Christian Parisot Arrested: Modigliani Institute President Involved In Forgery Investigation
Posted: 01/14/2013 2:47 pm EST
The "vivacious dandy" Amedeo Modigliani has been dead for nearly a century, yet his name continues to creep into some of the contemporary art world's most scandalous headlines. The Italian artist is considered one of the most faked artists in forgery history because of his consistent style and knack for attracting million dollar price tags.
This month, Modigliani Institute President Christian Parisot is embroiled in an international forgery investigation involving the deceased painter. The art expert and close friend of the artist's family is accused of providing false certificates of authenticity for over €6.65 million ($8,678,800) worth of counterfeit Modigliani works, according to the Financial Times.
Parisot was apprehended last month in connection with an investigation that dates back to 2010, when 22 fake Modigliani paintings were removed from an exhibition he organized at the Archaeological Museum of Palestrina. He and Italian art dealer Matteo Bignapiano were put under house arrest while authorities seized 59 artworks thought to be falsely attributed to the artist, acccording to a report by local newspaper, Il Tirreno.
Parisot has a long history with the Modigliani family, having served as secretary to the artist's daughter and only living descendant, Jeanne Modigliani. He had also been in the process of compiling Modigliani's cataogues raissones, a comprehensive monograph of the painter and sculptor's oeuvre. But the December 2012 arrest was not Parisot's first run in with the law. In 2008, he was accused of producing forged copies of drawings by Modigliani's mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne. His case went to court where he was sentenced to a fine and two years of jail time, a verdict he promptly sought to appeal before the 2010 investigation began.
Huffington Post 15 January 2013
Christian Parisot, a self-appointed expert on the work of Modigliani, was also reported in London's FT of 11 Jan 2013, to have been under investigation for over 2 years by Italian authorities, was arrested, indicted and sentenced for artfraud-- and the investigative web has been extended to include some of Parisot's associates-- one of them the consignor of record of a Modigliani nude entitled Grand Nue Alongee or Reclining Nude of Celine (Coupet) Howard, discreetly referenced below in my CONSIGNMENT OF MODIGLIANI TO BONN EXHIBITION, posted in 2009 and deemed by Henrik Hanstein in the article to be "risky". The consignor of record was Joseph Guttmann of New York (working along with his cabal of associates-- his team of attorneys, Arnold Katzen, Christian Parisot, various other attorneys all of whom may claim attorney-client privilege when queried by authorities, and others). What was never mentioned was that the painting had been the subject of a declaratory relief trial and a bank fraud investigation in the United States-- the painting remaining with unpaid bank liens and a dubious provenance to date. I do believe Mr Parisot's arrogance and the malfeasance of his associates have finally met with their comeuppance. I even pulled Parisot into a California courtroom from Paris and Italy (at great expense to his then handler Guttmann) to query him as to his authentication practices and fees to be paid for his favorable attribution. But Parisot and his cabal of cohorts proved difficult to impeach to a common jury of 12 working men and women. Hence I think both Guttmann, and Parisot et al all concluded that they might be "bulletproof" from civil judgments-- given the plaintiff costs of meeting one's burden of proof, the multiplicity of jurisdictions required for a successful prosecution of one's case, and the byzantine opacity and mind-numbing quagmires and metrics of an international painting transaction. We all concluded that the force and power of a criminal adjudication and prosecution would be required to excise this cancer upon the artworld- given infinite resources and subpoena power well beyond that of a civil dispute or litigation.
Such practices employed by both Parisot and Guttmann have enjoyed a life of their own-- a longstanding complicity between Giacomo Canale, Parisot, Guttmann and Arnold Katzen specifically with collaborative support provided by Jean Kisling, Claude Mollard, Marie-Claire Mansecal, Masaaki Iseki and Andre Schoeller. Canale would publish this cabal's findings under the imprimateur of Canale Arte, affording their findings a level of institutional legitimacy claiming that the "Modigliani Committee"s scholarship was supported by the Archives L'Egales Amedeo Modigliani (certainly- which was entirely the product of Parisot employing the droit morale legimacy afforded to him by the primogenitor laws of France), the Ambrogio Ceroni Archives (co-opted by the wife that survived his death, Angela), the Arthur Pfannstiehl Archives (vehemently denied by its sole authority, heir and archivist, Bernard Schuster. Arthur Pfannstiehl's son, Frederick-- an ex-masseur in Europe was bequeathed none of his father's extensive documentation dating from the 1920s. Arthur Pfannstiehl published his first concourse (what he called his Catalogue Presume) ante-dating all rival opinions and expertise by forty years (Ambrogio Ceroni's Edizione del Milione catalogue of 156 paintings was only published in 1958, followed by the 1965 and 1970 editions, the latter Rizzoli and Flammarion editions purporting to be catalogue raisonnes of 337 paintings/canvases), with his Catalogue Presume published in 1929), and the Lanthemann Archives (denied to me by his wife, but all the same lacking epistemic weight and the gravitas of a raisonne). On 23 Jan . 2001, the "Modigliani Committee" was launched by Guttmann and Parisot using Katzens office to provide a legitimate sounding NYC 1100 Madison Avenue address, suite 6C-- however many documents posted to that address were returned to sender marked "Adressee Unknown", despite the shiny brass plaque emblazoned "Modigliani-Kisling Institute" that Katzen had plastered to the Madison Avenue facade of the building. Giacomo Canale had claimed to "underwrite the project" and was "committed to the publication of the forthcoming new Catalogue Raisonne to be produced by the Committee".This though was prior to Katzen and Shirley Sack's arrest in Boston for money-laudering in June of that same year, for trying to sell a fake Modigliani "Jeune Femme aux Yeux Bleus (credentialed/expertised by Parisot) and a Degas for $4.1M to an alleged Columbian drug lord wishing to launder "street money" with the acquisition -- however their "client" was a US Customs Treasury agent working with the FBI. This incident diminished the prestige of the "Modigliani-Kisling Institute's" new Madison Avenue digs.
You see, Parisot has worked under the droit morale privilege of the French government and authorities for years since he succeeded to inveigle and cajole an impaired and impoverished Jeanne Modigliani (birth daughter to Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne, orphaned by both parents in the course of one day in 1920) into assigning him her droit morale -- affording the surviving child of the artist the rights to opine on the authenticity of the artist's (in this case, her father's) legacy and work. Jeanne never had any archive or documentation of her father at any time, and certainly nothing at the time I met with her before her death.Yet this privilege is jurisdictionally limited- to that of the French courts , and this privilege will languish mercilessly when scrutinized under international law and expertise in a variety of legal jurisdictions. E-mail me for further discussion on this matter.
As an aside, I was just interviewed this past week 13 Feb. 2014 by the ALR (London) for nearly 3 hrs regarding Joseph Guttmann's complicity with Parisot et al, to authenticate, publish and sell off dubious paintings ( I believe 36 in number was the last figure, in addition to those I know of personally), among them Modigliani--- this is clearly a cottage industry fine-tuned by Guttmann and his crew/cabal. Most interesting.
Paul Quatrochi
Quatrochi@aol.com
This month, Modigliani Institute President Christian Parisot is embroiled in an international forgery investigation involving the deceased painter. The art expert and close friend of the artist's family is accused of providing false certificates of authenticity for over €6.65 million ($8,678,800) worth of counterfeit Modigliani works, according to the Financial Times.
Parisot was apprehended last month in connection with an investigation that dates back to 2010, when 22 fake Modigliani paintings were removed from an exhibition he organized at the Archaeological Museum of Palestrina. He and Italian art dealer Matteo Bignapiano were put under house arrest while authorities seized 59 artworks thought to be falsely attributed to the artist, acccording to a report by local newspaper, Il Tirreno.
Parisot has a long history with the Modigliani family, having served as secretary to the artist's daughter and only living descendant, Jeanne Modigliani. He had also been in the process of compiling Modigliani's cataogues raissones, a comprehensive monograph of the painter and sculptor's oeuvre. But the December 2012 arrest was not Parisot's first run in with the law. In 2008, he was accused of producing forged copies of drawings by Modigliani's mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne. His case went to court where he was sentenced to a fine and two years of jail time, a verdict he promptly sought to appeal before the 2010 investigation began.
Huffington Post 15 January 2013
Christian Parisot, a self-appointed expert on the work of Modigliani, was also reported in London's FT of 11 Jan 2013, to have been under investigation for over 2 years by Italian authorities, was arrested, indicted and sentenced for artfraud-- and the investigative web has been extended to include some of Parisot's associates-- one of them the consignor of record of a Modigliani nude entitled Grand Nue Alongee or Reclining Nude of Celine (Coupet) Howard, discreetly referenced below in my CONSIGNMENT OF MODIGLIANI TO BONN EXHIBITION, posted in 2009 and deemed by Henrik Hanstein in the article to be "risky". The consignor of record was Joseph Guttmann of New York (working along with his cabal of associates-- his team of attorneys, Arnold Katzen, Christian Parisot, various other attorneys all of whom may claim attorney-client privilege when queried by authorities, and others). What was never mentioned was that the painting had been the subject of a declaratory relief trial and a bank fraud investigation in the United States-- the painting remaining with unpaid bank liens and a dubious provenance to date. I do believe Mr Parisot's arrogance and the malfeasance of his associates have finally met with their comeuppance. I even pulled Parisot into a California courtroom from Paris and Italy (at great expense to his then handler Guttmann) to query him as to his authentication practices and fees to be paid for his favorable attribution. But Parisot and his cabal of cohorts proved difficult to impeach to a common jury of 12 working men and women. Hence I think both Guttmann, and Parisot et al all concluded that they might be "bulletproof" from civil judgments-- given the plaintiff costs of meeting one's burden of proof, the multiplicity of jurisdictions required for a successful prosecution of one's case, and the byzantine opacity and mind-numbing quagmires and metrics of an international painting transaction. We all concluded that the force and power of a criminal adjudication and prosecution would be required to excise this cancer upon the artworld- given infinite resources and subpoena power well beyond that of a civil dispute or litigation.
Such practices employed by both Parisot and Guttmann have enjoyed a life of their own-- a longstanding complicity between Giacomo Canale, Parisot, Guttmann and Arnold Katzen specifically with collaborative support provided by Jean Kisling, Claude Mollard, Marie-Claire Mansecal, Masaaki Iseki and Andre Schoeller. Canale would publish this cabal's findings under the imprimateur of Canale Arte, affording their findings a level of institutional legitimacy claiming that the "Modigliani Committee"s scholarship was supported by the Archives L'Egales Amedeo Modigliani (certainly- which was entirely the product of Parisot employing the droit morale legimacy afforded to him by the primogenitor laws of France), the Ambrogio Ceroni Archives (co-opted by the wife that survived his death, Angela), the Arthur Pfannstiehl Archives (vehemently denied by its sole authority, heir and archivist, Bernard Schuster. Arthur Pfannstiehl's son, Frederick-- an ex-masseur in Europe was bequeathed none of his father's extensive documentation dating from the 1920s. Arthur Pfannstiehl published his first concourse (what he called his Catalogue Presume) ante-dating all rival opinions and expertise by forty years (Ambrogio Ceroni's Edizione del Milione catalogue of 156 paintings was only published in 1958, followed by the 1965 and 1970 editions, the latter Rizzoli and Flammarion editions purporting to be catalogue raisonnes of 337 paintings/canvases), with his Catalogue Presume published in 1929), and the Lanthemann Archives (denied to me by his wife, but all the same lacking epistemic weight and the gravitas of a raisonne). On 23 Jan . 2001, the "Modigliani Committee" was launched by Guttmann and Parisot using Katzens office to provide a legitimate sounding NYC 1100 Madison Avenue address, suite 6C-- however many documents posted to that address were returned to sender marked "Adressee Unknown", despite the shiny brass plaque emblazoned "Modigliani-Kisling Institute" that Katzen had plastered to the Madison Avenue facade of the building. Giacomo Canale had claimed to "underwrite the project" and was "committed to the publication of the forthcoming new Catalogue Raisonne to be produced by the Committee".This though was prior to Katzen and Shirley Sack's arrest in Boston for money-laudering in June of that same year, for trying to sell a fake Modigliani "Jeune Femme aux Yeux Bleus (credentialed/expertised by Parisot) and a Degas for $4.1M to an alleged Columbian drug lord wishing to launder "street money" with the acquisition -- however their "client" was a US Customs Treasury agent working with the FBI. This incident diminished the prestige of the "Modigliani-Kisling Institute's" new Madison Avenue digs.
You see, Parisot has worked under the droit morale privilege of the French government and authorities for years since he succeeded to inveigle and cajole an impaired and impoverished Jeanne Modigliani (birth daughter to Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne, orphaned by both parents in the course of one day in 1920) into assigning him her droit morale -- affording the surviving child of the artist the rights to opine on the authenticity of the artist's (in this case, her father's) legacy and work. Jeanne never had any archive or documentation of her father at any time, and certainly nothing at the time I met with her before her death.Yet this privilege is jurisdictionally limited- to that of the French courts , and this privilege will languish mercilessly when scrutinized under international law and expertise in a variety of legal jurisdictions. E-mail me for further discussion on this matter.
As an aside, I was just interviewed this past week 13 Feb. 2014 by the ALR (London) for nearly 3 hrs regarding Joseph Guttmann's complicity with Parisot et al, to authenticate, publish and sell off dubious paintings ( I believe 36 in number was the last figure, in addition to those I know of personally), among them Modigliani--- this is clearly a cottage industry fine-tuned by Guttmann and his crew/cabal. Most interesting.
Paul Quatrochi
Quatrochi@aol.com
