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Art Games and Forgeries

1/30/2013

Sotheby's Art Auction (NYTimes)

If you ever doubted that the ‘Art World’ is an insider’s game, read the recent article in the New York Times, As Art Values Rise, So Do Concerns About Market’s Oversight. A detailed chronicle of failed or ignored regulations, accepted practices visible only to those already in on the ‘rules,’ and tricky high-stakes finance, the article paints a vivid picture of what you probably already suspected. It’s dangerous territory for the naïve, the innocent and, certainly, for those of only moderate wealth. For most artists too -–although art is the commodity on which this all hangs, very few reach a point of having the power to dictate terms of sale. Despite what it may have cost them in real life terms, an artist’s work becomes the glittering ball tossed around in a game of (mostly someone else's) greed and gain.

Degas: After the Bath 1900

But if you think that the world of legitimate art is dark and nefarious, try the underground labyrinth of art forgery. I’ve just finished two books on the subject, one a novel, one an intriguing call for the acceptance of art forgery as ‘the great art of our time.’ The novel, The Art Forger, by B. A. Shapiro, has gotten quite a lot of press, mostly enthusiastic. I agree that it’s a good read, with a compelling main character and a twisty plot that is fun to follow. Shapiro, who is not a visual artist, gets some of her art history wrong - Ernest Meissonier was a far more important painter than she allows for example, and she credits Edgar Degas with a bubbly, flirtatious personality that flies in the face of everything that’s ever been said about him. But this is fiction and those are irritations rather than flaws in her tale. The core of the story is the famous theft of paintings from the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, a mystery of mythic proportions.
The (real) Degas shown here is similar to the work that is the centerpiece in 'The Art Forger'.

Missing: empty frames at the Gardner

One March evening in 1990 thieves dressed as Boston police walked out with 13 extraordinarily valuable works, including Vermeer’s The Concert (one of only 35 known paintings by the artist) and Rembrandt’s only seascape, leaving empty frames that remain on the walls in anticipation of their return. No person or any information has ever come forward to explain the theft or reveal the whereabouts of any of the stolen art. The story is a novel already, but Shapiro has the fun of taking it further into ‘what if?’ territory, leading her heroine into ever-narrowing tunnels of personal integrity and artistic identity.

Van Meegern: Supper at Emmaus 1937

When she gets to the details of how a forgery can be pulled off, Shapiro borrows from art forgery royalty, the real life Hans van Meegeren, a Dutch charlatan who fooled experts and amateurs alike into believing his ‘Vermeers.’ Using a cobbled, incredible technique involving Bakelite - a 30s era plastic - he created previously unknown ‘masterpieces;’ one of his most ardent collectors was Hermann Goring. Van Meegeren’s ersatz Vermeers are the sappiest, most lugubrious religious scenes imaginable, impossible to take seriously, but one of the truths running through Shapiro’s story and through the second book, Why Fakes are the Great Art of our Age, is the mantra ‘people see what they want to see.’

Too many Mona Lisas

As the author Jonathon Keats proves over and over again, this truth holds even if those people are the curators of major museums, art scholars and experts, and wealthy experienced collectors. For Keats, however, the prism of art forgery is colored differently; instead of seeing a scourge and a crime, he believes that forgery does art’s proper job of provoking and disturbing. He trumpets forgery as the perfect art for our current ‘age of anxiety.’ The theory is intriguing, both specious and valid, and he makes his case with anecdotal evidence ranging from Raphael to recent forgers hell-bent on wreaking havoc.

Tom Keating painting a Van Gogh

Wreaking havoc is, in fact, a common thread for a number of forgers, at least in recent cases, and that is where a hole tears into the fabric of Keats’ theory. Revenge - in retaliation for slights by art dealers, for a lack of recognition of ‘genius,’ for invisibility when someone else gets all the glory - is not the stuff of great art. Many artists, famous or not, can relate to the feelings, but if those angry negatives take over they will certainly dim the light of honest creation. Real art needs real heart, not simply classic technique and clever tricks.
photo by Rob Ebdon

Fake Modigliani by Elmer de Hory

Another indisputable truth, emphasized in both books, is that successful forgers are very good art makers; they may lack the true artist’s inner fire of inspiration but they are exceptional technicians. Although the number of works by forgers hanging in major museums can never be known, it is openly acknowledged to be large - astonishingly so.

If you’re tempted to enter into the game of art at the highest levels, be cautious. And remember this: forgery may not be mentioned in the hushed halls of the big auction houses, but it is surely a wild card in a complex game.

card from Open Studio event in Wash DC

P.S. Buy local, go to studios and small galleries, attend Open Studio events, seek out your own original treasure. Real art is everywhere. When you buy art from real artists you don’t have doubts about the art or the heart–- and you have something worth millions - at least to you.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Forger-A-Novel/dp/1616201320
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Why-Fakes-are-Great/dp/0199928355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359572179&sr=1-1&keywords=jonathon+keats
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/arts/design/as-art-market-rise-so-do-questions-of-oversight.html

Tom Keating photo courtesy of most of the shebang
http://www.stephenbrookes.com/arts/2007/8/7/fine-art-of-the-fake-makers.html

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Royal Portraits: The Grand and the Odd

1/17/2013

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Elizabeth I by an unknown artist 1600

When the first official portrait of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, was revealed last week to much gnashing of critical teeth, my thoughts went to all those long-suffering court artists who spent their lives struggling to craft acceptable images of individuals blue in blood but all too often lacking in physical beauty.
A portrait is never an easy thing for an artist - ego and vanity make it treacherous ground to tread. What must it have been like when the likely consequence of an unflattering likeness was the loss of your head?

Mary Cassatt: Lady at the Tea Table 1883

Mary Cassatt, speaking from personal experience, once defined a portrait as ‘a painting in which something is wrong with the nose.’ In her case the painting was Lady at the Tea Table, finished in 1883 but hidden away until 1914 after criticism about the size of the nose from the sitter’s daughter. This beautiful work is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mrs. Robert Moore Riddle, Cassatt's subject, was of the upper crust but she was American, not noble or of Royal lineage. For an artist to please the picky entitled beings who command armies with a snap of their fingers would have taken diplomacy and tact as well as artistic skill.

Many Royal portraits are State Portraits, easily recognized by all the visual Pomp & Circumstance. In a State Portrait the human individual is subsumed into a version of the nation they rule. In these official images of Francois I of France and Catherine the Great of Russia decorum and power are the intent - though both had lively personalities, quick minds and reputations for promiscuity, we don't get much inkling of it from these paintings.

Francois I of France by Jean Clouet 1525

Catherine the Great of Russia by Alexei Antropov 1766

Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud 1701

The State Portrait that sets the standard has to be the 1701 portrait of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Louis’s likeness is apparently a good one, but it doesn’t really matter - it’s the trappings that count. Louis - aka France - was powerful and wealthy and so dominant in Europe at the time that he/it doesn’t need to wear a crown to bolster his authority. The golden sword at his side implies - no need to shout - military might. While the swords carried by his contemporaries were a sign of their aristocratic standing, for Louis – the first among gentleman - his sword hints at a very real threat. He/it can - and did - use it to start wars that involved all of Europe. The impossibly expensive ermine and velvet cape broadcasts wealth while it also drapes the man Louis in the fleur-de-lys, the symbol of France. This get-up was customary for French kings for several centuries, but no one ever wore it with more style or more sincere intent than Louis XIV. (After the original ermine cape was destroyed during the French Revolution a copy was made for the coronation of Louis XVIII. It can be seen in the Treasure House at Reims.) The most individual part of the portrait is Louis’s well-turned legs, a reminder that he was a dancer and patron of the dance; it was in his court that the vocabulary of ballet was established. He also set the style for men for a long time to come - thanks to Louis, men had to display shapely legs, so no doubt ‘touching up the nose’ often meant ‘touching up the legs’ until long pants came into fashion.

Las Meninas by Diego Velasquez 1656-57

Diego Velasquez painted numerous portraits of his patron, King Philip IV of Spain, some of which are more ‘official’ than others. Las Meninas, Velasquez’s greatest masterpiece, is a state portrait of sorts, but a very different sort, one that changed the idea of portraiture, royal and otherwise, forever. The Spanish court of Philip was an extremely serious, rigidly formal place, so Velasquez’s genius for naturalism was a gift to us as well as to Philip. Philip, from the distinguished, jealously guarded line of Hapsburgs, was not a handsome man. He has the characteristic hangdog look - long prominent chin, narrow face and drooping eyes, but at least he escaped the most grievous consequences of all that intermarrying. (The jaw of a close relative was so distorted that he was unable to eat normally.) Thanks to Velasquez, who earned his king’s deep trust and friendship, the legacy of Philip IV is graced by some of the most exquisite, sensitive paintings ever created - and we are privy to an extraordinarily acute sense of Philip’s humanity.

Philip IV by Velasquez 1644

Philip IV by Velasquez 1653

Elizabeth I by Cecil Beaton 1953

The Coronation Portrait of Elizabeth II, a photograph by Cecil Beaton, is quite a contrast to that of Elizabeth I but it’s nevertheless full of the proper symbolic regalia - orb, scepter, ermine, crown, etc. Now, with their hold on the throne so well established, the British Royals apparently have little further need for State Portraits. The new portrait of her Highness the Dutchess of Cambridge is hardly the most radical or controversial of recent Royal non-State portraits.

Elizabeth I by Lucien Freud 2001

Lucien Freud, England’s most celebrated living painter until his recent death, painted the Queen as a gift in 2001. The result is tiny in size but a provocative statement, focusing in on her features with the merciless perspective of a fish-eye lens and squeezing in the Crown in all its diamond detail at the top edge. Robert Simon, editor of the British Art Journal, commented, "It makes her look like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke." The chief art critic of The Times, Richard Cork, describes the image, on the other hand, as "painful, brave, honest, stoical and, above all, clear sighted."

Prince Philip by Stuart Pearson Wright 2004

Prince Philip gamely went along with what must be a policy decision to bolster contemporary British art and let himself be painted by Stuart Pearson Wright in 2004. Wright, like Paul Emsly who painted Kate Middleton, is a past winner of the BP Portrait Award, an annual competition for British artists. Pearson Wright is an artist with a sense of the theatrical and a definite sense of humor – the result is a fine painting, but surely one of the most bizarre entries in the National Portrait Gallery. Philip rejected the first version; he allowed the second, but exclaimed upon seeing it, "Gadzooks!" Why have you given me a great schonk?" The nose again!

Catherine, The Duchess of Cambridge by Paul Emsley 2012

The Duchess and the Royal Family are evidently pleased with the Emsley portrait. I’m not a fan - it’s pretty bland, with no adventurous agenda to make it entertainingly offensive, and it isn’t particularly beautiful either. I find it curious that the artist seemed compelled to sort to the negative with a vengeance, in fact putting negatives in where they don’t exist. He has commented that Kate Middleton was ‘too beautiful’ and therefore hard to paint, but why did he have to makes her look not only old but, as one commenter said, zombie-like? On the other hand, knowing some of the alternatives, perhaps perhaps the family is simply relieved. And the nose seems fine. What do YOU think?

Slide show - the ‘Best and Worst of Royal Portraits’ with snarky comments, from the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jan/11/kate-middleton-best-worst-royal-portraits#/?picture=402244397&index=0
Websites of the Artists
http://paulemsley.com/works/=
http://www.stuartpearsonwright.org/

If you like this topic, you’ll enjoy my Postcard Art History series: Paparazzi: The Rich and Famous. This 10 week series, delivered to you (by email to any device) in the form of pdf postcards with beautiful images and entertaining, informative stories, gives you a look at the Royal, the Wealthy, and the Powerful across centuries and cultures.

www.postcardarthistory.com/papparazzi-portraits-of-the-rich--famous

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Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Met - and El Anatsui in Chelsea

1/1/2013

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Women in Blue Dress 1937

Matisse? Again? Maybe it’s just Philadelphia, but with the Barnes Collection and the recent ‘Visions of Arcadia’ at PMA it seems like we’ve been seeing an awful lot of Matisse lately. Not that I’m complaining. Matisse is the ‘art as comfortable as a good armchair’* guy, and true to his word, he made a great deal of beautiful eye candy (in the very best sense.) His colors alone are an endless pleasure. Who could ever get tired of his sweet spot blues, candy pinks and vivid greens?

December 31 was Matisse’s birthday, by the way, so Happy Birthday Henri, with great thanks.

Palm Leaves 1912

Matisse: in Search of True Painting, currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (through March 17, 2013) is well worth a Megabus journey. The exhibit, organized by the Met in conjunction with a Copenhagen museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris, features 49 works in pairs or series. The exhibit is thus a spectacular chance not only to see Matisse but to probe beyond the pleasing surface of this most popular artist to get at his process and his ideas about creating art.

Still Life with Purro I 1904

A number of the works have a still-searching-for-direction quality about them, particularly a grouping of still lifes that begin the show. In fact, when Matisse painted them in 1899 - 1904, he was in his early 30’s with a wife and three children to support. He’d been painting seriously for some time but had little to show for it - no critical notice and no financial success. These still lifes are worth a long look; they hold many of Matisse’s sources and influences as well as signposts indicating his road forward. Cezanne, Signac, Bonnard and Van Gogh are all more or less present in color usage, texture, and composition, but so are strong hints of Matisse’s own unmistakable brand of alchemy. Part of the fun of the exhibit is noticing how the influences flicker in and out and then fade to background as Matisse became more confident with and more acclaimed for his own vision.

Acanthus 1912

Much of the direction of his art was surely set by his trips to Morocco. I always picture Matisse, a child of bleak, grey industrial northern France, getting off the boat in that bright southern port for the first time in 1912 and opening like a flower to the golden light and the warm sun. Two paintings from that first visit, Palm Leaves and Acanthus, give a stunning idea of how Matisse absorbed the experience of Morocco and turned it into brave modern art. Both works are full of energy, slashed and scrubbed with strong color in thin washes; they both push and pull between representation and abstraction and steam with the excitement of discovery. Acanthus, a marvel of mauves, bright acid greens, oranges and rich periwinkle blue, troubled Matisse at first. He carted it home to Paris and then back again to Morocco, planning to rework it but finally deciding it was all right as it was. By nature and habit Matisse was said to be much milder than his groundbreaking art, so perhaps he just needed time to catch up with himself.

Young Sailor II 1906

Young Sailor II from 1906, a painting in the Met’s own collection, is shown side by side with an earlier version from the same year. I found this one pairing of the most striking moments in the exhibit. The Met version, well known and beloved, is a cartoon-like version of its partner, which is a more solidly drawn, better proportioned representation of a young boy in sailor’s clothing. When Matisse showed Young Sailor II to Leo Stein, he tried to pass it off as the work of the mailman in Collioure, the small town in southwest France where he painted it. Stein described the painting as a work of ‘extreme deformation.’ Again we see Matisse bent on pushing art in a new direction, taking chances and experimenting with form and color, but I was interested to see that in direct comparison with Young Sailor I, the Met version looked tepid and almost sentimental.

Young Sailor I 1906

Young Sailor I is already edgy and modern - in its energy and courage and the play of color in the face, it reminded me of Femme au Chapeau, Matisse’s Fauve portrait of his wife from 1905, the painting that sent shock waves through American audiences when it was shown at the Armory show in 1913. Young Sailor I is in a private collection so is rarely seen - the pairing in this exhibit not only revealed Matisse’s process, but also raised interesting questions about the designation ‘masterpiece.’ Is a work crowned with honor and glory on its own merits, or may it be revered simply because it hangs in a storied, world-class museum? How does the taste of gallery dealers and museum curators and market availability factor into our understanding and acceptance of the ‘masterpiece’ label? Whether or not Young Sailor II is considered a great masterpiece in Matisse’s overall body of work, the buzz of recognition connected to a known, rather than little seen, painting makes the question relevant.

View of Notre Dame 1914 (MOMA)

In 1914, when World War I was about to devastate Europe, Matisse was in Paris, with a studio on the Quai St. Michel. Out the window he could see the towers of Notre Dame, and from this year came one of what is, for me, one of his supreme masterpieces. My heart did a little dance when I came around a corner and met it face to face. (The only masterpiece meter you need, really.) This is the stark, stripped down View of Notre Dame from the spring of 1914, owned by NY MOMA. The MOMA View of Notre Dame is a blue and black drawing on canvas, with a surface scrubbed and scratched and smudged and worked over until everything that remains seems both arbitrary and rock-solid essential. Disembodied towers float in a blue ether that is at once underwater and high in the sky. Only one little green splotch of a tree holds the great cathedral to earth.

View of Notre Dame 1914 (Switzerland)

At the Met this work is mated with a second view from the same year, a literal sketchbook sort of drawing/painting that is light years away from the concept of the MOMA work. Over and over again I found this exhibit telling stories beyond the one it promised in the title. The story of Matisse and his process, valuable as that is, is just the beginning. Here is the ranging imagination of artists in general, those with the vision and curiosity to see and express the same idea or scene in infinite ways and forms. Matisse did numerous versions of Notre Dame, each with its own identity and particular magic.

The Dream (1940) with photo of early stage

In the final galleries, several of Matisse’s paintings are documented with photographs showing working stages. (The Large Blue Dress, a 1937 work in the Met’s collection, is also accented with the skirt of the dress worn by model Lydia Delectorskaya.) The Dream (1940) is centered amid 14 black and white photographs that show how it progressed from a loose, sketchy, literal scene of woman and foliage to an abstract composition, a white oval against a rose background that retains hints, flattened and decorative, of the original subject. My own love of Matisse’s rich, luxurious drawings would have stopped the process at about stage 5 or 6 and left it in black and white, but the total picture, like this entire exhibit, is fascinating.
Matisse's famous quote:
*What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/Matisse
Slide show from the Met Exhibit
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/11/30/arts/design/20121130-MATISSE.html#1

El Anatsui at Jack Shainman

Also in New York, but only until January 13, is a show of the work of El Anatsui, the great contemporary African artist, at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. El Anatsui’s astonishing tapestries are painstakingly composed of flattened bottle caps and other bits of discarded metal held together with tiny twists of copper wire. Sprawled across walls, the works make deep, rich connections to ideas of African tribal grandeur, especially the legacy of the storied gold-rich African kings wrapped in luxurious cloaks of symbolic Kente cloth, and to the sad history of colonial exploitation by Europeans who cheapened and brutalized people, countries and traditions. The seductive beauty of El Anatsui’s textured, shimmering, swaths of metal cloth is the portal to worlds of meaning.
http://www.jackshainman.com/home.html

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Art Games and Forgeries

Royal Portraits: The Grand and the Odd

Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Met - and El Anatsui in Chelsea

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Art Games and Forgeries

Royal Portraits: The Grand and the Odd

Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Met - and El Anatsui in Chelsea

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ArtSmartTalk by email

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ArtSmart Consulting
BETTER CONTENT for your art site
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TRY A FREE SAMPLE!
Postcard Art History
Easy, fun way to learn about ART - a great gift! http://www.postcardarthistory.com/