Looking at some of the paintings that are sold at auctions today, I want to cry. Cry because these canvases look like a child’s doodle, but they stand like a villa in Miami. The time has come to present the most expensive absurd masterpieces that were sold at auction for millions of dollars.
Painting “Green and White”, Ellsworth Kelly – $1.6 million
blogspotThis is not just a jagged green circle on a white background. This is an example of painting where the main object is the color itself. This creation was bought at Christie’s auction in New York in 2008.
Actually, in the rest of the artist’s paintings you will not find complex patterns or realistic landscapes - only the simplest figures on a white, black or bright background.
"The Blue Fool", Christopher Wool - $5 million
pinterest The painting was auctioned at Christie’s (New York) in 2010. Contemporary American artist Christopher Wool went further than his colleagues and, in addition to “daub” and “doodle”, began to place inscriptions in large letters on canvases.
There is a considerable amount of irony in the fact that one of the most expensive works from this series was a canvas with the inscription “FOOL” (Fool).
"The concept of space. Waiting, Lucio Fontana - $12.8 million
source: forbes The white canvas with slits was sold at Sotheby's London in 2015. The artist Lucio Fontana is known for his “barbaric” attitude towards his canvases - he mercilessly cut and pierced them. But he did it in such a way that later he could show the “mutilated” picture to the viewer.
For the master, his slots personified infinity itself. “When I sit down in front of one of my slits and begin to contemplate it, suddenly I feel that my spirit is freed. I feel like a person who has escaped the shackles of matter, belonging to the endless expanse of the present and the future,” said Fontana.
Painting "Dove" The Third Star by Joan Miró$36.9 million
karenruimy One of the most expensive lots at the Sotheby’s auction held in the British capital in 2012. This is the first picture on our list in which it seems like they were trying to draw something. Just what?
The painting was created by the Spanish surrealist artist Joan Miró. At one time, the painter was starving, which is why he often saw hallucinations on the walls. The creator transferred the images he saw to paintings. Now his paintings sell for millions of dollars.
"The Sleeping Girl" by Roy Lichtenstein - $44.8 million
nytimes “The Sleeping Girl” was auctioned in 2012 at Sotheby’s in New York. For the work of Lichtenstein, who was once called “the worst artist in America,” today exorbitant amounts of money are paid.
Roy Lichtenstein is famous for creating paintings based on comics: the artist simply took and redrew other people's works, adding something of his own. For this he had to endure attacks from critics, but this is also what made him famous. Lichtenstein's paintings constantly appear on lists of the most expensive paintings.
Untitled, Cy Twombly - $69.6 million
gazeta The painting was sold at New York auction auction house Christie's in 2014. When a child draws something like this, it’s a scribble. But when a well-promoted artist does it, it’s a masterpiece worthy of shelling out crazy amounts of money for it. Twombly's other works are the same scribbles and are just as obscenely expensive.
"Black Fire" by Barnett Newman - $84.2 million
bloomberg This masterpiece was sold at Christie’s auction held in New York in 2014. Barnett Newman's signature design is vertical lines, nicknamed "lightning bolts."
Other paintings by the master differ from the one presented above, except in color and the width of these same lightning bolts. Prices for the artist's paintings are rising from auction to auction.
“Orange, Red, Yellow,” Marco Rothko – $86.9 million
Scandal in US artistic circles! Dozens of paintings that were considered newly discovered masterpieces of abstract painting turned out to be fakes. What is this - a fatal mistake of experts or the incredible talent of scammers?
Or is it simply objective confirmation that in reality the originals of these “masterpieces” are just a well-publicized daub, which is simply easy to copy?
The closure of the Center for Visual Culture at the Mogila Academy not only led to heated controversy in society. But it also made me think about what all that is offered under the guise of works of art, in reality is.
Scandal in US artistic circles! Dozens of paintings that were considered newly discovered masterpieces of abstract painting turned out to be fakes. What is this - a fatal mistake of experts or the incredible talent of scammers? Or is it simply objective confirmation that in reality the originals of these “masterpieces” are just a hyped-up daub, which is simply easy to copy?
Almost 17 years ago, a little-known art dealer from Long Island, New York, Glafira Rosales, walked into the luxurious premises of Knoedler & Company's gallery, carrying a painting that, according to her, was painted by the artist Mark Rothko (a leading representative of the art movement). .n. abstract expressionism - approx.).
She showed a small board with two dark clouds on a pale peach background to Ann Friedman, the new president of Knoedler, New York's oldest art gallery.
“Immediately, at first glance, this work interested me,” Mrs. Friedman later recalled. She was so passionate that she ended up purchasing the job for herself.
Over the next ten years, Ms. Rosales frequently visited the Knoedler Gallery mansion with its lavishly decorated ceiling, carrying works by famous modernist artists: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.
All of them appeared on the market for the first time. All, she said, belonged to a collector whom Ms. Rosales declined to name.
The paintings were enthusiastically received by both the Knoedler gallery and Ann Friedman: at least twenty works were resold, one of which went for $17 million.
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Today, a number of experts call these works falsification. One has officially been stamped “fake” by a court decision, while others are being investigated by the FBI. Knoedler Gallery, after 165 years in business, has closed its doors and is suing a client who purchased one of Rosales' paintings (the gallery says the closure was a business decision related to the lawsuit). Ms. Friedman, who still claims the paintings are real, is also named in the lawsuit.
IN recent years there have been few events that have shaken the art market as much as this mysterious story about how an unknown art dealer was able to discover a stunning number of unknown treasures of painting created by the titans of abstract expressionism. Each of the possible explanations carries with it the burden of implausibility.
If the paintings are real, then why does the paint on some of them contain pigments that had not yet been invented at the time of their creation?
If they are fake, then who are these supernaturally talented forgers who were able to mislead the experts?
And if the paintings are real, but stolen, why didn’t their owners come forward after this story became public?
Unfortunately, the only person who could solve this mystery, Ms. Rosales, refuses to talk, at least publicly. However, several details have been leaked from court documents and interviews with other participants in the case. And there are enough of them to describe what happened.
Rosales, 55, a charismatic and educated woman of Mexican descent, and her husband, Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, originally from Spain, once ran a small gallery, King Fine Arts, located in Manhattan on West 19th Street. The couple, who had accounts at leading auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's, said in court testimony that they owned or sold paintings by famous artists including Andy Warhol, whom Mr Bergantinos described as a friend.
Based on this data, it seems strange that Ms. Rosales contacted intermediaries like the Knoedler gallery, whose commissions “took a bite out” of her own commissions. Part of the answer to this may lie in the distance between the statuses that Rosales and Friedman occupied in the art world.
Tall, very thin and very confident, Ms. Friedman ran one of the most respected galleries in the United States. She met at breakfasts with top-tier collectors, buyers who, without blinking an eye, shelled out several million for a canvas. She and her husband, real estate businessman Robert Friedman, were collectors themselves.
The two women were introduced by gallery employee Jayme Andrade, who crossed paths with Ms. Rosales at a cocktail party. According to Ann Friedman, at first Rosales told her only that she represented the interests of her friend, who has real estate in Mexico City and Zurich, and whose name she agreed to keep secret. This came as no surprise, Friedman explained; private collectors often prefer to remain anonymous. However, over time, more details about the owner emerged. Rosales told her that she inherited the painting from her father, who collected the paintings with the help of David Herbert, a New York dealer who died in 1995.
Herbert allegedly planned to create a new gallery based on these works, which would be financed by the owner of the collection. But the two founders ran away, and, in the end, the paintings ended up in the collector’s basement, where they were preserved until his death.
Ms. Rosales does have a portrait of Herbert by Ellsworth Kelly that was recently part of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. What she doesn't have is any record of ownership of the two dozen or so modernist paintings she brought to the market.
Selling works famous artist without documents confirming origin, this is a rare situation. Dealing with paintings that had no paperwork and could theoretically, as one lawyer put it, be painted "in Ms. Rosales' garage," Ann Friedman said she focused on what really mattered: quality. works as such.
And they were extraordinary,” Friedman said. She invited several experts to test her own impressions of paintings by Rothko, Pollock, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Stills and others - paintings provided by Rosales' dealer. Claude Chernushi, who is the author of a book on Pollock, confirmed the authenticity of the small painting "Untitled, 1950", signed "J. Pollock." The National Gallery of Art, which has a powerful collection of Rothko's works on paper, said two of Rothko's paintings were real.
Until 2000, Ms. Friedman herself purchased three paintings offered by Rosales: a Rothko from their first meeting, “Untitled 1959” for 200 thousand dollars, a Pollock for 300 thousand and a Motherwell for 20 thousand. “If Ann Friedman had any doubts about these works, she and her husband would not have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in them,” her lawyer said in this case.
The clouds began to gather in 2003, when a senior executive at the investment bank Goldman Sachs wanted to confirm the authenticity of Pollock's (alleged) painting "Untitled, 1949", which he had purchased from the Knoedler gallery. He donated Cortina to the International Foundation artistic research, an independent non-profit organization. And after the analysis, the anonymous commission refused to confirm the authenticity of the painting, calling into question its style and origin.
The buyer demanded a refund. Mrs. Friedman, without any delay, gave him two million dollars and acquired the canvas, covered with white, black and red spots, herself - in partnership with the gallery and a friend, Canadian theater impresario David Mirvish. Mr. Mirvish, himself a former art dealer, said he was not concerned about the anonymous appraisals (he and Knoedler also invested in two other Pollock works that Rosales provided).
But estimates were also obtained from other sources. Mirvish in 2006 brought to the gallery the artist Frank Stella, who was a contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists. After examining several paintings that came from Rosales, Stella stated: “Each of them is too good to be real, but when you see them in the overall context, as a group, you realize that they are real,” - at least that’s what it says Ann Friedman testified in court about the conversation.
The most impressive thing is that the paintings “by Rosales” have received confirmation in the market. Ms. Friedman testified that she sold 15 or 16 works overall through the Knoedler gallery, totaling between $27 million and $37 million.
The most expensive painting was Untitled 1950, allegedly by Pollock, which was acquired through an intermediary in 2007 by a London hedge fund director named Pierre Lagrange. The gallery, along with Mr. Mirvish, had purchased the painting, depicting a jumble of black, red and white lines on a bright silver background, several years earlier for $2 million. Lagrange paid 17 million.
And this is a genuine Pollock. And how come the experts didn’t immediately notice how superior these lines scribbled on the canvas are to the lines scribbled on the counterfeit canvas?
A few days after the deal with Lagrange, Ms. Friedman invited several employees of the non-profit Daedalus Foundation, which Robert Motherwell created to protect artistic heritage modern She wanted them to see her last Motherwell.
It was the seventh painting that art dealer Rosales had sold in eight years to either Friedman or another New York dealer, Julian Weissman. The painting, with large black strokes and spots scattered across the canvas, appears to have belonged to Motherwell's distinguished series known as the Spanish Elegies. Foundation staff have already seen several of these new “elegies” and recognized them as authentic.
But a few weeks after the visit to the Knoedler Gallery, during a foundation committee meeting, some of its members began to question the authenticity of the signatures and style of the newly discovered “elegies.” Foundation President Jack Flem said he soon learned that other works "from Rosales" attributed to Pollock and Richard Diebenkorn were met with skepticism.
Not everyone in the fund decided that the alarm should be raised. Joan Banach, Motherwell's personal assistant and a veteran trust employee, said Flem made unqualified statements about the paintings' authenticity and thereby violated the trust's painting appraisal procedures. She subsequently sued the foundation, saying she was fired because of her criticism of Mr. Flem (the foundation denies this).
“More likely yes than no,” is how Ms. Banach assessed the authenticity of Motherwell’s paintings, which the Knoedler gallery acquired through Rosales, in court documents.
But the chairman of the foundation, Jack Flem, was determined to prove that these paintings were forged. He hired a private detective to investigate Rosales and her husband and insisted on a series of forensic examinations.
On a cool January evening in 2009, Flem and Friedman met to discuss the results. They sat in the wrong hall where two “elegies” hung, one of which belonged to Mrs. Friedman. A forensic scientist concluded that both contained pigments that were invented ten years after 1953 and 1955, the dates indicated on the paintings.
Ann Friedman disagreed with these findings. Artists were often given new pigments to experiment with before they were even patented and brought to market. But the Daedalus Foundation stood its ground: the art dealer Rosales, as later confirmed in court documents, was “the key person who brought to market a series of seven counterfeit “Spanish Elegies.”
The dispute over Motherwell's paintings soon reached the FBI, which began an investigation. Rosales' lawyer acknowledged that his client was under investigation and added that she "never knowingly sold paintings knowing that they are fake."
Ann Friedman received a warrant from the FBI in September 2009, although her lawyer says the FBI does not consider her a target of the investigation. She left the gallery the following month. Both Friedman and the gallery maintain that the investigation had nothing to do with her dismissal, which was due to Friedman's reluctance to merge the Knoedler gallery with another gallery.
However, it was much more difficult to move away from the problems with Rosales’s paintings. Last year, one of the “elegies” became the basis for a lawsuit from an Irish gallery, which bought this painting and, after the scandal, demanded the return of $650,000.
The Daedalus Foundation was embroiled in this lawsuit because, after forensic tests, it was they who declared all the “elegies” received through Rosales to be fakes. Including those that he had previously informally recognized as genuine - and among them was the painting that was sold to the Irish.
The lawsuit was dropped in October. Rosales agreed to pay most of the cost of the painting and legal costs, and the painting itself, at the request of the Daedalus Foundation, was stamped on the back with the inscription “Fake” in ink that cannot be removed. Daedalus once declared the painting to be real, and another time that it was fake. Despite this, the other side, through their lawyers, still claims that the painting is genuine.
A few weeks later, another picture became the cause of a dispute. Pierre Lagrange was divorcing his wife, and they wanted to sell “Untitled, 1950.” But Sotheby's and Christie's auctions refused to deal with this painting due to the dubiousness of its origin and its absence from the full catalog of Pollock's works. Lagrange demanded that the Knoedler gallery take the painting back and ordered his own forensic examination of the painting.
On November 29, the results of the analysis arrived: the two yellow pigments used in the painting were not invented until Pollock's death in 1956. The conclusion was sent to the Knoedler gallery. The next day it announced its closure.
In December, Rosales and Friedman met again - but this time the meeting took place in the federal district court in Manhattan, where they were summoned in response to Mr. LaGrange's lawsuit. He wanted his 17 million back.
The back of this Motherwell painting is now permanently stamped "fake". Moreover, the same art foundation that insisted on the appearance of this mark had previously confirmed the authenticity of the painting. Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times
The two women briefly greeted each other, after which Rosales addressed the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants a citizen the right not to incriminate himself. They have not communicated since then, according to their lawyers.
It is now impossible to say whether a court or criminal investigation will be able to give a convincing answer to the mystery of these works.
Authenticity is difficult to confirm. Dating pigments is generally considered a reliable method, but this is not necessarily a decisive argument. For example, Golden Artist Colors CEO Mark Golden, whose father Sam created experimental paints for artists like Pollock, stated his belief that his father never made yellow pigments like the one in the questionable painting. However, he noted that individual components of these pigments did exist in the late 1940s.
In criminal cases, the bar is even higher. The prosecution must prove that Rosales' works are fake - and this is when even experts do not agree on this matter. And if they are still fake, the authorities must prove that Ms. Rosales participated in the fraud and was not also misled.
Meanwhile, the painting at the center of the civil suit, Untitled 1950, no longer takes pride of place on the wall in Mr. LaGrange's living room. The 15" x 28" board has become an orphan in the art world and is in some kind of art hell. And it waits for it to either be exalted to heaven as a masterpiece, or be defamed as a fake.
Patricia Cohen, New York Times
Translation from original into Ukrainian:TEXTS , original"Suitable for Suing" By PATRICIA COHEN Published: February 22, 2012
Have you long wanted to try your hand at painting, but couldn’t decide to pick up a brush and palette and stand at the easel? Does everyone around you think that your creative efforts are a pathetic daub? Therefore, you are a loser! This means that a selection of paintings by Canadian artist Kim Dorland will serve you as a good consolation. Or maybe inspiration too.
Experts call Dorland's work " naive art", spiteful critics see it as a careless daub, and admirers of his original talent believe that the paintings that Kim creates are psychologically and stylistically unexpected. And this is true - no one expects, instead of the promised landscapes and portraits, to see a canvas plastered with paint, on which, moreover, the author left not neat strokes and lines, but rough furrows, as if a tractor had driven through a fertilized and wet field...
The principle by which Kim Dorland paints his original paintings can be described in one short phrase: “the main thing is not to spare paint.” After all, if you look closely, the paintings are literally scratched on a thick layer of oil, with which the author generously anoints his canvases. It turns out that the paintings are not painted, but sculpted, as if they were sculptures.
And the artist does not strive for accuracy and realism. He creates in a special style, a kind of childish abstractionism, without worrying about maintaining proportions, or giving volume to the images, or the aesthetics of the canvases. It seems that the author’s main task is to throw paint on the canvas as casually as possible, with his left hand from under his right knee, to add blots - this is painting!
Although, it may very well be that it is only to us, ordinary people, that it seems easy and simple to draw in this way. After all, one way or another, Kim Dorland quite often participates in exhibitions, his paintings are presented in galleries in Toronto, where he lives and works, and quite successfully sells his works both in Canada and far abroad.
Nowadays it's full strange people, giving tens of millions of dollars for what to an ordinary person, like me, seems like an outright daub). In any case, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the ten most expensive paintings in the world at the moment!
Some people will like them, others will not understand such art, but the fact that there were people willing to pay a lot of money for them is an indisputable fact.
So, number 10 on the list the most expensive paintings we have Gustav Klimt’s painting “Second Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”, which went under the hammer for $89.1 million. A little history. In 1912, the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt painted a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist of the time who sponsored different types art, including Gustav Klimt himself) Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model whom Klimt painted twice - she also appears in the “First Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”. Apparently Ferdinand sponsored the artist well;)
9th place - a self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, for which they paid $90.1 million at auction. In general, the Dane Van Gogh loved to paint self-portraits - and all of them, along with the famous “Sunflowers”, are popular and are his most famous paintings. In total, he painted more than 12 self-portraits during the period from 1886 to 1889
In 8th place is the painting “Dora Maar with a Kitten” by Pablo Picasso, the price for which was $97 million. The painting, painted in 1941, depicts Picasso's Croatian mistress, Dora Maar, sitting on a chair with a kitten on her shoulder (although it looks more like the kitten is still walking on the back of the chair). When I saw this picture, I suddenly realized that Picasso’s kittens were the best))
7th place is again taken by Van Gogh’s painting, only this time it’s not a self-portrait) The buyer had to pay $97.5 million for the painting “Irises,” but at least it’s more or less similar to the painting—I wouldn’t regret 10 bucks for that! This is one of Van Gogh's first works, written during his stay at St. Paul de Moussol in the French province of Sanremo a year before his death in 1890
On the 6th line - again Picasso) It seems that they decided to “measure” Van Gogh =) In any case, for the painting by Pablo Picasso “Boy with a Pipe” from the personal collection of John Hay Whitney at the Sotheby’s auction held in New York 5 May 2004, they gave $104.1 million with a starting price of $70 million. However, many art historians believe that such an exorbitant price was more likely associated with the artist’s great name than with the actual historical value of his painting
5th place, so to speak, the equator of the list the most expensive paintings, occupied by Pierre-Augustus Renoir with the painting “Ball in Montmartre”. At the time of sale, this painting, along with Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, was the most expensive painting ever sold - and both belonged to the Japanese industrialist Saito. Associated with him interesting story- the fact is that Saito bequeathed after his death (which happened in 1991) that these two paintings be cremated with him, which caused a wave of indignation throughout the world. However, his partners decided to do otherwise and, faced with the threat of bankruptcy, sold Renoir at Sotheby’s for $122.8 million - the buyer wished to remain anonymous, but it is assumed that the painting is now in Switzerland
In 4th place is Van Gogh again, with the previously mentioned “Portrait of Doctor Gachet”. There are actually two versions of this painting, both painted in 1890, in recent months life of an artist - and in both, the doctor sits at the table, resting his head on right hand, but the difference between them can be seen even with the naked eye. This painting was sold for $129.7 million.
We already mentioned the painting that is on the “bronze”, the third step of our list, at the very beginning - this is “The First Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” by Gustav Klimt. As you can see, this portrait turned out better and more expensive) It was painted in 1907 and, according to information from specialized sources, was sold in 2006 to the owner of the New York gallery Neue Galerie Ronald Lauder for $135 million, which made the painting the most expensive ever or those on sale at that time
In second place is a completely incomprehensible daub called “Woman 3” by the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, although if you look at the artist himself and his other paintings, you can basically say that this is the crown of his work))) “Woman” 3” is one of six paintings by the artist, central theme in which, surprisingly, there is a woman) The canvas measuring 170 by 121 cm was painted in 1953, and in November 2006 it was sold by David Geffen to billionaire Steven Cohen for $137.5 million, which made it the second most expensive painting in world ever sold
So, number one on the list “The most expensive paintings peace" at the moment is “No. 5, 1948”, written by Jackson Pollock, an American artist who made a significant contribution to the abstract expressionism movement. The painting was painted on a 2.5 x 1.2 meter sheet of fiberboard by applying a small amount of brown and yellow splashes on top, making the painting look like a huge nest. This Pollock masterpiece sold for a record $142.7 million.
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