Previous Posts: November 2012

“The art market is a lot weaker,” explained Thomas Galbraith, head of analytics at artnet, who expects another lackluster week.  The problem is that the market is, as one commentator put it, “allergic” of second-tier works.  “People are taking less risk and going for works that are proven,” noted Galbraith, “the market is taking a step back, it’s a self-aware market.”

The doyenne of art-market reporters, Sarah Thornton, has quit writing about the economics of art. She says there are a hundred reasons for doing so, including the fact that “tightknit cabals of dealers and speculative collectors count on the fact that you will report record prices without being able to reveal the collusion behind how they were achieved”, and that “it implies that money is the most important thing about art.”

Charlie Finch, too, smells the irrelevance of a world which has become irredeemably decadent in all the worst meanings of the word — to the point, this summer, at which he convinced himself that even the plutocrats would notice, and that the art market would be crashing hard, right about now. Obviously, that didn’t happen: it’s almost impossible to underestimate the obliviousness of the art-collecting elite, who are of course constantly surrounded by precisely the kind of courtiers — consultants, gallerists, even artists — who constantly tell them how perspicacious and important they are. Look no further than former commodity broker Jeff Koons, whose Tulips just sold for $33,682,500 at Christie’s: the last time I saw him he was in Davos, palling around with a Ukrainian oligarch, and generally solidifying his reputation among the people who really matter. Insofar, of course, that the people who really matter are the people you want to continue to funnel millions of dollars in your direction.

No, Charlie, the art market oligopoly system isn’t going anywhere: if anything, it’s more entrenched than ever. But the people without millions of dollars, the people who try to talk about art but find all conversations ultimately being about money — those people are, finally, getting fed up.

The spring of 2013 will see the launch of an exciting new programme of research events at the Centre. 

Research seminars

The first of a seasonal series of five, fortnightly research seminars will be given by distinguished historians of British art and architecture. These research seminars, which will take place on Wednesday evenings, are intended to showcase original and stimulating research in all areas of British art and architectural history. They will take the form of hour-long talks, followed by questions and drinks, and are geared to scholars, curators, conservators, art-trade professionals and research students working on the history of British art. We are pleased to announce that the papers given in this first series of research seminars will be delivered by members of The Paul Mellon Centre’s Advisory Council.  

Research lunches

The spring programme of events will also include a series of five research lunches, geared to doctoral students and junior scholars working on the history of British art and architecture. These research lunches, which will normally take place on alternate Fridays, are intended to be informal events in which individual doctoral students and scholars will talk for half-an-hour about their projects, and engage in animated discussion with their peers. A sandwich lunch will be provided by the Centre on these occasions. We hope that this series, which we look forward to maintaining in the summer and autumn, will help foster a sense of community amongst PhD students and junior colleagues working in the field, and bring researchers from a wide range of institutions together in a collegial and friendly atmosphere. 

In order to help us plan for these events, it is essential that all of those who intend coming to individual research seminars and research lunches email the Centre’s Events Co-ordinator, Ella Fleming, on efleming[at]paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk, at least two days in advance.

The LCC felt that such new estates should have works of art in them and they set about sourcing and buying artworks for these new spaces and also for schools and colleges. This was not for purely aesthetic reasons as they made clear ‘the Council has no authority to encourage art for art’s sake or to encourage national art except insofar as it benefits London art’. It was part of the policy to improve Londoners lives and living standards. The new Stifford Estate was a prestigious site and a suitably prestigious sculpture was therefore required to put in it. A work by Henry Moore, at that time an artist of international fame and prestige, must have seemed very appropriate   The LCC in 1962 therefore acquired Draped Seated Woman (Old Flo) and it was installed outside one of the tower blocks called Ewhurst Tower in the Stifford Estate in the spring of 1963. It remained there until the Stifford Estate was demolished in the late 1990s.

We are faced with a stark choice in these times of recession.

The unprecedented partnership of Glasgow City Council and the National Galleries of Scotland bought the work for £637,500 from an auction at Sotheby's in London. The purchase was made possible by grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, who gave £423,358 and £62,983 respectively.

John Leighton, director general of the NGS, said: "Guthrie's In the Orchard is a key masterpiece in the story of Scottish art and, at a time when funding is obviously very scarce, it is entirely fitting NGS and Glasgow City Council should join forces to acquire this iconic work for the public.

"We are immensely grateful to the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund for their rapid and very generous support, which has allowed us to move quickly to secure this extremely important work at auction."

Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the NHMF, said: “This is wonderful news. Guthrie’s In the Orchard is universally acknowledged as one of the most powerful paintings of the Glasgow Boys Movement, which directed the course of modern art in 19th century Britain.  When news reached the National Heritage Memorial Fund just fourteen days ago that this seminal work was at risk, we were able to act extremely fast and pledge our support in record time to secure this important part of our heritage for future generations to enjoy.”

Julia Nagle, a London-based independent paintings conservator, explained that repairing a painting such as Rothko's would be a lengthy process.

"Rothko is difficult in the sense that he painted using lots of different media, which narrows down the choice of solvents that can be safely used on his paintings," she told the BBC.

"Graffiti pens are made to work outdoors and survive rain and all kinds of things, so it's something that's quite noxious that has then gone right through the paint into the canvas below."

"It was just an unbelievably mean-spirited gesture," says Hockney as he creates a new sketch shown here.

The 75-year-old artist is convinced the stump was targeted because it had become possibly the most famous piece of dead wood in Britain after he portrayed it in several of his acclaimed landscapes of the countryside around his home in Bridlington. "It is something that has made me depressed. It was just a spite. There are loads of very mean things here now in Britain."

Couldn't agree more on being rather suspect of reading overly sexual meanings in pictures such as the Dou you posted this week. However, I think from time to time  my fellow countrymen painters did like to include a dubious prop or two, such as Abraham van den Tempel in this picture sold at Christie's Amsterdam this week [above]. The calabash in question could hardly be over-interpreted, in my view...

With all these stories of dodgy art dealers selling fake paintings to unsuspecting art collectors, I wondered if you had heard that there is a new film that will be released this coming Wednesday (21 Nov), staring Colin Firth as an unscrupulous art dealer who recruits Cameron Diaz to sell a dodgy Monet painting to Alan Rickman? It's called 'Gambit' and the bus shelters of London are currently stuffed with adverts for it, as I discovered while driving round the south circular this afternoon!  Apparently it is a remake of a 60s film [with Michael Caine].

According to Knoedler and Freedman's motion to dismiss: “In the end, [the] plaintiffs seek to blame Knoedler and Freedman when it was plaintiffs and their art advisor… who acted recklessly: they purchased a multimillion dollar painting without asking a single expert for an opinion considering its authenticity (including any of the experts Knoedler and Freedman said had 'viewed' the work), [and] without seeing a single document reflecting the provenance (which they knew could not be entirely and indisputably verified by Knoedler)… ”

The De Soles argue they could not have known the facts of a fraud until they learned that the London hedgefunder Pierre Lagrange sued Knoedler and Freedman in December 2011, alleging that the gallery sold him a fake Jackson Pollock. The De Soles then hired a forensic expert to examine their painting who concluded that the “materials and techniques… are inconsistent and irreconcilable with the claims that Untitled was painted by Mark Rothko.” 

The relatives said they believe that the museum has not always safeguarded their family’s donations. Until late October, the descendants didn’t know that art donated by May’s sister, Blanche Adler, a prominent BMA donor, also had been stolen from the museum. They also complained that the museum does not display enough of May’s art.

Museum officials said the thefts happened a long time ago, and security has been beefed up considerably since. They noted that the museum can show off only so much from one family’s collection, and that May’s mix of classical and Egyptian works, Renaissance textiles, 20th-century European paintings, and even a Jackson Pollock, was given with no strings attached.

BAROCCI: BRILLIANCE AND GRACE

27 February – 19 May 2013, Supported by The Joseph F McCrindle Foundation, Sainsbury Wing, Admission charge

Federico Barocci (1535–1612) is celebrated as one of the most talented artists of late 16th-century Italy. Fascinated by the human form, he fused charm and compositional harmony with an unparalleled sensitivity to colour.

Thanks to the cooperation of the Soprintendenze delle Marche, the exhibition will showcase Barocci’s most spectacular Marchigian altarpieces, including his famous Entombment from Senigallia [above]

and Last Supper from Urbino Cathedral – never before seen outside Italy. In total, 16 of his most important altarpieces and devotional paintings and five of his finest portraits will be on display alongside their preparatory drawings and oil sketches.

Barocci was an incessant and even obsessive draughtsman, preparing every composition with prolific studies in every conceivable medium. Drawing from life and inspired by the people and animals that surrounded him, his works are characterised by a warmth and humanity that transform his religious subjects into themes with which all can identify.

VERMEER AND MUSIC: 

LOVE AND LEISURE IN THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE * 

26 June – 8 September 2013, Sainsbury Wing, Admission free

This exhibition explores the concept of music as a pastime of the elite in the northern Netherlands during the 17th century. 

Vermeer and Music: Love and Leisure in the Dutch Golden Age will bring together for the first time the National Gallery’s two paintings by Vermeer, Young Woman Standing at a Virginal and Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, and Vermeer’s Guitar Player, on exceptional loan from the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House. The exhibition aims to enhance viewers’ appreciation of these beautiful and evocative paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries by juxtaposing them with musical instruments and songbooks of the period. Visitors will be able to compare 17th-century virginals, guitars, lutes and other instruments with their painted representations to judge the accuracy of representation and what liberties the painter might have taken to enhance the visual or symbolic appeal of his work.  In 17th- century Dutch paintings, music often figured as a metaphor for harmony, a symbol of transience or, depending on the type of music being performed, an indicator of one’s education and position in society. Musical instruments and songbooks were also included as attributes in elegant portraits to suggest that the sitter was accomplished in this area.

THE PORTRAIT IN VIENNA 1867–1918 *

9 October 2013 – 12 January 2014, Sainsbury Wing, Admission charge

The Portrait in Vienna 1867–1918 is the first exhibition to explore Viennese portraiture during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, showing both the continuity and the rupture between the Biedermeier and imperial traditions of the 19th century and the innovations of avant-garde artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl and Oskar Kokoschka in the years around 1900. The period is widely regarded as the time when the avant-garde overthrew the academy.

The exhibition explores how portraiture came to be closely identified with the distinctive flourishing of modern art in Vienna during its famed fin-de-siècle years. It is divided into six sections: Biedermeier-Modern (the rediscovery around 1900 of early 19th-century portraits of the Alt-Wien bourgeoisie); Modern Family/Modern Child; The Artist; Modern Men/Modern Women; Love and Loss (the use of the portrait to declare love and commemorate the dead); and Finish and Failure (unfinished works abandoned by frustrated artists, or rejected by outraged sitters).