The World of Art

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The World of Art

• Big Prices, Big Risks

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Art For Sale

• The 3 Ds
• Debt
• Divorce
• Death
• Restitution
• Art in museums returned to owners from whom they
  were stolen
• Nazis

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Auction at Christies NY

• November 2006

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Issues

• Guarantees undisclosed minimum sums that are
  paid to the sellers regardless of a sales
  outcome
• Protect sellers
• Risky for auction houses
• Possibility of losing millions
• Warehouses full of unsold art
• Hedge fund billionaires
• Financiers (Asia, Russia and India)

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Contested Art Pulled from Auction

• Picassos Portrait of Angel Fernandez do Soto
• Owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation
• Claimed by Julius H. Schoeps
• Great- uncle forced sale after Nazis devastated
  his personal fortune
• Federal court in Manhattan ruled it did not have
  jurisdiction to decide on the merits of the
  dispute

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Auction at Christies NYMay 2008
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Auction at Christies NY

• Monets The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil sells
  at a record 41.4 million

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Auction at Christies LondonJune 2008

• Monets Le Bassin aux Nymphéas sells for a new
  record 80.4 million

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Private Sales

• David Greffen--283.5 million
• Jasper Johns
• De Kooning
• Pollock

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Authentication
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Duccios Madonna and Child

• Acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY)
  in 2004 for 45 million
• Thought to have been painted around 1300

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Stylistic Approach

• James Beck (Columbia University Art Historian)
• Jesus goard-like head is hardly rewarding and
  is quite at odds with confirmed and documented
  paintings by Duccio
• Parapet in the forefront of the painting is
  inconsistent with Duccios style and did not
  surface in Renaissance art until around 1400 or
  1450
• Has studied the painting hanging at the Met, but
  has not asked to examine it

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Stylistic/Scientific Authentication

• Keith Christiansen (curator of European painting
  at the Met)
• Duccio scholars accept
• X-ray and infrared reflectography
• Comparison with the Fricks Temptation of Christ
  on the Mountain
• Luciano Bellosi (Duccio scholar at the University
  of Siena)
• Comparison with the Duccios Maestà altarpiece
  in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Siena
• Parapet testifies to the relation between the
  young Duccio and the young Giotto, who both
  worked in the workshop of Cimabue

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Authenticating Pollocks Paintings
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Alex Matter

• Matters mother and father were artists and
  friends of Pollocks
• Found a group of small drip paintings in a
  storage locker in Wainscott NY

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Controversies in Scientific Authentication

• Richard Taylor (Assoc. Prof. of Physics at the
  University of Oregon)
• Fractals (regularities that recur on
  increasingly finer magnification) are different
  in the drip paintings and paintings known to be
  Pollocks
• Catherine Jones-Smith (Ph.D. candidate) and Harsh
  Mathur (Assoc. Prof. of Physics at Case Western)
• Made drawings using Adobe Photoshop that had the
  same fractal characteristics as Pollocks
  paintings

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Terri Horton

• Bought a large painting in a thrift shop in CA
  for 5
• Buyer offered 9 million
• Rejection by connoisseurs
• Canadian restorer claims to have matched
  fingerprints
• Documentary Who the is Jackson Pollock?

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Kramer v. The Pollock-Krasner Foundation (SDNY
1995)

• Christies and Southebys use the Pollack-Krasner
  Foundation EXCLUSIVELY to authenticate Jackson
  Pollacks paintings. Kramer is claiming this
  connection is a conspiracy to monopolize and is
  in fact a monopoly.

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Is It a Warhol?
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