Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Art Market

The Cost of Poor Care: Multi-millions

When I saw a digital image of the Pontormo portrait of Cosimo I de Medici, which was up for sale at Christie’s yesterday, I fell in love with it. It’s a beautiful pose, a study in black. But then I heard from art historians about how abraded the surface was — some said they could not even stand to look at it.

452px-Cosimo_I_de_Medici_by_Jacopo_Carucci_(called_Pontormo)And surely, the presale estimate was a giveaway: $300,000 to $500,000 for a Pontormo? It would, some experts said, be worth $30 million to $50 million if it were in good condition. The Metropolitan Museum doesn’t even own a Pontormo. The Getty paid more than $35 million in 1989 for Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier — more than $65 million in today’s dollars.

Could varnish, retouching and other poor maintenance choices really destroy the picture that much? Who would do that?

Earlier this week, I went to Christie’s to see for myself — and while I can look at the picture, I did see the obvious problem. It’s flat and one can see the retouching brush strokes. Most of the damage, I was told, was done decades ago, not recently.

So I was very curious to see what happened at the sale. The hammer fell at $600,000 — and with premium the price was $725,000.

So someone still wanted the work.

But, boy is this a lesson in care.

Rothschild Prayerbook Squeezes Out A New Record, Sort Of

It was just by a sliver. This afternoon at Christie’s, when the Rothschild Prayerbook came up for sale, the final price including the premium was $13.605 million. Last time, in 1999, it fetched $13.379 million.

23369245_bConsidering that the book was sold in London last time, and therefore in pounds sterling, not dollars as today, the price could be construed as lower now. In pounds sterling, the price last time was £8,581,500 and today it was £8,215,583.

I was watching only online, so I could not tell who was bidding — the buyer was on the phone, and there seemed to be one other bidder, possibly in the room. But it’s difficult to know if that bidder was real. Last time, according to reported accounts, there were five bidders — all ardent suitors.

The hammer price was $12 million — exactly at the low estimate of $12 million to $18 million.

This is a bit of a disappointment, if not necessarily a surprise. Experts  outside of Christie’s told me that the illuminated manuscript market is notoriously difficult to discern. That Chinese bidder, who seemed so interested — according to Nicholas Hall, the Christie’s department chair — may not have come through. The Chinese bidding reputation might have suggested that.

On the other hand, maybe the buyer was the Getty — the underbidder last time. I await a press release.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

Paging Through A 1505 Prayer Book

It was a perk of the job, and what a pleasure it was. As I reported and then wrote a short item about the Rothschild Prayerbook, which is up for sale on Wednesday at Christie’s, I went over the the auction house to “look” at it. I assumed that an expert would don white gloves and let me see a few of its 150 pages.

GerardDavidMadonnaBut no. When I arrived at the skybox overlooking Christie’s Rockefeller Center sales room, the guard standing outside let me in (along with a representative of the PR department) and — as long as my hands were clean — invited me to page through it, no white gloves needed (that’s a trend, I’ve learned, with books and manuscripts; the theory is that more damage is done with gloved hands, possibly because gloves make us careless).

And so I did, and discovered — as Roger S. Wieck, curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, put it a book with “some of the finest paintings by major, major illuminators,”  and borders decorated with widely varying images that include flowers, peacock feathers, shells, architectural elements, skulls, pearls and jewels that “are unbelievably bedazzling,” plus “some text pages have no decoration at all – just luxuriously wasted vellum.”

23369245_cIt is a spectacular prayer book, which holds the world record price at auction for an illuminated manuscript (nearly $13.4 million). I relate its background and assess Christie’s strategy — putting it in its Renaissance sale, rather than a manuscript sale, and touring it to Moscow and Hong Kong — in a small article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the Saturday Icons page. As Kay Sutton, Christie’s London-based Director and Senior Specialist of Books and Manuscripts, noted, “It has 67 paintings, and that’s almost as many as the rest of the Renaissance sale.”

Since it last sold, in 1999, Wieck said, the book has barely been touched at all — he examined it then, and saw it again recently, and said, “It is in pristine condition, with no changes at all since I last saw it in 1999.”

Of course, I hope that the prayer book goes to an institution – and by consensus the Getty is the likeliest American museum to buy. It was, reportedly, the underbidder last time.

Over to you, James Cuno and Timothy Potts.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Christie’s

 

Calder Heirs’ Fraud Case Against Dealer Perls Is Dismissed

Alexander-CalderI don’t know about you, but I wasn’t convinced by an article in The New York Times last October headlined Calder’s Heirs Accuse Trusted Dealer of Fraud. Apparently, neither was the court. On Christmas Eve, New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich made public an opinion that dismissed the $20 million suit by relatives of Alexander Calder (at right) against the late Klaus G. Perls, Calder’s dealer from 1954 until 1976, when the artist died, and the Perls estate. According to a Dec. 26 article in Bloomberg Businessweek,

“All these allegations are so patently inadequate that the court can only conclude that they were brought solely for the purpose of harassment or embarrassment,” Kornreich said in the ruling, dismissing the case.

…“Plaintiffs are attempting to litigate issues that necessarily stretch back decades without any personal knowledge or contemporaneous records, where nearly all of the people who had personal knowledge of the facts of the case are dead,” Kornreich said in her ruling.

To recap, from the NYT:

…the Calder estate says the Perlses surreptitiously held on to hundreds of Calder’s works and swindled the artist’s estate out of tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps most surprising, it says that Perls, a dealer with a sterling reputation who campaigned to rid his industry of forgeries, sold dozens of fake Calders. The suit depicts Perls as a tax cheat who stashed millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account, a secret his daughter said she maintained by paying off a former gallery employee with $5 million. She added that Calder had his own hidden Swiss account.

The Calder heirs also talked of “nearly 700 Calder bronze sculptures, jewelry and other works worth well in excess of $20 million that had been in the Perlses’ hands and are unaccounted for” and said “the gallery handled at least 61 counterfeits.”

In responses, a lawyer for the Perls family had deemed the lawsuit a ” “sham and manufactured claim.” He characterized it as a fishing expedition, one that is finding only the sort of gaps in records that are normal when tracking 25-year-old transactions from a gallery that has been closed for more than 15 years. The Perls family has asked the court to dismiss the case, also arguing that the statute of limitations has expired.

Of course, the Calder heirs are not stopping with the December ruling. Again, from Businessweek:

“We are definitely appealing — the defendants should not go to bed easily at night,” Aaron Richard Golub, the lawyer for Calder’s heirs, said today in a phone interview. “The behavior of the Perlses was so contorted that it’s very hard to describe it in straightforward terms.”

I have read only coverage, not court documents, but so far, I’m with the judge.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum

 

 

Cheese As Art, And ABMB As Celebrity Circus

CheeseArtIf ever you thought that Art Basel Miami Beach was turning into a circus, take a look at this press release that landed in my Inbox this afternoon. The subject line was “MEDIA INVITE to “Cheeses of France” EAT ART Media Preview.” Then it went on to say:

Amongst the fabulous art on display at this year’s Art Basel in Miami you’ll find an oasis of delicious FRENCH CHEESES.

Now I like my cheese as much or more as anyone else, but this read like something from The Onion. The cheeses can been seen in two pop-up events, which I’m sure will be fun, and very commercial. Listen to the details:

The pop-up will be held under a special tent that is being erected specifically for the Cheeses of France event (directly across from the Art Miami tent), and attendees will be able to sample a variety of French cheeses, while enjoying spectacular interactive and edible art displays from three international artists, as well as tasty passed hors-d’oeuvres and wine pourings.

And then:

The “Eat Art” movement is an integral part of the Cheeses of France Miami pop-up event, and was created by Daniel Spoeri in the early 1960s to create synergy between art and food. For the first time ever, during the Miami Art Basel Fair, the Milk Factory, a Parisian Art Gallery specializing in the “Eat Art” movement, will showcase three “Eat Art” artists: Dorothée Selz, known as the “Eat Art” baby, who began work as an artist in the late 1960s; Antoni Miralda, who with Daniel Spoeri created the “Eat Art” movement and who later opened The Food Culture Museum, an informal museum preserving diverse popular food culture throughout the world; and Krai, an artist from Thailand currently residing in Paris, who adapted his art of sculpturing tropical fruits to the French culture and is now the only sculptor on cheeses in the world.

I wish I could be there, actually, but I am traveling in a different direction tomorrow.

Another press release today carried the words “Of course we are not allowed to mention names but if you read about a major personality like Jay Z, Lady Gaga, or Leonardo Di Caprio attending Art Basel, chances are they are checking out the Manuel Pardo exhibit at Williams McCall, the only fine arts gallery South of Fifth on South Beach. They are scheduled to come by during the week or at the official reception…” I’d be staying away from that one. And then there are all the “private event” invitations I’ve received from brands (ahem) I don’t even know.

Celebritization of the art world has been going on for some time now.  I regularly receive emails about galas or gallery openings that cite the attendees, listing celebrities first, then “major collectors,” then a couple of high-profile, global curators — and then, finally, the artists, if there are any. That’s sad.

And so, as fun as a cheese event sounds, I’m dismayed by the way ABMB and the contemporary art world in general are going. ABMB is turning into a mammoth commercial opportunity, not for art — which would be expected — but for luxury products and experiences, a trade fair for the rich. Art is secondary.

Now, as for the cheese, if you go to this website, you’ll be invited, too.