven noughts.

Christie's sold the picture in New York in 1998 for $21,850 (£11,400), when it was catalogued as by a relatively minor 19th century German artist. Shortly afterwards, a leading Leonardo scholar reattributed it to Leonardo and wrote a book about it. Abracadabra! $150 million!

Now the original vendor, Jeanne Marchig, is suing Christie's for negligence.

Given the monstrous prices changing hands at the top of the art market (cf this week's Picasso in New York), it's not surprising that 'La Bella Principessa', as she is now known, is suddenly at the centre of a multi-million dollar legal action. But quite how Ms Marchig can have a case against Christie's when a bullet-proof attribution to Leonardo hasn't been made (and probably never will be) is a moot point.

There are legal precedents regarding an auctioneer's duty of care, most notably the Court of Appeal's decision in 1990 over Luxmoore-May v Messenger May Baverstock.

This concerned an English provincial auction house, Messenger May Baverstock, which sold two seemingly anonymous sporting paintings in 1985 for £840. A few months later the paintings were offered at Sotheby's as works by George Stubbs, where they fetched £88,000. The original vendor, a Mrs Luxmoore-May, sued Messenger May Baverstock for the difference, claiming that the auctioneers should have known the works were by Stubbs.

The court found in favour of Messenger May Baverstock on the grounds that a distinction needed to be drawn between a provincial auctioneer, who could be described as a general practitioner, and a London firm, who could be expected to show specialist knowledge. Within the parameters of their professional function, Messenger May Baverstock merely expressed an opinion and thus were not negligent, the court ruled.

But the case of the 'Leonardo' involves Christie's, who one can reasonably assume qualify as specialists, if not connoisseurs (a critical distinction). Moreover, not everything in the art market can be definitively researched. Pictures often present greater difficulties than objets d'art, although that realm can be a quagmire too, as the case of the Islamic rock crystal ewer at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury in 2008 vividly illustrated.

True connoisseurship is now a moribund skill, having long ago been replaced by the vulgar imperatives of the art market whose ever-widening maw now sucks in not only Wall Street speculators but academics and "freelance art consultants", all bewitched by the siren chime of the cash register. Brush strokes, fingerprints, chemical analysis, carbon-dating...bring 'em on!

The Leonardo market stinks like a Cinquecento latrine.

Back in December 2009, London Old Masters dealer Simon Dickinson was at the centre of a legal wrangle after allegedly taking a commission of more than £600,000 for selling a Leonardo da Vinci drawing to an American client.

According to the Daily Mail, the drawing had been consigned to Dickinson by private art consultant Daniella Luxembourg, who in turn had been instructed to sell it on behalf of a mysterious Liechtenstein-based foundation called Accidia. 

The Mail reported the subject of the drawing as "the Madonna and Child with St Anne and a lamb," and yet the three or four known documented Leonardo drawings of that subject are all in national museum collections. Had another authentic Leonardo drawing of that subject been found it would have been major art market news and worth a lot more than three or four million. So what was the drawing Dickinson sold?

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For the most informative piece on the La Bella Principessa reattribution controversy, see Richard Dorment's excellent piece for the Telegraph here and for the recent news of the impending court action, see Dalya Alberge's summary for The Times here.

Annus mirabilis for bankers, annus horribilis for those who bailed them out

Picasso's biographer John Richardson has described the year 1931-1932 as an annus mirabilis for the artist. It was on March 8th 1932 that Picasso painted the portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter entitled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (shown on the wall behind Picasso in Cecil Beaton's photograph above).

That same painting yesterday set a new record for a work of art at auction when it sold to an anonymous buyer at Christie's in New York for $106,482,500 (£70,278,450/€81,991,525). Christie's, for some inexplicable reason, described the result as "staggering". But hey, it's only a little bit more than Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein will trouser in bonuses this year.

The very name Picasso is enough to have art investment fund managers and hedge fund billionaires masturbating into their spreadsheets. The artist's works are the most eagerly-chased 'commodities' on the international art market, seemingly more prized as badges of wealth than for any aesthetic significance that the likes of John Richardson might seek to explore. This may partly explain why paintings by Picasso also figure so prominently on international art theft databases as the most frequently stolen objects in the annals of modern art crime.

As John Richardson observed of another high-priced Picasso - The Dream — it "has become one of Picasso's most popular images; sadly, the record prices it fetched in 1997 and 2006 and its renown as a tourist attraction at a Las Vegas casino have left the painting so sullied that it is difficult to judge it on its merits." (It is arguably now even more notorious for having had a hole punched through it by the elbow of its hapless owner Steve Wynn while showing it off to his guests.)

Christie's may disingenuously declare themselves 'staggered' by the outcome of this week's auction, but being the engineers of the sort of arcane backroom deals that now fuel the international art market, the auction houses know better than most the central role played by investors, speculators and bankers in driving destructive boom and bust cycles. They're in bed with them.

But how will the news of another $100 million painting be received by the humble taxpayers who have already bailed out those responsible for the ever deeper global recession into which we're all still sinking? While the super-rich collector who placed the winning bid on the Picasso now sits staring proudly at his Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (right), everyone else looks on, probably not green, but definitely bust.

There is a certain synchronicity to this week's result. Picasso was among the most investment-savvy artists of the modern period, having been one of the first artists to benefit from a structured art investment vehicle — the now famous 'Peau de l'Ours' fund organised by André Level between 1904-1914. (Note how Picasso looks every bit like a fat-cat investment banker in Beaton's photograph, above).

Nor was Picasso averse to rubbing shoulders with the speculators who amassed his works before they strategically returned them to market for a profit. In the 1930s, Picasso succeeded in persuading one such collector, the Lausanne-based Dr G.F.Reber, to loan a number of works to a retrospective of Picasso's work where, as Richardson notes, they were "discreetly for sale." [Richardson, J., A Life of Picasso Vol III, Cape, 2007, p458].

This week's result has been hailed as definitive proof that the art market has finally recovered from the recession, as if the price of Giacometti's Walking Man back in February ($104m) had suddenly vanished from memory. But this market bears no relation to the art market that most artists and collectors know. This is investment banking. The Picasso and Giacometti prices should be viewed alongside the extortionate bonuses currently being paid to City workers in New York and London. Recession? What recession?

Let's be clear. This is an art market fuelled by the same greed that has steered the Western economies to the brink of oblivion. One hundred and six million dollars for a painting. Read it and weep.

Art Loss Register sues Solomon over Rockwell's Russian Schoolroom case

The Art Loss Register (ALR), which for a time represented Jack Solomon, the Nevada-based art dealer who recently lost his title battle with Judy Goffman Cutler over Norman Rockwell's Russian Schoolroom, is to sue their former client.

The ALR has declined to comment further on the case on sub judice grounds, but it would appear to be because Solomon failed to apprise them of the full details of the case. The ALR claims that its role was purely that of "mediator" in the dispute and that neither Solomon nor Judy Goffman Cutler were fully open in their disclosures to the ALR. Judy Goffman Cutler vehemently denies this.

Following the painting's mysterious disappearance in 1973 from Solomon's Arts International Gallery in Missouri, his insurers Chubb paid him $20,000 in compensation for the loss. When the painting reemerged in 1988 at Goldberg Auction Galleries in New Orleans, Solomon was a beneficiary at the sale when the $70,400 auction proceeds were shared between Solomon, Chubb, Goldberg Auction Galleries, and the 'couple' who consigned it for sale and whose identity has never been revealed.

Judgement of Solomon
Yesterday, Solomon's attorney Michael Mushkin told the Los Angeles Times that his client will appeal the decision of Nevada District Court Judge Roger L. Hunt on the grounds that Solomon never consented to the sale of Russian Schoolroom at the 1988 auction, despite having trousered his share of the proceeds.

According to Nevada court documents, Solomon told the FBI on 16 October 1988 that he had agreed to share the auction proceeds with the other parties because neither he nor his insurance company had any documents to prove that Russian Schoolroom was his.

Court documents state that:

"The FBI communication concluded by stating that due to the settlement between Solomon and Goldberg Gallery, the painting should not be seized at the October 28 auction in New Orleans."

Solomon's subsequent attempts to clip the ticket a third time by suing Judy Goffman Cutler for ownership of the painting appear to stem from his earlier assertion that: "I'm sure in two calls I could turn [Russian Schoolroom] over for x million dollars".

With the ALR's suit against Solomon and Solomon's appeal both in the pipeline, it seems this one could run and run.

Unanswered questions in Rockwell's Russian Schoolroom case

Once a judge has ruled in a case of disputed title, it's easy to simply close the book and move on. But jurisprudence often leaves important stones unturned and critical questions unanswered. The case of Norman Rockwell's Russian Schoolroom would seem to have been settled following the judgment by the Nevada District Court on April 8th, but certain aspects of the case remain unresolved.

We hear a lot about the concept of 'due diligence' — the investigative steps that need to be taken by those transacting in the art market in order to limit the likelihood of inadvertently handling stolen goods. Such exhortations to 'do the right thing' are generally aimed at dealers, but auction houses also need to kick the tyres from time to time.

In the case of Russian Schoolroom, Chief Judge Roger L. Hunt found for Judy Goffman Cutler (right) in her title dispute with Nevada-based art dealer Jack Solomon, asserting that Mrs Cutler had "met the standard of care for art dealers in the industry" prior to purchasing the painting at Goldberg's auction in 1988. But did the auction house meet the standard of care?

While Mrs Cutler will now regain ownership of the Rockwell picture, some important questions about the case remain unanswered.

• Who was the mystery "couple" who consigned the painting for sale at the Goldberg Auction Gallery in 1988 and how did they come into ownership of the stolen painting?
  
• Why were those close to the Goldberg auction recently able to recall details of what was said on the pre-sale view day in 1988, and yet unable to recall who consigned the painting for sale?
  
• Why was Goldberg prepared to offer a painting on behalf of a "couple" whose title to the painting was in question? (Had their good title been beyond doubt, they would surely have refused to share the auction proceeds with Solomon).
  
• Why did Solomon himself agree to share the proceeds of the 1988 auction with the "couple" who consigned the painting when he was himself claiming good title to it? Why not assert outright ownership and all the proceeds?
  

We're unlikely ever to get a satisfactory answer to these nagging questions, for the record is far from clear as to how much Solomon declared to his lawyers.

Who was the mystery "couple" who consigned Russian Schoolroom to the Goldberg auction? Will Jack Solomon please do us the courtesy of divulging their identity?

More on this in the next few days.

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Exonerated: Steven Spielberg's Art Dealer in Case of Rockwell Painting Stolen from St. Louis (Riverfront TImes)