A Picasso in a suitcase (ctd.)
August 10 2015
Picture: Ebay
The saga of the fake Picasso 'discovery' I rumbled last month goes on - but seemingly without the bountiful ending once hoped for. After conceding that the picture was indeed a fake, made by himself, the Scottish artist Dominic Currie decided to sell the picture on Ebay. The Ebay account used was his wife's - the same one through which we'd been able to trace all that Soviet memorabilia used to create the legend that the picture came from Mr Currie's 'dad', a Soviet soldier.
Anyway, it appears that the bidding never got above 99p. Which is a shame, as at that price I might have been interested.
The picture was offered as a 'Genuine Fake Picasso', which is taking art historical terminology to a whole new level. Here was the rest of the blurb:
Genuine Fake Picasso
Up for bids on eBay – The painting that caused a worldwide stir when the story first broke a few weeks ago.
The performance painting reputedly by Pablo Picasso was claimed to have been found in an attic and as part of a gift from a Soviet soldier to his girlfriend in the mid 1950s.
It was a piece of Performance Art and an experiment in media relations towards artistic iconoclasm at the expense of new up and coming artists who never get much (if any) media attention.
The painting, which is original, is in the style and manner of Picasso’s cubist work from 1910 of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (also on canvas).
It bears a remarkable likeness to Picasso’s original and is probably the closest anyone outside of the Chicago Institute will ever be to possessing the real thing.
This work has the look, feel and smell of a painting that is over one hundred years old. It is technically perfect in every detail and has the same monotones and brushstrokes as the original Picasso in Chicago.
It was declared to be a piece of Performance art to highlight the lack of media attention to up-and-coming artists, just a few days before it was due to be authenticated at Christie’s auction house in London.
The painting by the artist Dominic Currie follows Picasso’s style and determination to treat Cubism as an art dealing primarily with forms. Its means of representation are relative and not absolute.
The original ‘portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’ which Picasso painted on returning to Paris from Cadaque’s is a turning point in modern art history. The painting introduces what are known ‘keys’ which establish the sitter’s identity: that is, personal and attributive details which are rendered more naturalistically than the rest of the painting.
Kahnweiler’s nose, hands, and sculptures behind him demonstrate that at the beginning of high analytical Cubism Picasso still felt it necessary to show a decent concern with the facts of the world.
On the whole the subject matter of Cubism becomes more substantive as the movement developed.
The basic intention of Picasso in creating Cubism was not merely to present as much essential information as possible about figures and objects but to recreate visual reality as completely as possible in a self-sufficing non-imitative art form.
The Chicago version was produced in 1910 at a time when a distinct advance was made by Picasso in another important technical aspect of his art.
The technical nature and quality of Dominic’s application and the way that the paint is actually put on to the canvas is a direct reference to Picasso and his handling of the brushwork which was more subtle and varied than he had previously achieved.
The atmospheric connotations in the brush-work at this time, combined with the use of non-atmospheric colours, give an impression of airlessness that underlies the use of the term Cubism.
A substantial donation from the sale of this work will go towards the local artists and their struggle for materials and recognition.
Update - a reader writes:
As far as I remember the painting reached 300 GBP and then the sale was cancelled. I emailed the seller asking if the painting was still for sale and she replied "Not for the time being!"
