Connoisseurs, Curators and Other Frauds

 Once again in the papers this week, both here and in Europe, there have been lengthy accounts of the supposed discovery of a Van Gogh, “Sunset at Montmajour,” painted during the artist’s residency in Arles. And once again this is a painting, discovered in an attic, of course, that had been described as a fake—and by no less than a French ambassador to Sweden. The Danish owner at the time, the Norwegian steel producer Nicolai Christian Mustad then supposedly banished the work to an attic, where it remained until after the industrialist’s death in 1970. Isn’t it wonderful to know that there were collectors a century ago just as concerned with the name of the artist, as opposed to the effect of the work, as there are today. Certainly, as Jerry Saltz has been screaming lately, no one buys a Jeff Koons for the beauty (can one even speak of a Koons in such terms?) of the object, but for the importance of the name and the trophy price. With the Van Gogh there are the breathless claims that this adds not only a new piece to the Van Gogh catalogue, but fills a major lacuna in the understanding of the greatest period in his development. And it may even be worth more than $50 million. Supposedly the painting was brought to the Van Gogh Museum by a new owner in 1991, but was declared a fake; then in 2011 museum officials supposedly had a change of heart and decided to examine the work again and declared it a real Van Gogh, after scientific analysis of the pigments. They claimed it to be an experimental work with which Van Gogh was not satisfied, but that it had belonged after his death to his brother Theo. Nowhere was there any real discussion of whether the picture was any better than any Van Gogh imitation in a flea market on the Seine.

All of this should be quite amusing for those without $50 million to spare, but it points up the real problem with this authentication. It is totally subjective, even when pigments, canvas, and so on are consistent with the practice of the artist being examined. Absent an accession catalogue prepared as the artist is working, there is no real guarantee that any work is authentic even with a signature and a certificate of authenticity (maybe a fingerprint on the work would be acceptable, but this is extremely rare). And certainly as the ongoing Knoedler case demonstrates all too well, the reputation of the gallery purveying a work is sadly no guarantee. (The perpetrator of this fraud, Glafira Rosales, has just pleaded guilty to the charges brought against her in Federal Court. But Knoedler has already been destroyed, and its former president, Anne Freedman, has seen her reputation shattered. In fact, she has filed a libel suit against one dealer who faulted her for failing to vet the works Rosales provided to her; but she had showed them to a number of major curators and even the former head of the National Gallery, who seem to have approved them.)  

While connoisseurship was the rage for several generations through the first decades of the last century, it has been replaced now by “curatorship” as the operative educational/collection mode. Connoisseurs were supposedly able, by their training and their “eye,” to determine the authenticity of the work. Like graphologists (another pseudo-science), they were thought to have attained a superior ability to recognize characteristics of an artist’s style and apply that to contested works. The addition of computers to the equation was supposed to validate this, but of course the computers can recognize only was has been input—not unlike the great valuators of the past century.

Modern curators are taught--in what is truly a development as specious as connoisseurship--how to come up with ideas for exhibitions—concepts to unite the disparate. The work is always secondary to the idea. In both cases, however, the operative mode is money, the validation of the work by its placement within the right collection or exhibition venue or the fee paid for the valuation or exhibition. And it is money, of course, which has forced most so-called experts at attribution to stop providing evaluations; even if there is a written agreement that the opinion given is not subject to litigation, the circumstances are; no expert can ever really be sure that a judgment will not be subjected to the law courts. After repeated lawsuits, for instance, the Warhol authentication board had to stop issuing rulings; the litigation was eating up its funds. And Twombly foundation members have been accused of exaggerating the value of the genuine holdings in the artist’s estate in order to increase their own management fees. For curators, the problem is including works from certain collections or creating exhibitions, like a current solo revival at a major uptown museum in New York, that can cover exhibition costs. They also need to generate art loan agreements and donations from the right collectors or trustees for the entire process. This includes all those corporate sponsorships, really just advertisement by another name, what PBS calls ever so smugly “underwriting.”

The 2013 Art Season Begins

A new art seasons began a few days back, one that promises some of the most important shows in many years and that has already seen the closing of many galleries. All across the art capitals of London, Berlin, and New York, there is a palpable fear in the air among smaller and younger dealers about what the future may bring. From its high of over 370 galleries in Chelsea alone, New York has lost at least 40 galleries and more than 100 have closed in Chelsea over the last two years, a demise brought on by the triumph of the franchise dealers and mega-mall spaces of the likes of Zwirner, Gagosian, White Cube and their ilk (and the astronomical rents they can pay). If a gallery does not have a physical space on at least two or three continents, it is almost considered inconsequential. Just now Paris-based Perrotin has announced the forthcoming debut of its New York Gallery in an old Bank of New York Federal-style building on Madison and 73rd Street; interestingly, one of its directors will be Lucien Terras, a pioneer in Chelsea, who will be handling its museum and institutional sales. (I first met Lucien when he was working, with Tony Feher, whose career he launched, at Paula Cooper’s space on Wooster Street.) Marian Goodman, who has long had galleries in New York and Paris, has just signed a lease for a very large space in London off Piccadilly Circus, while the Berlin dealer Max Hetzler is opening two new venues in Berlin and one in Paris.

Perhaps the most pernicious, if least discussed, aspect of the rapid change in the promotion and sale of contemporary art has been the rise of the PR firm as a major component of the process. While museums and other arts institutions have long had in-house media and public relations operations and have occasionally used outside public relations firms to handle exhibitions for which a big box-office is expected or for which a major donor is paying, this has not been true for commercial galleries. They have generally used mailings and phone calls made to select clients to generate buzz and sales. The rise of email and art event sites has allowed even the smallest galleries to publicize their openings widely, in hopes of drawing both crowds and clients---and, of course, the critics from The Times. The public relations firms now control how and when and even by whom articles and reviews can be done; they will even refuse to offer any help, including images, to small publications, if they think The Times wants first rights. And there are even pop-up exhibitions that exist only through and for publicity, with the names of the models and celebrities in attendance getting far more notice than the works on display. Julian Schnabel’s son Vito ws one of the first—while still a teenager—to do this kind of pup-up gallery, but he reestablished the careers of a number of older artists, like Ron Gorshov. The same cannot be said for Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, whose exhibitions seem to exist in a world in which the prime motivation is fashion celebrity—like the breathless and very controlled reports from the front lines of the party circuit at the art fairs.

Some of the galleries that have been forced to leave Chelsea because of rising rents and building sales have taken over spaces on lower Orchard Street, the heart of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, that have been abandoned by the pioneers there, as they seek larger venues on parallel streets. Perhaps the most interesting of this group is Monya Rowe, whose second floor space on West 22^nd Street was no longer available. The peripatetic DCKT alighted in late Spring in the former space of Nicelle Beuachene, who shares a building on Broome Street with Jack Hanley. The two actually alternate using the ground floor, which must have posed a bit of a problem during Ms Beauchene’s pregnancy this summer.

Among the closings I most lament, over the past few months, are Anna Kustera, Newman Popiashvili, and Harris Lieberman, each of which carried real personality and creative vision to the task of selling art. From its early days in an almost inaccessible aerie on Mercer Street, Newman Popiashvili  brought the unexpected to light, including, at one point, the skillful and macabre racing crash paintings and tornado scenes of Rover Feyer and, throughout its run, the psychologically powerful photographs of Mark Woods. And who can forget the time when, in their gallery on 22nd Street they lowered the ceiling so that you basically had to crawl to get to their office through the installation. Fortunately that was not during one of the times when the gallery flooded, especially during Hurricane Sandy last year.

Harris Lieberman in seven years presented some of the more innovative shows I saw, including works by Karl Haendel. Ohad Meromi, Matt Saunders, and Alexandre Singh. One of the really surprising works they sponsored was a lot-line wall mural by Haendel at the corner of Howard and Broadway in New York; watching it over the years as it aged and then as it was hidden by construction in the next door vacant lot—once the home of a flea market---was truly a great New York art experience. I wonder if it will reappear again in a hundred years if the new building is demolished.

Anna Kustera has long been one of my favorite dealers, perhaps the most innovative I have known. And I have known her from the time when she was the assistant to Josh Baer in his enormous space on Broome Street. With shows as diverse as the first-generation feminist artist Mimi Smith and the "bomb-maker" Gregory Green, she has challenged our ideas of what the historical paradigm should be. And she showcased artists of all backgrounds, allowing them to do things that did not fit the official line of ethnic or politically engaged art. She has said she is looking, like a number of other dealers, including Casey Kaplan, (long her neighbor across 21^st St), for a new location, without the ridiculous overhead of Chelsea and now, unfortunately, much of the Lower East Side.