Paul Quatrochi would like to open a dialogue regarding the responsibilities of a national museum, and their exhibition curator's (Christoph Vitali) role concerning questions of authenticity, dubious title, and its liability in the knowing or unwitting masking of a fraud.
Art 27.06.2009
Showing Modigliani is risky, says art expert
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The origin of 'Reclining nude' (1918) is in dispute
At a retrospective exhibition of works by artist Amedeo Modigliani in Bonn, at least one of the paintings is said to be fake. The case is under investigation. Art expert Henrik Hanstein tells DW why he's not surprised.
Henrik Hanstein is managing partner of Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne. Founded in 1845, it is one of the leading art auction houses in Europe.
Deutsche Welle: Mr. Hanstein, in general there are said to be three fake Modiglianis around for every real one. Why is it with Modigliani paintings particularly difficult to distinguish between an original and a copy?
Henrik Hanstein: This has to do with Modigliani himself, who certainly didn't live the kind of orderly life that every art cataloger hopes for - he didn't register or photograph every painting. Modigliani's estate was scattered very quickly in all directions and it quickly became a kind of Bohemian myth and, thus, an easy target for imitators.
To sort this out, five divergent and contradictory catalogues have in the meantime attempted to organize his works. I don't know of anything similar in art history. It's unique. And, that makes it really difficult for a museum to put on an exhibition.
Can anyone say for sure whether the disputed paintings are originals or fakes?
Difficult question: At the moment, there are two experts who consider themselves to be the authorities, including Professor Christian Parisot in Paris and Rome, who received archive documents from Modigliani's daughter and because of that has a kind of competitive advantage. The second expert also lives in Paris. Both have their qualifications, but when I survey the market, both also have large weaknesses.
That's why it's so difficult to say, 'I know or I don't' - that is, unless they have a painting whose provenance they can prove very reliably over many years and have early documents showing its origin.
At Kunsthaus Lempertz, what do you do when you are offered a Modigliani?
We recently had an interesting case of a painting that was offered to us from the United States and then lay around for seven years, but none of us liked it, so we didn't want to include it in the auction.
What do you mean, you didn't like it?
Technically, stylistically, it provenance hadn't really been confirmed, it wasn't verifiable in any of the catalogues and in such cases you have to be extremely careful.
We said we didn't want it, but the collector didn't come to pick it up and also didn't pay the fee for storing it with us, so we gave him a deadline. It was then promptly picked up by Christian Parisot, who wanted to examine it carefully in Rome. Before we gave it to him, we also brought in a restorer, and, after closer inspection, it became apparent that the signature was on top of the varnish, which is a clear indication of a fake. Also, the canvas was machine-woven and couldn't have existed between 1915 and 1917. So, on technical grounds, we said, no, that's not one.
But then while in an Italian restaurant ordering a pizza I read by chance in the newspaper Corriera della Sera about a painting that had been missing in private ownership for a long time and then put on display for the first time in Italy. It was billed as a big discovery. And I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked in my small camera that I had with me. It was "our" painting! That really took my breath away.
So, one has to work almost in a forensic manner. There's really no more difficult case than Modigliani. There are paintings hanging at the Bonn exhibition that aren't from him. That's not being kept secret. I don't think the state attorney's office would be able to solve it.
How should the Bonn museum - the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany - react?
It shouldn't react at all. The state attorney will ask where is the authoritative expert? But it won't get an answer. That's an exhibition that doesn't claim to be flawless. When they go through the exhibition and keep their eyes open, they'll see that the quality of the paintings varies greatly.
But the attempt, after decades, to put together a retrospective, is respectable nevertheless.
From the beginning it was clear that, with Modigliani, you'll could run into a trap.
It's been suggested that an allegedly fake painting in the show was put up for sale during the exhibition. Was there an attempt to give the painting a certificate of authenticity during the exhibition?
That was a painting in the exhibition that didn't appeal to me. That applied also to curators. And, when it was advertised by code in the newspaper - in the Frankfurt Allgemeine, I think - then the suspicion became firmer. I found it rather disconcerting. I don't know the background. Here, it's possible that the museum has been used as a means to an end.
Interview: Sabine Oelze (kjb)
Editor: Ian P. Johnson
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
FT article- Think Like a Faker
Paul Quatrochi is seeking to open a dialogue in the spirit of establishing the rightful role of the Art Loss Register as underscored in this FT article published worldwide, regarding allegations of forgery.
Think Like A Faker
By Anthony Haden-Guest
Published: July 20 2007 14:52 Last updated: July 20 2007 14:52
Paul Quatrochi, a private dealer in Manhattan, only found out that the Art Loss Register (ALR) was now listing fakes when it asked him about a collection with which he was familiar. The ALR, which maintains a list of stolen works, wanted his opinion on whether certain pictures were fakes.
Quatrochi said that he regarded both the collector and his holdings with some scepticism. “He has two Vermeers. Two!” he chortled. An unusual claim that positively demanded scrutiny. “They are hard to date. I’d put them at about 1920.” But Quatrochi, who is trained in art law, noted that this was highly litigious territory and wondered if the ALR knew what it was getting into.
The Art Loss Register was founded in 1991 by Julian Radcliffe, then the director of a Lloyds brokers. “We only really started registering fakes to build up a database in the last two years,” he says. Concerns such as those voiced by Quatrochi don’t bother him unduly.
“We are not the arbiter of whether something is a fake,” he says. “We merely raise the red flag.
“We do sometimes find ourselves in a position where one side says, ‘Put it on the database and I’ll sue you if you don’t.’ And the other guy says, ‘It shouldn’t be on the database and I’ll sue you if it’s on.’”
Has the ALR been taken to court for doubting authenticity? “No. People are often threatening to sue. Very often they withdraw, a little bit shamefaced, when they discover they need us on their side next time round.”
Quatrochi was contacted about the suspect collection by Katja Lubina, a young Dutchwoman who works at the ALR’s offices in London. “I was going through the cases on the database registered as fakes, doing some quality control so that we can immediately act,” she says.
Can’t that be legally a high-risk business?
“Yes,” she says. “Nobody in this office would like to say this painting is a fake. So what we do is we advise them that there are indications that it could not be the real one.”
I observe that this seems a fine distinction.
“We are not saying it is a fake. We are saying, ‘Please be advised that someone might think this is a fake.’ For instance, another identical work has been for years in such and such a museum. So it could be that it is a fake. But we are not saying it.”
The ALR folders resonate with greed, guile and longing. One letter reads: “You mentioned that a South American gentleman had offered this painting to you for sale.” An ALR search established the painting was a copy of a Monet in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
In such cases, the ALR’s role is simple. Lubina is delighted when she has more complexity to deal with. “People are so creative in covering up fakes,” she says. She cites some supposed Van Gogh drawings, which were not only fake themselves but which had been embellished with fraudulent Nazi stamps on the reverse.
“They point you in the wrong direction. And you immediately think, ‘Well, this might be a case of looting.’ And your attention is on whether the provenance is OK, that is wasn’t confiscated or stolen. Which takes you away from thinking whether it is a genuine work or not.”
Fakers can get more creative than this. “It’s not just about faking the work of art. It’s about faking the whole provenance,” Lubina says. One of the ALR’s most potent fake-busting databases is the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute at Somerset House in London. “It is an archive where you can look up provenance for works of art. They keep boxes for every artist. They record sales of paintings over a number of years,” she says.
“You can go into archives like the Witt, with your backpack, everything,” Lubina says. “You slip something in one of the files. From then on it will always be picked up by people researching. That happened in the Dr Drewe and John Myatt case.”
Myatt was the artist. Dr John Drewe, armed with an antique typewriter, manufactured the provenance. Between 1986 and 1994, they put 200 bogus pieces into circulation. Many are certainly still hanging or floating around. “There are such great criminal minds out there,” says Lubina. “I think we would all be surprised if we knew the real size of the [problem].”
So Lubina and everyone else at the Art Loss Register has to learn to think like the fakers?
“Yes. Probably after having worked here, I can develop my own techniques,” she says with a merry laugh.
The Art Loss Register, tel: +44 (0)20-7841 5780 (UK); +1 212-297 0941 (US); artloss@artloss.com
anthony.haden-guest@ft.com
ś�际收藏界的赝品清单 - FT中文网 - FTChinese.com曼哈顿私营经销商保罗•夸特罗奇(Paul Quatrochi)出乎意料地发现，国际 ... 那么，ALR有没有因为对艺术品的真实性提出质疑而被告上法庭呢http://s.info.com/clickserver/_iceUrlFlag=1?rawURL=http%3A%2F%2Fapp.ftchinese.com%2Fstory.php%3Fstoryid%3D001013872&0=&1=0&4=74.205.26.218&5=205.188.117.17&9=6e6d127e79764f34b4b8b486f50cca01&10=1&11=us.infoflag&13=search&14=867530&15=main-title&17=16&18=5&19=0&20=3&21=13&22=iZpm%2FQXy6vQ%3D&40=Blj86vtprvmmvVvhLHnKXw%3D%3D&_IceUrl=true
Think Like A Faker
By Anthony Haden-Guest
Published: July 20 2007 14:52 Last updated: July 20 2007 14:52
Paul Quatrochi, a private dealer in Manhattan, only found out that the Art Loss Register (ALR) was now listing fakes when it asked him about a collection with which he was familiar. The ALR, which maintains a list of stolen works, wanted his opinion on whether certain pictures were fakes.
Quatrochi said that he regarded both the collector and his holdings with some scepticism. “He has two Vermeers. Two!” he chortled. An unusual claim that positively demanded scrutiny. “They are hard to date. I’d put them at about 1920.” But Quatrochi, who is trained in art law, noted that this was highly litigious territory and wondered if the ALR knew what it was getting into.
The Art Loss Register was founded in 1991 by Julian Radcliffe, then the director of a Lloyds brokers. “We only really started registering fakes to build up a database in the last two years,” he says. Concerns such as those voiced by Quatrochi don’t bother him unduly.
“We are not the arbiter of whether something is a fake,” he says. “We merely raise the red flag.
“We do sometimes find ourselves in a position where one side says, ‘Put it on the database and I’ll sue you if you don’t.’ And the other guy says, ‘It shouldn’t be on the database and I’ll sue you if it’s on.’”
Has the ALR been taken to court for doubting authenticity? “No. People are often threatening to sue. Very often they withdraw, a little bit shamefaced, when they discover they need us on their side next time round.”
Quatrochi was contacted about the suspect collection by Katja Lubina, a young Dutchwoman who works at the ALR’s offices in London. “I was going through the cases on the database registered as fakes, doing some quality control so that we can immediately act,” she says.
Can’t that be legally a high-risk business?
“Yes,” she says. “Nobody in this office would like to say this painting is a fake. So what we do is we advise them that there are indications that it could not be the real one.”
I observe that this seems a fine distinction.
“We are not saying it is a fake. We are saying, ‘Please be advised that someone might think this is a fake.’ For instance, another identical work has been for years in such and such a museum. So it could be that it is a fake. But we are not saying it.”
The ALR folders resonate with greed, guile and longing. One letter reads: “You mentioned that a South American gentleman had offered this painting to you for sale.” An ALR search established the painting was a copy of a Monet in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
In such cases, the ALR’s role is simple. Lubina is delighted when she has more complexity to deal with. “People are so creative in covering up fakes,” she says. She cites some supposed Van Gogh drawings, which were not only fake themselves but which had been embellished with fraudulent Nazi stamps on the reverse.
“They point you in the wrong direction. And you immediately think, ‘Well, this might be a case of looting.’ And your attention is on whether the provenance is OK, that is wasn’t confiscated or stolen. Which takes you away from thinking whether it is a genuine work or not.”
Fakers can get more creative than this. “It’s not just about faking the work of art. It’s about faking the whole provenance,” Lubina says. One of the ALR’s most potent fake-busting databases is the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute at Somerset House in London. “It is an archive where you can look up provenance for works of art. They keep boxes for every artist. They record sales of paintings over a number of years,” she says.
“You can go into archives like the Witt, with your backpack, everything,” Lubina says. “You slip something in one of the files. From then on it will always be picked up by people researching. That happened in the Dr Drewe and John Myatt case.”
Myatt was the artist. Dr John Drewe, armed with an antique typewriter, manufactured the provenance. Between 1986 and 1994, they put 200 bogus pieces into circulation. Many are certainly still hanging or floating around. “There are such great criminal minds out there,” says Lubina. “I think we would all be surprised if we knew the real size of the [problem].”
So Lubina and everyone else at the Art Loss Register has to learn to think like the fakers?
“Yes. Probably after having worked here, I can develop my own techniques,” she says with a merry laugh.
The Art Loss Register, tel: +44 (0)20-7841 5780 (UK); +1 212-297 0941 (US); artloss@artloss.com
anthony.haden-guest@ft.com
ś�际收藏界的赝品清单 - FT中文网 - FTChinese.com曼哈顿私营经销商保罗•夸特罗奇(Paul Quatrochi)出乎意料地发现，国际 ... 那么，ALR有没有因为对艺术品的真实性提出质疑而被告上法庭呢http://s.info.com/clickserver/_iceUrlFlag=1?rawURL=http%3A%2F%2Fapp.ftchinese.com%2Fstory.php%3Fstoryid%3D001013872&0=&1=0&4=74.205.26.218&5=205.188.117.17&9=6e6d127e79764f34b4b8b486f50cca01&10=1&11=us.infoflag&13=search&14=867530&15=main-title&17=16&18=5&19=0&20=3&21=13&22=iZpm%2FQXy6vQ%3D&40=Blj86vtprvmmvVvhLHnKXw%3D%3D&_IceUrl=true
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