Previous Posts: articles 2018
The 'Isleworth Mona Lisa' (ctd.)
December 7 2015
Picture: BBC
The BBC has a new programme on the Mona Lisa, called 'The Secrets of the Mona Lisa', and it'll be shown on BBC2 this Wednesday at 9pm. It's presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, and comes only four years after the last programme called 'Secret Life of the Mona Lisa', which was presented by Alan Yentob.
So, are there any more secrets for this much studied painting to give up?
Well, perhaps yes - for technology in this world moves quickly. And sharp-eyed readers will notice that in the above publicity still, Andrew Graham-Dixon poses not in front of the actual Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but the so-called 'Isleworth Mona Lisa', which is a copy not by Leonardo (on which, see AHN passim by putting 'Isleworth' into the search engine). Proponents of the 'Isleworth Mona Lisa' claim it to be not just by Leonardo, but an earlier work, done before the picture in Paris.
The owners of the 'Isleworthless Mona Lisa' are busy sparing no expense in trying to promote their picture as a work by Leonardo, including most recently a lavish exhibition in Singapore. A new page on their website claims to show that '100% of experts who have seen the painting' say the picture is by Leonardo or 'possibly by' Leonardo. In the latter category, remarkably, we see the name of Keneth Clark - and I'd like to see the evidence for that.
Quite why we need to give this unremarkable copy yet more publicity is unclear. Would you promote a programme on the Mona Lisa by using a photograph of a copy? AHN will be watching anxiously, and hoping the programme doesn't even come close to suggesting the picture is by Leonardo. Andrew Graham-Dixon's programmes are always excellent - I'm sure his Leonardo connoisseurship is too.
Update - the conclusions of the Mona Lisa programme are in the news. And it's pretty bold stuff. The Mona Lisa is indeed a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, but the finished picture on top is of someone else. At least I think that's what it is. It all depends on Pascal Cotte's whizzy imagery. And regular readers will know what I make of that. More here, including scepticism from Prof. Martin Kemp. The Louvre is saying rien.
Angels!
December 4 2015
Video: National Gallery
The National Gallery's videos are getting better - splendid. This one is all about angels in pictures. And we see the first glimpse of new director, Gabriele Finaldi.
How should we save our 'national treasures'?
December 4 2015
Picture: NAF
In Germany, the culture minister Monika Grütters has published draft legislation to, as she puts it, protect Germany’s cultural treasures. Specifically, she wants to extend a list of ‘national treasures’ that cannot ever be allowed to leave the country. This list includes all works in public museums, even those on loan from private owners. New regulations for what requires an export licence will also come into effect (more here). The proposals bring Germany closer to policies followed in France and Italy, and further from those here in the UK.
The result? ‘Truckloads’ of art have been leaving Germany, as owners of important artwork rush to get their pictures out of the country before the new law is passed and values go through the floor. Museum loans have been withdrawn too. The German artist Georg Baselitz withdrew all of his pictures in protest. Gerhard Richter threatened to do likewise, calling the new proposed law ‘an infringement of freedom’.
In other words, messing around with laws to protect cultural heritage can be a dangerous business. By publishing a law to forbid the export of important privately owned works of art, the German government is making sure that soon there won’t be any left in Germany anyway.
On the one hand, this is a simple case of economics and self-preservation. Imagine you own, say, a Rembrandt that is valued at £35m on the open market. That market value is most likely dependent on international buyers, such as major Rembrandt collectors in the US, or Middle Eastern states looking to buy brand name works of art. If, suddenly, you can only sell to collectors or museums in Germany, competition for your Rembrandt is massively diminished - and thus also its value. In France, the state allows you to sell your pictures on the open market, but only in theory; as soon as any auction sale is concluded (for example) the state can automatically buy your picture for the final price, without having bid themselves. And because everybody knows this will happen, few people ever bid in the first place.
On the other hand, however, Monika Grütters’ proposals reflect a belief that great art belongs ‘to the people’. This is a legitimate point of view, which I respect. But for me this means that the interests of those who happen to own it don’t really matter. And that I disagree with.
In Britain, we have a different system for protecting cultural treasures, because it also balances the rights of those who happen to own them. Here, owners can market their work internationally, and thus achieve the best price. (If you think that’s unfair, imagine selling your house, only for the estate agent to tell you they can’t offer it to anyone not already living in the same county.) Once someone has sold their painting, the government can grant institutions (or sometimes, in certain circumstances, other domestic private owners) a period of time to try and raise matching funds, usually about a year. If nobody can raise the money, the work of art can leave the country. Monika Grütters doesn’t like the UK system, because, she says; “the only objects that are protected are the ones that the state can afford to buy.”
This is, on the surface, to a certain extent true. But the sentence ‘the ones the state can afford to buy’ has many meanings. It can, literally, mean simply the amount of money easily available. But it also of course reflects the willingness to raise those funds. Because let us be in no doubt that states like Germany and the UK can afford, in a literal sense, to buy literally any work of art they wanted to. They are rich nations, with GDP measured in trillions of dollars. The question is, how much are politicians - or more broadly, the public - prepared to spend on a work of art, and does the cost justify the public interest. A Prime Minister, faced with a £100m bill for a new hospital or a Leonardo, will go for the hospital every time.
That, then, is the key test here; ‘the public interest’. In an article for the Art Fund’s quarterly magazine, the Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar, places great emphasis on the public interest, or at least his definition of it. Deuchar wants to see “radical improvements to the UK’s art export control mechanisms […] real action and reform, without further obfuscation or delay”. He writes after the recent controversy over the sale of a £35m Rembrandt portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (above) from Penrhyn Castle in Wales. The Art Fund was ready to launch a campaign to raise £22.5m to buy the picture (the remainder would have come from the government, in the form of tax foregone). The appeal showed great ambition, and the Art Fund must be applauded for giving it a go. But in the event, the campaign had to be halted at the last minute, because the new owner decided he wanted to keep the picture in the UK, and see off any risk that the Art Fund (or, in effect, the nation) might forcibly buy his picture from him against his wishes.
The Art Fund, understandably disappointed at not having the chance to buy the picture, hinted that they alone were acting in ‘the wider public interest’. They also made some hyperbolic statements about the Rembrandt being under immediate and perilous threat - when actually it will stay in the country (I think for at least a decade) and will be lent to a public museum (for more on this, see here). Hence we are now seeing Deuchar’s call for change.
Deuchar shares Monika Grütters view that the UK system is no good, writing: “The UK’s Export Review system – both looser in the controls it exercises and more cumbersome in the machinery it employs than systems employed elsewhere in Europe and beyond – has been unable to guarantee its central task (to stop national treasures going abroad) for some time.”
Is he right? I’m not sure many things we can truly define as ‘a national treasure’ have been lost over, say, the last five years. This is not to say that many extremely significant pictures have not gone overseas, which under current criteria were rightly declared 'national treasures'. And which I would dearly loved to have seen in a UK gallery. I mean instead in the wider sense of pictures which the nation itself, as whole, would have really felt the loss of.
The Rosebery Turners were certainly a great loss, but they are well looked after in the Getty, and we do already have the Turner bequest at the Tate, as well as many other fine Turners in public collections (thanks mainly to the artist himself). I'm sorry if this sounds a reductionist argument, but it's valid. Then there was a £50m Picasso, ‘Child with a Dove’; expensive, yes, but was there national grieving over its departure? Would the public really have stomached raising £50m for the picture, of which a huge part must have been public money? I doubt it. One could say the same about the £25m Raphael drawing from Chatsworth; undoubtedly a jewel, but our national conscience was not pricked by its departure.
Instead, it seems to me that where there are pictures which truly do stimulate the interest of the wider public, like the £100m Titian ‘Dianas’, or the £10m Van Dyck Self-portrait, we are perfectly able to raise even gargantuan sums to save them. And well done the Art Fund for doing so. Indeed, the whole process of raising such sums, though laborious and painful, is a useful indicator of whether the works in question should be ‘saved’. Just because an overseas buyer values something more highly than we do, doesn’t mean we must ‘save it’ - and so stop some other nation from enjoying it. Must we buy everything?
Second, let’s look first at Deuchar’s definition of ‘the public interest’. He seems to assume that the public interest test is purely whether a picture goes on public display. But as any judge will tell you, a public interest test must involve a far broader consideration than that. Is it, for example, in the wider public interest that we only step in to buy expensive pictures that happen to have been in the UK for a long time? Was it in the public interest, on this occasion, for £12.5m of tax to be foregone by the Treasury, in order to buy a picture that not everybody thought was as ‘mesmerising’ as Deuchar did? (The pot of tax available for such transactions is limited, so other works of art available to buy might have been lost.) Is it in the public interest to undermine the UK’s internationally dominant position in the art trade (on which, more below), which creates thousands of jobs, and millions in tax revenue? Finally, is it in the public interest for the state to have the power to compel you to sell something against your wishes, even if it’s art?
For here I suspect that when Deuchar mentions approvingly other ‘European’ export systems, and calls for ‘radical reform’ of the UK system, he has in mind the ability for the government to forcibly block the export of works of art deemed ‘national treasures’. I may be wrong, and if so, then he has my apologies.
But how would such a policy work in practice? Moves to tighten up the export of cultural objects to a level that might satisfy the Art Fund would, in effect, require the part nationalisation of privately held assets, and simply because someone has deemed them to be of ‘national importance’. In other words, if now we are to draw up some German-style list of national treasures, or introduce a French system of pre-emption, we immediately deny the owners of those works the right to realise the full value of their assets. Is that fair? And can it in fact be done without first causing a mass exodus of national treasures?
And who would decide what should be saved? A grand committee? The Art Fund? The Art Fund thought the Rembrandt a national treasure worth spending £35m of public and charitable money on. Plenty of other people did not. One leading UK museum director told me the picture had a ‘good face and wimple, but [is] not a great Rembrandt. The Rembrandts at Chatsworth, Drumlanrig and Mulgrave are so much better - wait for those?”
And let us look at the curious rationale on which the Art Fund partly based his decision to try and ‘save’ the Rembrandt:
Putting this great picture to such a powerful social purpose across Wales would, it must be said, also have provided a positive postscript to another, more controversial side to Penrhyn’s past. Not only had the family’s wealth originally derived from sugar and the slave trade, but their suppression of union activity and then strikes at the Penrhyn slate works in 1900-3 lies among the darkest chapters of Welsh industrial history. To this day many local people refuse to enter the castle by way of quiet retaliation. For all these reasons, the prospect of a sale by the Penrhyn trustees to the Art Fund, on behalf of the National Museum of Wales and the Welsh people more widely, rather than to a private overseas buyer, promised to be a welcome and potentially popular outcome.
Should a ‘powerful social purpose’, and writing a historic wrong, be a reason for deeming something a national treasure? I’m not sure.
And, yes, the art trade. Aha, you say - “this Grosvenor fellow is an art dealer. He just wants to be able to flog as many pricey pictures as he can, for as much as he can. Those fat commissions!” Well, if that’s what you want to think, so be it. Actually, I’m more concerned with old-fashioned notions of private property. We like these notions in Britain, hence Magna Carta. Certainly, I think the UK’s traditional success as an international centre for the art trade is worth protecting. That does depend, to a certain extent, on being seen as a country where the rights of the owners of art are in some way protected. You need to be sure, if you move here with a picture, or merely send it for sale, that the state isn’t going to say ‘we’ll have that thanks’. It may be a nebulous concept, but it is around such fundamental certainties that generations of expertise coalesce over centuries and have helped create Britain’s dominant position in the art trade.
I don’t think Deuchar likes the art trade though. Here are the last two paragraphs of his Art Quarterly piece, which I quote in full:
Though we may regret the actions of many players in this saga, we should not be surprised by them. The UK’s Export Review system – both looser in the controls it exercises and more cumbersome in the machinery it employs than systems employed elsewhere in Europe and beyond – has been unable to guarantee its central task (to stop national treasures going abroad) for some time. Its rules and procedures have been developed over the years under the close scrutiny and lobbying of the British art trade, which has always wished to ensure as much freedom as possible to sell works of art abroad. Much is made – both by those who run and those who participate in the system – of the ‘gentlemanly’ procedures and etiquette that determine how business is conducted. Declarations are made by applicants on the basis of their word rather than through any legal contract, and in the majority of instances, it is true, the system’s many loopholes are not excessively exploited and abused. But in the growing roll call of recent occasions on which an applicant has been economical with the truth about some aspect of a sale, or gone back on their word, or acted in a way that has casually overridden the public interest – as in the case of the Rembrandt – notably large sums of money have been involved. With £35m at stake, gentlemanly conduct will forever be in short supply.
Human behaviour will not change, so the systems that regulate it must change instead. The Art Fund has been lobbying for many years for radical improvements to the UK’s art export control mechanisms. As a consequence of their weakness, the permanent loss to Wales and the UK of the Penrhyn Rembrandt may now look almost inevitable, but we appeal to the Treasury, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport and the Arts Council and all those who support and run the present and outdated systems, to respond to this terrible lesson by committing to real action and reform, without further obfuscation or delay.
I suppose some people are incapable of gentlemanly behaviour because they’re blinded by money. But actually, Deuchar has a lot of people in his sights here, not just dealers like me. He seems to mistrust, perhaps simply as naive, those who devised and run the current ‘cumbersome’ and ‘outdated’ export procedures. And he seems to believe we must be saved from ourselves by more regulation.
But I think Deuchar is being a little unfair. I have some experience of export cases, both as an applicant and as an expert adviser, and though there are often snags, those who operate the system are unfailingly efficient, professional and selfless. Many of them, such as those who make up the export committee, are volunteers. Others work under great pressure with few resources. Nor have I seen much evidence of the sort of dodgy behaviour Deuchar seems to have seen. This is not to say it doesn’t happen - I've been in committee meetins where I've found myself arguing for lower valuations for example. But I would simply say that elements of the art world are prone to gossip, some of it malicious, and I wouldn’t believe everything you hear. Perhaps I have misread him, but Deuchar seems to start with a deep suspicion of the art trade.
That said, I have great respect for Deuchar, who is a man of significant experience and undoubted decency. I can certainly agree with him that there is room for improvement in the export licence system. For example, the way licence applications are initially judged, by a single ‘expert assessor’ (usually a museum curator) can sometimes be a little arbitrary. It’s perhaps a matter of regret that pictures like the Charles Le Brun portrait of Everhard Jabach and his family was not taken to up to the level of the export licensing committee, for a full discussion on the picture’s merits. Maybe if two Expert Assessors were asked for their initial opinion, we might get a more consistent application of the criteria of what shouldbe stopped. And I can see the case for somehow ensuring that those who initially agree to accept a matching offer are under greater obligation to do so, to prevent situations where a campaign is undertaken but has to be abandoned because the applicant withdraws at the last minute. Fortunately, this scenario is rare, and in the case of the Penrhyn Rembrandt the campaign was never officially launched.
However, the best way to improve the system is - let’s be honest - to have more money to buy the works of art we deem national treasures. At the moment, there’s not enough of money for us to buy all the things we want (or think we want - and don't forget that much goes straight into storage). When Deuchar says (about the Penrhyn Rembrandt), ‘in recent years, and to the consternation of many, it has been privately offered for sale on a number of occasions at an asking price far beyond the means of the most evidently appropriate public buyers – the National Museum of Wales, for example, or the National Trust itself”, we can perhaps discern that he thinks such works should be offered to an appropriate public buyer at a level they can afford. That is, at an artificially lowered price, or as an act of charity.
But surely the best and fairest way to get around this issue is not to artificially create lower prices, but to somehow find more money to buy them, albeit at a fair price. But from where will we get this money? At root, we must realise that to a certain extent the majority of the public do not want to spend scarce resources buying lots of great art, even if they’re by Rembrandt. The reason regional museums are under threat, and the reason DCMS only gets 1% of total government revenue, is because the arts are not seen as a priority. That's a fact, albeit a painful one to us art lovers. In other words, if we want to buy more art, we art lovers need to dig deeper into our own pockets.
Therefore, where I disagree most with Deuchar is this: the best way to secure more treasures is by making a positive case of their merits - not by artificially trying to make them cheaper. That, surely, is the best way to get a wider, contributing public on board the Art Fund's brilliant and vital mission.
Update:
All ideas for any potential reform, or not, welcome - please send them in.
Update II:
A few years ago I discussed all this with A Very Senior UK Judge. He wondered, and I think more than half seriously, that if we went too far in tightening export controls, someone would one day take their case all the way to the highest European court (on the grounds that such restrictions infringed his/her right to enjoy their private property), and that they might well win. In which case, the whole system would come crashing down.
Update III - the Grumpy Art Historian agrees with AHN, mostly.
Update IV:
As an optimist, I can't help pointing out the good news: although many find it hard to accept, it was a Conservative administration (in 2012) which not only massively increased the amount of Lottery good cause money going to the Heritage Lottery Fund, but also changed the rules to allow that money to be spent on art acquisitions. That money has been instrumental in saving many important treasures, and will continue to be so. The Van Dyck self-portrait (to which the HLF contributed over £6m, and which was the first big test of the HLF's appetite for acquisitions) would probably have been sent overseas without these changes.
And now a boast, and an idea; as an art lover and museum visitor, I too want to see even more money come in to buy pictures. That’s why, when I was helping write Conservative policy for the arts (in 2005 and 2010) I not only suggested the above changes, but also advocated creating a specific National Acquisition Fund. The man then in charge of Tory policy (one David Cameron) agreed with the idea, but insisted on changing the title to National Fund for Acquisitions, to avoid the unfortunate acronym. Perhaps we can persuade him to take up the idea again?
Update V - a reader writes:
I would challenge your suggestion that few ’national treasure’ paintings have left these shores over the past five years. By definition, the Export Committee only considers artworks of utmost importance and therefore if the Committee temporarily stops an artwork from going abroad it is likely to be for a good reason. I would suggest that the Committee does a ‘good job’ that balances the rights of buyers and sellers and the market overall as evidenced by the fact that of the thousands of paintings that have passed through the sale rooms over the past five years (to 2014/15) the Committee export stopped just 23 paintings (ie. 4-5 a year). Are these 23 paintings not ‘national treasures”? If not then how should we view them?
Of the 23 paintings, only six were saved (van Dyck, Stubbs x 2, Lorenzetti, Rimini and Manet). Paintings by Turner, Poussin, Rembrandt, Brueghel, Claude, Hals, Guardi and Watteau have gone in addition to the Picasso and the de Bray you reference. Why is this?
I think you are right that the lack of funds available to British galleries to match the firepower of overseas buyers is a major issue. A National Acquisition Fund is a great idea in principle but the source of sustainable funding remains unclear.
Funding aside, I think there is also a real question mark over the appetite of our leading institutions to acquire these works. If the Export committee is taking the trouble to provide such opportunities for British galleries then in my mind there should be some obligation on the sector to explain why the work in question is not to be pursued for acquisition. It is currently too easy for museums to walk by on the other side.
And this brings us to the growing importance of a good campaign. You suggest that the recent Picasso loss did not strike a chord with the public as did say the van Dyck self portrait and this is undoubtedly true. However, it is a slippery slope to view each of these export stopped paintings in terms of how they can be packaged up for public consumption in a funding campaign. Is our national collection richer for having secured another van Dyck (however wonderful and rare the self-portrait is) because it could be positioned as 'the world's first selfie' rather than less easy to digest paintings by de Bray or the Guardi?
Update VI - a reader writes:
I would highlight a slightly different, but arguably more toxic problem with the export review procedure, one, ironically, which Deuchar is partly responsible for creating. The problem is rarely with works of art which come up before the reviewing committee, such as the Penryhn Rembrandt, but with the very major objects which are never even considered by the committee. This is not the fault of our export licensing laws, the excellent and efficient officials who run the tiny department responsible or the frankly brilliant committee members who represent amazing depth and range of knowledge but the so-called expert advisers who fail to submit significant objects for consideration by the committee. Take the Worcester College Ruisdael purchased last year by the Kimbell; an indisputably great Dutch landscape which surely met Waverly 2 and 3? It never even came before the committee, because the expert adviser made no case for its consideration and the license was simply granted. As academic art history becomes less and less interested in objects and more interested in theory and social contexts, the ability of national curators to adequately judge Waverly 2 and 3 and therefore discharge their duty as expert advisers comes under strain. During his lamentable period as director of Tate Britain, Deuchar oversaw the decimation of curatorial expertise. A small point, but it seems to me the major problem with the system.
Update VII - a reader from Germany writes:
regarding the national treasures. If the politicians want to act in the name 'of the people', then they should have a referendum before buying a multimillion piece of art. I wonder, when faced with the choice to buy a picture by say Rembrandt against improvements in public health, pensions, housing etc., what 'the people' will go for.
While a reader from the US writes:
In amending the Art Export Scheme perhaps a committee could make it known in advance that a work might be considered a national treasure when it is offered for sale and before a buyer has bid or offered to purchase it. This might reduce the price a bit but it doesn't create a certainty that it can't be exported and it provides a longer period to consider public acquisition irrespective of whether the buyer seeking the work is foreign or domestic.
More importantly, AHN has mentioned the importance to the art trade of Britain's respect for private property. As an economist and business consultant I can assure the reader that this deep respect for private property is core to the willingness of foreign businesses and investors to locate I the UK and to hold British assets. An infringement of this historically basic right could have economic affects beyond the art trade and the jobs it creates directly and that it supports in other services and industries whose products its participants consume in large quantities.
Update VIII - a reader writes:
Thanks for a very thoughtful essay. One of the issues you rightly emphasize (and not only in this post) is the unintended consequences of well-intended policy measures. Another is the difficulty of factoring into decisions the “opportunity cost” (one of the few economics buzzwords that is well-said): what else might have been done with the money and the effort or time involved? Both require difficult assessments well beyond purely artistic quality, however difficult it surely is to determine what is or isn’t a “national treasure”. Unfortunately, in my admittedly haphazard experience as an amateur historian of arts, curators tend to be among the most narrowly focussed people I have encountered, too prone to discount considerations outside their own professional compass or the views on arts of those outside their professionally academic community. With many sterling exceptions, of course; but I do fear that contemporary academic trends accentuate the negatives. I hope I am mistaken….
Another reader wonders if we should be saving things at all:
Firstly, it does seem rather rich to be invoking the dubious concept of a "national treasure" when so many of these artworks are by, of, or originally commissioned by, non-nationals. The Rembrandt portrait may have been in Wales for 150 years, but it has spent most of it's existence not being in Wales. I am Welsh and would love to see it here in Cardiff but the idea that the painting is a 'national treasure' seems ludicrous to me.
Moreover, given that much of this material was hoovered up from Europe by the UK's wealthy aristocrats and industrialists during the 18th and 19th centuries, it smacks of sour grapes for us to then seek to prevent today's wealthy aristocrats (in the Middle East) and industrialists (in the US, Russia and China) from using their wealth from doing more or less the same thing. As an art lover I may not like seeing most of these works go, but I really don't feel that I have any rights in the matter, and the idea that there is some coterie of experts deciding what is a 'national treasure' and where the 'public interest' lies is not terribly appealing either....
I'm as susceptible as the next person when it comes to wanting to 'save' things. But there is undeniably an element of culture protectionism about the whole process.
Stupid story of the week
December 3 2015
Picture: BBC
The BBC News website has a real gem of a story today:
Universities across England have spent some £20m on art to furnish their buildings or museums over the past five years, a BBC investigation has found.
One work of art, from the University of Oxford, cost £7.9m.
Unison criticised the spend, saying universities were choosing "style over substance".
Universities said the works of art often went on public display and were used for teaching and research.
A Freedom of Information request by the BBC collated the information for 2010-2015. [...]
A Unison spokeswoman said: "Unison is appalled that universities can think about investing £20m in works of art when a significant number of institutions still pay their employees significantly less than the living wage.
"Universities must be more accountable on how they spend their money. The huge amount going on works of art suggests that during these austere times, universities are choosing style over substance.
"As nice as they might be to look at, paintings, statues and sculptures don't enhance teaching, and leave the lowest paid staff on campus unable to have a decent standard of living."
The BBC seems not to have noticed that universites like Oxford and Cambridge also have their own museums (respectively the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam museums) which are an essential part of their educative mission. And occasionally these museums buy works of art (like the Ashmolean buying that £7.9m portrait by Manet). So it's daft to present this 'invstigation' as some sort of outrage about universities wasting money on art, as if it's for dons' private rooms.
Sleeper Alert
December 2 2015
Picture: Liveauctioneers.com
The above small canvas (50 x 31.5 cm) came up in Austria the other day as 'Attributed to El Greco'. As such, a price of €54,000 wasn't too unusual. But the estimate of €400-€800, with a starting bid of just €200 certainly was cheap.
Art in storage (ctd.)
November 30 2015
Picture: Guardian
Regular readers will know I often bang on about art in storage - in particular that held by the major London museums. Lend it out, I say. So I'm delighted to find a fellow traveller in Steven Parissien, director of Compton Verney, who also wants London museums to be more pro-active in lending to regional museums:
“I don’t wish to point fingers, but I’m going to,” he said. “The Victoria & Albert Museum is particularly disappointing. They get lots of money from the government. Galleries like ours don’t.
“It would be nice if they at least looked at a two-tier charging system. We can take some of [their] collections on long- or short-term loan. We can arrange national tours to get all those collections out.” [...]
“Rather than pay vast sums for public access stores by the nationals, let’s just lend some of them out ,” said Parissien.
Referring to the Tate’s branches – Modern, Britain, St Ives and Liverpool – and the V&A’s planned outposts in the Olympic Park, he accused the London nationals of “cultural colonialism”. He added: “You don’t need to spend millions of taxpayers’ money on new buildings. We’re already here – a whole national network of superb galleries.”
Three cheers for Dr. Parissien. National museums, over to you.
(Deafening silence).
More here from Dalya Alberge in The Observer.
A £100m Leonardo or a 1978 fake?
November 30 2015
Picture: Sunday Times
In The Sunday Times yesterday the art critic and broadcaster Waldemar Janusczcak broke the extraordinary news that the convicted British forger Shaun Greenhalgh claims he made the 'Bella Principessa' drawing declared by some a work by Leonardo da Vinci (most notably Prof. Martin Kemp of Oxford University).
If true, Greenhalgh's work raises huge questions about not only the connoisseurship of those involved in declaring the drawing a Leonardo, but also the extensive array of scientific analysis behind the attribution. Extensive tests have declared that (for example) the vellum is the 'right' age, that the materials in the drawing are approriate to Leonardo's time period, and that the work was even cut from a specific 15th Century book in Warsaw. But if Greenhalgh is right, then all of that is a waste of time.
First, a recap. The 'Bella Principessa' drawing was first recorded when it was sold at Christie's on 30th January 1998 in New York, where it was described as 'German School, early 19th Century'. It made $21,850. No provenance was listed. It was bought by a dealer, who after a while sold it on (for roughly the same price) to a private collector, Peter Silverman, who thought it might be by Leonardo. After extensive research, a number of Leonardo scholars agreed, including Kemp and Carlo Pedretti (of whom regular AHN readers will know). A large number of scientific tests were done at the Lumiere laboratory in Paris by Pascal Cotte (of whom regular AHN readers will also know). A book was published containing all the evidence behind the attribution, including (in a misjudgement which later cast doubt on the whole proceeding) some entirely unconvincing analysis of a fingerprint, claimed to be Leonardo's. The drawing has been regularly displayed in museums (mainly in Italy) as a Leonardo. The press give it a valuation of '£100m'.
Shaun Greenhalgh has great form as a forger. He was jailed in 2007 for making (among other objects) the 'Amarna Princess' a fake ancient Egyptian sculpture bought by a British regional Museum for £439,767 - after it had been authenticated by experts from the British Museum. He (along with his parents) had sourced some suggested fake provenance from a legitimate sale catalogue of 1897. In other words, they were crafty and diligent.
Now, Greenhalgh (in a book available from Waldemar's company ZCZ Editions) says he made the 'Bella Principessa' in 1978 on an old English vellum document, and backed it with a piece of wood taken from a school desk. To make the wood look older, he put in some fake repairs in the form of butterfly joints. The model was apparently a girl called Sally, who worked the check-outs in the local Co-op supermarket. He says he sold it to an (unnamed) dealer, and it later ended up in the hands of Gianino Marchig (d.1983), who was an artist and a restorer. His widow Jeanne Marchig consigned it to Christie's.
So should we believe Shaun Greenhalgh? On the one hand, Mr Greenhalgh's past credits, if we can call them that, are already stellar enough - he fooled some of the world's most important institutions. So why the need to make up another claim entirely, especially one which, if the drawing is indeed 15th Century, would presumably be easy to disprove scientifically? On the other hand, forgers do have (historically) a tendency to continue to weave webs of deception, for all sorts of reasons. On a previous episode of 'Fake or Fortune?' we investigated a work by the most famous forger of them all, Han van Meegeren, which he continued to deny forging even after he had admitted everything else. He just couldn't stop telling fibs.
In response to the Greenhalgh claim, Pascal Cotte has released some new (previously unpublished) results from his tests. These showed conclusively, he said, that radio-active decay levels in the pigments confirmed a date earlier than the 17th Century. In response, Greenhalgh claimed that he made his own pigments from organic materials of appropriate age, including 'iron-rich clay and charcoal from ancient trees.
So, what to make of all this? I've never seen the drawing in the flesh, but I can say it has never struck me as a work by Leonardo (and who am I to say, you ask). You can see a high-res image of it here. That said, until now it hasn't struck me either as modern fake. It's very competently drawn, whoever made it. The repairs on the back of the panel (which you can see here) do look a little superfluous, as if they have indeed been put there for show. I find the claim that the drawing was cut from a 15th Century book now in Poland (whilst diligently set out, here) to be, on balance, a little too implausible. And it's a persistent cause for caution that there is no documentation pointing to the drawing's existence before the late 20th Century (with not even a hint of a mention in any early litereature). If Leonardo had drawn such an engaging model, surely we would expect to have some references to it.
But at the moment I think the balance of evidence makes me doubt Mr Greenhalgh's story. Jeanne Marchig has said (in her lawsuit against Christie's, for selling 'a Leonardo' as a 19th Century work) that the picture belonged to her husband before she married him in 1955. I find it hard to believe that all the scientific tests carried out by Pascal Cotte are completely useless. Above all, I wonder if Mr Greenhalgh (as talented a forger as he is) would really have had the inclination as a teenager (he was born in 1961) to make a captivating drawing in 1979 using pigments of the correct age, on the off-chance that someone, some decades hence, would scientifically test them to see if the work was by Leonardo.
Maybe Mr Greenhalgh can produce more evidence to back up his claim. Maybe 'Sally' will turn up and be a dead ringer for the 'Bella Principessa'. Maybe there is more to be learnt of Mr Marchig's role in the operation, for he was a talented draughtsman as well as a restorer. But for the moment to answer to the question, 'is this drawing a £100m Leonardo or a 1978 fake?' is; probably neither.
Update - Prof. Kemp responds to the story here.
Update II - an artist writes:
The subtleties of draughtmanship in the nose, the upper eyelid and mouth of the so called 'Bella Principessa' show that it is a drawing done from life by a very considerable draughtsman.
William Holman Hunt's similar profile in 'Isabella and the pot of Basil' in the Walker Art Gallery springs to mind as an example of someone good enough.
If Sean Greenhalgh is really up to this standard of draughtmanship, as he appears top claim, then why don't we see samples of his portraits in the Royal Society of Portrait painters every year? He could by now, have earned a very good living as a portrait draughtsman.
Whoever drew the Principessa seems indeed to have done a lot of Greenhalgh style research; from the hairnet of Ambrogio da Predis's young woman in the Ambrosiano, to the identical plait in Giancristoforo Romano's beautiful marble bust of Beatrice D'Este, with some Leonardesque knotwork on the shoulder thrown in.
Maybe not by Leonardo, but certainly not by Greenhalgh.
Update III - another reader writes:
Two small points re Shaun Greenhalgh -
1) The Amarna Princess was said to have come from a sale in 1892, not 1897 (I know - pedantic)
2) Eric Hebborn said he re-made the Royal Academy's Leonardo Cartoon after it was destroyed by a leaky radiator (or similar) just before it was sold. Forgers just love muddying the waters!
Clandon fire 'caused by electrical fault'
November 27 2015
Picture: BBC
The Surrey Fire and Rescue Service has published its report into the fire at Clandon Park. It makes for depressing reading. Here are the headline details:
Prior to the time of call to the fire service, a member of the Surrey Infantry Museum staff was working in the museum basement office when his computer lost power. He went to the fuse board to investigate the loss of power and on opening the cupboard discovered that there is a fire inside.
He has contacted National Trust Staff, who responded to the basement area, isolated the power at the main electrical intake in the plant room and then at 16:08 hours dialled 999 on her mobile phone and requested the fire service.
The report later notes that the fire began at approximately 16:00. Take a note of what time it is now, and ask yourself in eight minutes time if that's too long to wait before alerting the fire brigade to a fire you've just discovered in the basement of an 18th Century stately home.
The fire service began their investigation by excavating the area around the fuse box, and:
The forensic examination of the distribution board shows evidence that there had been a connection fault on the lower left hand side neutral bar.
The distribution board was manufactured by the company MEM and is estimated to be about 20 to 25 years old.
[...]
It is possible, if not probable that this distribution board would have been supplied with the internal wiring complete. It could be assumed that this distribution board was delivered from the manufacturer with this fault.
[...]
It is believed that the rapid fire spread observed at this incident occurred when the fire quickly reached the lift shaft allowing the smoke and fire to rapidly spread to each floor of the building and into the roof space.
It is believed the fire was able to spread in to the room above the distribution board cupboard due to a lack of fire compartmentation above the board.
An electrical contractor's report in 2010 noted a lack of fire stop/barrier to the ceiling recesses of the distribution board cupboard.
This report did not recommend any remedial work regarding this issue.
Additional evidence of this comes from the fire alarm panel information.
In addition to the lift shaft this building had horizontal ceiling voids in between each floor and many other hidden voids that accommodated unseen, rapid fire spread.
In response, the Trust said:
The Trust said none of its staff would have been able to identify this as a potential issue. The fault had not been detected during a number of previous professional checks by electricians.
Which is a curious first sentence. And though the fault might not have been detected, we know the lack of insulating material around the decades old fuse board was detected.
There is nothing in the report about the circuit board's capacity to deal with the demands placed on it at Clandon. For example, the Surrey Infantry Museum, which was in the basement, used a great deal of lighting. The museum opened in 1985, and 'major upgrades' took place in 2001 and 2011. Evidently, these did not include the electrics.
As the Trust stresses, the fire was 'accidental'. But it should not have been the case that an electrical fault discovered almost immediately could lead to the destruction of such an important house in the Trust's care. The report may say that the circuit board 'probably' had a fault in it all along. But the fault waited over two decades to manifest itself. In other words, it failed because it was old. A precious 18th Century house under the guardianship of a well funded institution like the National Trust should not be at the mercy of an old bit of circuitry without appropriate fire containment measurements around it. It's that simple.
The Trust's statement does seem to admit, albeit obliquely, that more could have been done in terms of fire prevention, and that lessons will be learnt:
Despite having some measures in place to limit the spread of fire, these had not been enough to slow the blaze once it had taken hold. The Trust said it was committed to working closely with the fire service to identify any areas for improvements in its processes – and would act on any they found.
The charity is also in the process of carrying out its own in-depth review of its fire prevention policies at all its properties to see where they can be strengthened further.
The Trust has still not released a full list of what treasures were lost in the fire.
Update - the image below shows the distribution board before the fire. The part that caught fire is the small covered box with the white and blue sticker on it. Above that are the large number of fuses that the distribution board was connected to, each one being a circuit somewhere in the house. The photo at the bottom of the fuse board after the fire gives a better idea. In other words, that distribution board was serving many, many appliances and outlets. It appears that while the distribution board was in a cupboard, the unit itself was not enclosed by a door.
Update II - according to The Mail, the Trust is expected to get a £65m payout in insurance. The current Earl of Onslow says the house shoud be left a ruin, and the money spent on something else. Beanbags, I presume.
Update III - doubtless a coincidence, but the fellow in charge of the relevant arm of Zurich UK, who were insuring Clandon, has left the company.
Update IV - I have asked Eaton, the company that owns MEM (who made the distribution board) for a comment on the allegation that a pre-existing fault in one of their parts has been suggested as the cause of the fire.
Update V - a reader writes:
Clandon Park: It is surprising that the report does not mention any failed attempt by the staff who discovered the fire to extinguish it with a fire extinguisher. Ordinarily, one would expect fire extinguishers near major fuseboards or in utility spaces such as the one described as a ‘cupboard’.
The main findings by the report, as well as the comments (or lack thereof) by the Trust seem to indicate simple incompetency in terms of building management. More importantly, and worryingly, this seems to indicate a serious naivety with regard to the extraordinary value and conservatory needs of these extraordinary historical houses and their collections.
Looking forward to the rebuilding plans, although buying a piece of beachfront may indeed be a more befitting alternative.
I'm all in favour of rebuilding. Yes, it won't be 'original', but there are many original features to put back, and the design any restoration will follow will be as original as the day it was created. Above all, I'm instinctively against the thought that a place like Clandon can burn down - because (let's face it) the people looking after it were not as careful as they could have been -and the resulting £65m windfall can be used for something else entirely. To ensure the highest possible standards of preservation and diligence, any insurance payout must be put back into preserving or rebuilding the original site.
UK Spending Review
November 25 2015
Picture: AFP
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, unveiled details of his five yearly spending review. This sets out what government departments here in the UK will get to spend over the next five years.
There had been dire warnings of 'massive' cuts to the arts. The Labour party said it would be 30%, many in the sector were claiming it would be 40%. In the end it was 5%. Other government departments have to deal with far larger cuts; Transport is down by 37%, Business by 17%.
The current DCMS combined budget (that is revenue funding and capital funding together) is £1.5bn. Next year it will be £1.6bn, the same the year after, but then it will be £1.5bn, and then £1.4bn. If the economy improves there will be scope for improvement towards the end of the five years. Inflation is low at the moment. The Arts Council budget will not be reduced. And Lottery funds, which the government increased, continue to roll in for arts and heritage projects across the country. Free entry for museums will be protected. Other annoucements included a new £150m storage unit for the British Museum, V&A and Science Museum. More details here.
In other words, the much vaunted 'cuts' are, while not ideal, not much to worry about. George Osborne evidently sees the value of state funding of the arts. Good for him. Those in the sector are now busy saying that their collective campaigning over the last few months has been successful, and while I applaud their efforts and enthusiasm, I'm not so sure it made a great difference. These decisions are taken by a handful of people at the top of government, and personally I think the likes of George Osborne see merit in the arts with or without a Twitter campaign. Above all I think we need to commend the effective messengers within government who have championed the arts; step forward Ed Vaizey (who I think must now be the longest-serving arts minister we've had) and, latterly, John Whittingdale. Those who said the Tories were philistines and don't care about the arts have been proved wrong - and I'm afraid I'll always be proud of having played a tiny role in making the Tories arts friendly. Of course, this hasn't stopped the likes of the Museums Association greeting today's news with gloom.
There is one area of concern, however. Regional museums, those funded by local councils, are likely to face further cuts as a result of reductions to the budget for the Department of Local Government. Of course, it is up to local councils how they apportion their funds, and in too many cases excessive cuts to museum services are made because local councillors know they can get away with it. Library closures always generate protests. Museum cutbacks? Not so much. The government needs to think more broadly about how it can protect, with a national effort, the many wonderful regional museums we have in this country.
One policy announced by the Chancellor may not immediately help this cause, though. He said that he wants to encourage local councils to raise cash from asset disposals, and cited a headline figure of £255bn of local government assets. But I've just checked the figures, and of this £255bn (of which most is pretty fixed and unsellable) over £3.5bn is described as 'heritage assets'. I may be being unduly anxious, but we must all hope that asset stripping councillors don't start eyeing up museum buildings, and collections.
Update - a reader writes:
Further to you incisive piece re the autumn statement, as you rightly say regional/council cuts are a different matter. Here in Ludlow we have the Museum/Resource Centre which has been a regional hub of expertise for 25+ years, especially for natural history/geology. All the expert staff/curators have recently lost their jobs and it is now run by some volunteers and one very part-time curator based over 20 miles away in Shrewsbury - so it has been totally undermined as a functioning museum in any meaningful sense. I fear this story is being repeated all over the country.
The best curatorial video ever?
November 24 2015
Video: British Museum
Great to see the British Museum developing its You Tube channel more, with some good new videos. Above is the legendary BM curator Irving Finkel, who shows us all how these things are done. Here's hoping he really does last the next 500 years.
Fred Meijer on Jan Davidsz de Heem
November 24 2015
Video: Museo Prado
I didn't know this - the Prado puts proper art historical lectures on You Tube. Above is Dr. Fred Meijer of the RKD on the Dutch still life artist Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1683/4). I am often in awe of both the RKD and Dr Meijer - two towering Dutch art historical institutions the likes of me would be lost without.
Goya, or not?
November 24 2015
Picture: Bonhams
There's an interesting picture coming up at Bonhams Old Master sale in London, in December, called 'Circle of Goya'. The subject is La Boda, and the estimate is £40,000-£60,000.
The catalogue note, however, lists an array of people who think the picture is actually by Goya:
Given the inevitable polemic which arises when a previously unknown work is proposed as an autograph work by a major master it has been held prudent for this catalogue entry to present the evidence and to catalogue this painting as 'Circle of Francisco José de Goya.' The case that the present painting should be regarded as an autograph work by Francisco Goya has been forcefully argued in separate articles by three leading Goya scholars. The painting was first published as a work by Goya by Professor José Gudiol in January 1982 in his lengthy article discussing the relationship between the cartoon of La Boda in the Prado and the present painting (it was unknown to him when he wrote his four volume catalogue of Goya's paintings in 1971). Gudiol wrote: 'After simultaneously analysing both the "cartoon" of "La Boda" and the recently discovered hitherto unknown version, we can confirm with absolute certainty that Goya painted both pictures without any collaboration whatsoever.' In the same year, Eric Young, a Goya biographer and the author of monographs on Bermejo and Murillo, wrote: 'its quality leaves little possible doubt of its being an autograph work of the master'.
The case that this is the modello for the Royal Cartoon of La Boda was further taken up by Professor Diego Angulo, then Director of the Prado Museum. He arranged for this to be discussed in an article which he fully endorsed and which was to be published in Archivo Español de Arte, of which he was editor, although his death resulted in its subsequent publication in the Boletin Del Museo e Instituto 'Camon Aznar' at Goya's home town of Saragossa in 1987.
[...] an attribution to Goya has further been widely accepted by a number of very distinguished scholars: Professors Michael Jaffe, Federico Zeri, Justus Müller-Hofstede, Seymour Slive, P.J. van Thiel, Sir Denis Mahon, James Byam-Shaw and Xavier Desparmet Fitz-Gerald are all on written record as finding the attribution to Goya convincing. Furthermore, Dr. Jose Manuel Arnaiz of the Istituto Tecnico de Expertizacion Y Reastauracion of Madrid and author of the authoritative publication Francisco de Goya Cartones y Tapices has written 'en la boda de cuyo autor estoy mas convencido cada vez.'
Another leading authority on Goya, Juliet-Wilson Bareau does not think the picture is by Goya. It all seems to come down to the question of whether Goya did replicas or not. Many artists did, some did not.
The accepted version is in the Prado (here). And, thanks to the wonders of zoomable high resolution photos, you can compare the two online, and decide for yourself.
Regional museums - go find a footballer
November 24 2015
Picture: BBC
Art dealers Ivor Braka and Thomas Dane have donated six works of contemporary art to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester - and have made some interesting comments in doing so. We are regularly told that there is no prospect of regional museums turning to local sources of private giving to help cover and state funding shortfall - apparently this can only happen in London. But not so, say Braka and Dane, and we need to be more ambitious in seeking new sources of giving:
"In America, pretty much every major city - Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, Dallas, Forth Worth, Houston, LA, San Francisco, Seattle - they all have museums which could virtually be national museums in terms of their scope and their quality.
"This situation just doesn't happen in England and there are very few museums that have got the ambition to emulate that sort of level of excellence." [...]
Donors will only have confidence to give to galleries if their buildings are up to scratch, he said. "Coming from Manchester, I knew that one day I always wanted to do something for Manchester.
"I didn't want to give until I was secure that the gift would be well looked after, and I didn't feel that the Whitworth in its old guise was a place would have necessarily given to.
"But having seen the new development and specifically its storage facility, you know that what you give to them is going to be well looked after. You'd be confident that in 200 years time it will be in good condition.
"And the gallery space is magnificent at the Whitworth - it's no accident that it won museum of the year."
There has not traditionally been the same culture of giving among wealthy individuals in the UK as there is in the US, Mr Braka added.
"There is a lot of money out there in Manchester - a lot of inherited wealth and self-made entrepreneurs, and you've got Manchester City and Manchester United footballers as well.
"I don't know whether they need to come to the museum or maybe there's just not been enough outreach in England to try and target people to take an interest ion the visual cultural life."
(More here.)
That said, we clearly need to do something about the patchiness of local government funding for regional museums. It seems to me that the model is no longer working, and some great museums with ambitious staff are left at the mercy of councillors who wouldn't know what an art gallery was if it hit them in the face. When I was last asked to look into all this by the Conservatives, as part of Sir John Tusa's 'Arts Taskforce', we decided that a relatively simple fix would be to put museum provision on the same statutory basis as library provision - in other words, there would be a legal obligation for councils to provide an adequate level of museum funding. But this has not happened.
Is it time for a more radical suggestion? It would seem clear that the major national and London galleries have coped well with the (somewhat forced) need to raise more money from private sources. Many of them, despite 'the cuts', are better off than ever before. They have been motivated to go anb shake the tin with new vigour, and have done a great job. So - should we therefore redistribute some of the money previously available to national museums, and send it out to the regions? This would, in effect, be a sort of nationalisation of regional museums, but at least it might work.
And we should also think of other more innovative solutions too. I'd like to see, for example, the better off national museums form partnerships with regional museums, to share everything from expertise to collections.
Update - the Spending Review will be announced tomorrow, with Labour predicting a 30% cut for DCMS.
Update II - a reader writes:
Given what has been happening to libraries lately, I'm not sure that would have constituted a vast improvement on the current position.
The lack of donors surely also relates to what you have previously said about the likelihood of one's donation ending up unseen in a dank Victorian basement or, still worse, sold off to finance some other project....
True - library provision is indeed patchy, but generally it's better protected from councillor's whims than museum provision.
By the way - another reason to live in Edinburgh (for which I'm an evangelical advocate) is that it has one of the best public art libraries in the country. You can borrow from it too.
Take a Turner to school
November 24 2015
Picture: National Gallery of Wales
Here's a nice story from BBC Wales - a painting by Turner, Dolbadarn Castle, has been loaned to a primary school in Wales. More here.
Warhol market takes a dive
November 23 2015
Picture: Artnet
Art Market Monitor covers Jonathan Yee's analysis of recent Warhol prices - and it's starting to look a little shaky. The graph above, you could say, reflects the bizarre state the top end of the modern and contemporary art world has got itselft into; plodding pretty well until the world went sub-prime crazy in 2006/7, then nosedived after the 2008 crash, then bounced back in a frenzy of speculation (and perhaps quantitative easing).
Where next? Down, I guess - but the question is how far, and how fast.
Update - Michael Savage, aka The Grumpy Art Historian, writes:
I think analogies between art market and financial market are overdrawn, and often take up the weakest ideas about financial markets. Trying to read the future from charts has always seemed a fool’s errand to me, but trying to read the future from a graph with so few data points is meaningless. The term ‘bubble’ is generally over-used, and has come to stand for ‘looks a bit expensive’. But the volatility in the graph you’ve reproduced is just changing supply. The other charts in the linked post show a more consistent pattern of rising mean and median prices. I don’t see any correlation with QE or evidence for speculation here. Not saying there isn’t speculative interest, but it takes two to make a market – why don’t we use the terms for sellers, who may be speculating that prices will fall.
Personally I think Warhol insanely expensive by any comparable metric I can imagine, but then I thought that in 2001, too.
Picasso's lost 'Woman in a Fuzzy Hat'
November 23 2015
Video: NBC
In the US, NBC goes on the trail of a man hoping to prove that his copy of Picasso's Woman with a Cape is in fact another version by the artist. More here.
Heir claims Matisse from National Gallery
November 23 2015
Picture: National Gallery
Dalya Alberge in The Guardian reports that the heir of a former owner of Matisse's portrait of Greta Moll, which the National Gallery bought in 1979, is legally hers. She says it was stolen after the Second World War in 1947. The National Gallery says they bought the picture in good faith. More here.
The picture, says the story, has been on loan to the Tate for many years - and, quelle surprise, is 'currently in storage'. Is there no regional gallery out there who could do with a Matisse on their walls?
How to wrap a 6m high painting
November 23 2015
Video: Art-Handler.com
Pretty impressive. This video comes from a new online magazine called 'Art Handler', which you can read all about here.
Beit Collection pictures sold
November 20 2015
Picture: Christie's
Two of the Beit Collection paintings controversially withdrawn from Christie's at the last minute earlier this year, are to be transferred to the Irish state. Under a tax incentive deal, the Rubens (above) and an Adoration by van Ostade have been bought for a combined approx. EUR3m. They will be transferred to the National Gallery of Ireland. More here.
Still some way to go before the Beit Collection reaches its EUR15m target.
Guffwatch - The Movie
November 20 2015
Video: Prima Musa
This is fantastic:
The use of “Artspeak”, the often incomprehensible language used by many curators, writers, critics, and other art insiders, has alienated much of of the art-viewing public. The film follows New York artist Bill Claps discovering everyday people’s thoughts and feelings about contemporary art as he develops a video installation and a series of artworks that comment on the phenomena of Artspeak. The film follows Claps at work in his studio, in the streets, galleries and art fairs of New York, and through several countries in Europe.
AHNers - we are not alone!
More here.
