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 us, ordinary people, who think that drawing in this way is easy and simple. 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.
I still believe that the concept of a masterpiece cannot be common to everyone. It’s not for nothing that there is a saying “there are no comrades according to taste and color.” A significant part of people will look at the picture at the beginning of the post and say - it’s a daub, another part of people will look at Da Vinci’s “La Gioconda” and say - an ordinary aunt, what’s wrong with that. This is generally normal, but if so, then what masterpieces these are. A masterpiece can be something so universally recognized that no one dares to belittle or say that it is not cool! Well, let's say. Or maybe something like this that is generally recognized does not exist at all, or will appear someday, but now we are often content with local masterpieces for a certain group of people.
For example, I, who consider masterpieces, have always been interested in how such masterpieces as the first photo in the post come into being.
But this...
... the apogee of Wassily Kandinsky's work "Composition VII. 1913". Imagine the beginning of the twentieth century - an era of change in all spheres of life and art. Painting was not left out either. Artists sought new forms of expression in fine arts. Abstractionism became a logical continuation of cubism and futurism. Kandinsky became one of the most prominent representatives of this movement
Wassily Kandinsky at work, 1936.
Personally, it seems to me that the canvas depicts simply stains and blots. However, I was curious to know that before starting to paint the picture, the artist did a lot of preparatory work. He made more than thirty sketches in pencil, oil, and watercolor. Kandinsky painted the canvas itself in four days from November 25 to 28, 1913.
Wassily Kandinsky at his easel, 1936
Experts say about the artist that he was a synesthete who perceived the world in his own way. He could see sounds, hear colors. “Composition VII” consists of color fragments of varying intensity, interspersed with sharp-edged and smooth combinations. Studying the artist’s archives, art historians came to the conclusion that Vasily Vasilyevich depicted several themes in his painting: Resurrection from the dead, Judgment Day, Flood and the Garden of Eden. I don’t even know how to feel about this. Either this can be considered some kind of fact, or it’s all made up and “made up out of thin air” for those who still don’t understand anything about it.
Well, something like this:
or so
The author himself described the creation as follows: “Pink and white foam so that they seem to lie outside the plane of the canvas or some other, ideal plane. Rather, they float in the air and look as if they are shrouded in steam. A similar lack of plane and uncertainty of distances can be observed, for example, in a Russian steam bath. The man standing in the middle of the steam is neither close nor far, he is somewhere. The position of the main center - “somewhere” - determines the internal sound of the whole picture. I worked a lot on this part until I achieved what was at first only my vague desire, and then became clearer and clearer internally.”
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, shows 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.
lifeglobe.net/entry/1228
Effectiveness of Public Relations: “Brilliant” assholes
If I take up a brush and paint some landscape or portrait on the canvas, then any person, looking at my work, can safely say: what a daub! And he will be right, because I don’t know how to draw. However, my daub could sell for millions of dollars if I had a reputation as a great artist. Theoretically, it is difficult to imagine that my unpainted, but no less terrible, paintings could be promoted as great works of art and sold for “mad money.” But in real life, this happened more than once - the second half of the 19th century and the entire 20th century was a continuous triumph of daub in art.
From the moment it was born modern painting, whose father is considered to be the Italian Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), and over the next few centuries, the artist’s skill in displaying reality on any surface suitable for drawing (canvas, wall or board) was put in first place in assessing the work. Photography did not exist then, but many wanted to have own portrait or a picture of your relatives. The views of the surrounding forests and fields were also appreciated. We still like to hang reproductions in our apartments. different paintings, and for those whose financial condition allows it, then the originals themselves. In the Middle Ages, rich people also liked to decorate the walls of their houses and castles with works of art, and some of the rich collected huge collections. Some did it out of love for painting, others - to improve their status.
In addition to the rich, the church also needed works of art. The Church did not need paintings that depicted real life - they needed biblical scenes that would look real - like photographs real events(although they had no idea about photographs back then). People had to believe in Christ, Mary, the apostles and others religious figures, and for this the biblical characters had to look like living people.
Whatever the customers' requests were, such were the paintings. Crazy ideas, sketched on canvas by an inept hand, were of no use to anyone. No one would buy a portrait of themselves that did not resemble the original, and certainly not one that in principle did not resemble the image of a person. In those days, to paint a portrait, you needed an artist who had mastered the craft of a painter. Without being a professional, you could not sell paintings and make a living. Those who collected paintings no longer needed just casts from reality - they wanted to get exclusive things that no one could repeat. That is, the artist had to add something of his own to a realistic image - a certain unique style, so that his painting would stand out among the bulk of high-quality handicrafts. It could be a unique technique like Leonardo da Vinci, an innovative use of light and shadow like Van Eyck, fantastic images like Bosch...
The 15th-17th centuries in Europe are the heyday of world painting. By this time, in the economically developed countries of Europe (Venice, Florence, the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany) a sufficient number of customers for paintings had appeared - thanks to this, we received a whole galaxy of outstanding artists, whose works still adorn the most famous museums in the world. Along with such generally recognized great painters of the Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo Buonarroti, several dozen equally outstanding artists were working at that time: the Dutch Robert Campin, Jan Van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Vermeer, the Italians Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, Caravaggio, the Germans Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger, the Spaniard Diego Velazquez... All of them had an original manner of displaying reality, but What they had in common was that they all brilliantly painted exceptionally realistic paintings. Realistic not in plot - the same biblical paintings have never been like that. Realistic - based on the similarity of the image with real life. No one drew any cubes or squares - supposedly this is how he sees the world, since “masterpieces” in such a style would not have found their buyer. The customers of paintings in those days were simple people - like our Nikita Khrushchev. There is a story that he once asked about one of the paintings at an abstract art exhibition: “What kind of ass is this?” I note that no one has ever said anything like that about the paintings of Raphael or Correggio, including Khrushchev - anyone with vision understands what is depicted in them: Madonnas in the form of beautiful women, and not some creepy and incomprehensible creatures like in Picasso’s paintings . Every outstanding artist was an innovator in some way, but all innovative techniques in painting made sense only if the artist could adequately depict life in all its manifestations. Novelty in the image was used for the sake of realism, and not in itself. We can say that the painters tried to work like builders - every house must have a foundation, walls and a roof, and all experiments were allowed only within these frameworks.
As professionals, Renaissance artists reached the pinnacle of painting. And we can safely say that it is impossible to surpass Raphael or Van Eyck - they can only be repeated. Or create something of your own, which has become more and more difficult over the years. Already in the 17th century, there were fewer outstanding artists than in the 16th century, and in the 18th they could be counted on one hand. It is extremely difficult to stand out against the background of the Renaissance masters - this is the highest level of skill, which, in principle, only a few can achieve.
And against such a background, when there are many artisans, and there are few outstanding masters, a real revolution is taking place in the world of art - “great artists” began to be created artificially. This was difficult to do in the Middle Ages- without the media, PR technologies are ineffective, since information has to be transmitted through rumors that distort it. Moreover, if we're talking about on the dissemination of information over long distances. Only the media can quickly and effectively create and introduce into the mass consciousness the image of any object (product, brand) as ideal and necessary in life. It is no coincidence that when in the second half of the 19th century in the life of states Western Europe, which have already entered the era of the industrial revolution, the press begins to play an increasingly important role, and at the same time “great artists of a new type” begin to appear. In other words - bastards.
Who exactly reoriented buyers of paintings towards outright daub? There are a lot of them. Basically, these are people who were engaged in art criticism in the media, as well as those who organized exhibitions. For example, the critic Roger Fry “washed out” the Post-Impressionists, the Frenchman Guillaume Apollinaire helped promote the products of Matisse and Picasso to consumers. But even more important for the painting market was the fact that more and more wealthy collectors appeared in the world - especially in the second half of the 20th century. In an environment where truly outstanding works of art are in state museums or belong to churches that do not sell their masterpieces for any money, from what should collections be made? - From what is considered fashionable. What became fashionable was purchased by buyers.
How was the fashion for this or that “painter” created? Basically it all started with a scandal. At the end of the 19th century, the mere display of a terrible daub in public under the guise of works of art meant a public scandal. This was a real challenge to society. People, seeing “this,” were indignant, all this was discussed in the press and bohemian places, the fame of the author and his paintings grew - and so a fashion for this or that character appeared. First in narrow circles, and then, if you were lucky, the general public learned about the emergence of a new “great painter.” “If they talk about you, it means you exist” - this is the basic rule of PR. If you become famous, then at least someone will buy your paintings - regardless of their artistic value. As soon as the mediocre people in the bohemian environment realized that daub was also a hot commodity, such paintings literally flooded the market. Many future great assholes started with realistic paintings, but in time they refocused on the daub. And some didn’t need to change anything - they didn’t know how to draw in the first place.
At different periods there was a fashion for one thing artistic direction, then to another - impressionism, post-impressionism, abstractionism, cubism, expressionism…. And fashion is the main engine of trade. As soon as the “artist” became a brand, from then on everything produced under this brand “sold like hot cakes.” It didn’t matter what exactly this or that “artist” painted - the fashion industry operates according to different laws than the handicraft industry. The fashion for this or that mastic, of course, did not arise immediately, and at first the “laurels” in the form of huge money went not to the artists themselves, but to the buyers of paintings. The crazy amounts of money that began to be shelled out for fashionable daubs at auctions appeared only towards the end of the second half of the 20th century. A huge number of people with easy money received on the world financial markets, as well as from the looting of state property in Russia, simply did not know where to put it - as a result, any feces smeared on canvas became an extremely popular commodity.
With whom did the triumph of daub in art begin?The way for the Impressionists and Cubists was paved by the Englishman Joseph Turner, who “created” in the first half of the 19th century. His only merit as an artist was that he was not very good at painting landscapes. He also had almost good paintings, but he became known for outright daubs, like the canvas “Approaching Venice.” If Venice had been like in his painting, then it is unlikely that anyone would have swum to it... Turner at one time simply shocked the public, thanks to which he became famous. There is a caricature of him - Turner stands in front of a picture with a paint brush (which was used to paint fences at that time) and paints something...
The next to pick up the baton was the Frenchman Edgar Degas - he knew how to draw, and sometimes he succeeded wonderful paintings, but for some reason Edgar was drawn to painting the ugliest naked women who are getting ready to wash, are washing themselves, or have just finished bathing.... - For such drawings they are expelled from the 1st year art school due to incompetence, but Degas became popular largely thanks to them.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the number of muffins began to increase sharply.
At this time, the “great impressionists” Claude Monet (who should not be confused with the famous artist Edouard Manet) and Auguste Renoir were creating. Renoir knew how to draw, but like Degas, he often fell into outright scribbling. At first, Monet also tried to become a real artist, but realized that he would not succeed - as a result, he can be called one of the brightest successors of the work of Joseph Turner - Monet's landscapes are almost as terrible as those of his predecessor.
His main “masterpiece” is “Rouen Cathedral, west façade in sunlight" - typical children's daub. Monet riveted many works in a similar “style” and all of them are still popular: “Water Lilies” (without a title you can’t immediately recognize that these are lilies on water...) went at auction for 36.7 million dollars (2007). ), “Waterloo Bridge” (pictured below) sold for $35.9 million (2007),
“Pond with water lilies...” (in comparison with “Waterloo Bridge” it can even be called a painting) - for $33 million (1998). The Times newspaper conducted a survey among readers in 2009, based on the results of which it determined the most popular artists 20th century - Claude Monet took 4th place!
At the turn of the century, post-impressionists also got down to business: Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt. Which of them was the “greater”, or in other words, the more fashionable artist in our time? Cézanne has at least one painting that can be described as “interesting” - he painted it at the age of 27. Then everything went much worse - without enlightenment, daub after daub. Nevertheless, he is definitely not the “greatest”. The prices for some of his paintings amount to tens of millions of dollars (the most expensive of them, “Still Life with a Jug and Drapery,” was purchased for $60.5 million (!)), but the popularity of his works among collectors is clearly inferior to the popularity of Gauguin’s works, and even more so Van Gogh. But The Times readers ranked Cezanne in 2nd place among the artists of the 20th century!
The mentally ill Van Gogh painted like an untalented 5-7 year old boy who never grew up. At one time he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, but this did not help, and at the age of 40 he committed suicide. His biography is more like the biography of a “great artist.” This is evidenced by the prices of his paintings - $40.3 million for a creepy portrait of Madame Ginoux, $40.5 million for “Sunflowers,” $47.5 million for “Peasant Woman in a Straw Hat,” 53, $9 million for “Irises,” $57 million for “Wheat Field with Cypress Trees,” $71 million for a self-portrait, and $82.5 million for “Portrait of Dr. Gachet.” This Gachet, by the way, looked after Van Gogh shortly before his suicide - probably the “artist” decided to take revenge on the doctor for his work with his signature portrait.
Van Gogh's lover Gauguin painted like a boy slightly older than Van Gogh's boy. This is a clear disadvantage for him as a “great artist.” Moreover, Gauguin was not as crazy as Van Gogh, although there is a wonderful episode in his biography when he came to stay with Van Gogh and ended up cutting off his ear - this is a really powerful claim to “greatness”! However, the demand for Gauguin's paintings is not as great as for Van Gogh - only a few of his paintings were sold for more than $30 million.
Almost a dwarf, Toulouse-Lautrec was crazy about ugly French whores, whom he embodied in his equally ugly paintings. If you look at the picture below, code-named “Whores on Examination,” you will have an idea of Toulouse-Lautrec’s creative style.
He was more of a master of sketching, but never got around to painting a full-fledged picture. Compared to Gauguin and Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec is completely unpopular, and the Norwegian Munch is clearly not up to par with them, although his biography is very good: he constantly suffered from terrible depression and was treated for mental disorders several times. Several of his paintings appear on the list of “100 most expensive paintings in history,” but that’s about it.
But the Austrian Gustav Klimt is truly the greatest post-impressionist. He is no less popular than Van Gogh, and his most expensive painting was bought for 135 million dollars! And what is most surprising for the great artist of the 20th century is that the painting depicts a woman with a human face! All the remaining space is taken up by typical daub, but the face turned out to be realistic. And other paintings by Klimt, where people are depicted, are similar to this picture - the same faces among the “post-impressionist” daub.
The people also respect Klimt - 3rd place among best artists 20th century - only Picasso and Cezanne are ahead.
Let's move on to the 20th century. As Wendy Beckett wrote in her History of Painting, “Two people reign in 20th-century art: Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.” It’s hard to say why these two, because there were hundreds of such idiots, but the ways of fashion are inscrutable. Pablo, by the way, took 1st place in the Times reader poll.
The Spaniard Pablo Picasso knew how to draw, but did not want to. He was far from Da Vinci’s level (who doesn’t believe it, watch it early painting“Boy with a Pipe” - not bad, but not outstanding), but simply good paintings were no longer relevant in the 20th century. Daubing became more and more fashionable, and Pablo decided to swim at the will of the waves. And he did it great!
In 1907, he painted the painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” - it became the first work in the Cubist genre. At first, the artist was embarrassed to show this nonsense to strangers, which, in general, is understandable: five absolutely creepy creatures are looking at you from the picture, and showing such nonsense to others is the same as declaring publicly: I’m crazy! I'm a complete psycho! However, Pablo took the risk of exhibiting his “masterpiece” and I was right. No one put him in a hospital and Picasso continued to damage his canvases. He put into practice the postulate of dialectical materialism: quantity develops into quality. IN in this case- in reputation. Picasso painted for about 70 years and it is not surprising that he has become the most popular painter of our time.
His “Portrait of Dora Maar” (bought for $95.2 million at auction in 2006, pictured above), “Woman Sitting in a Garden” ($49.5 million in 1999), “Dream” ($48.4 million in 1997), “Nude in a Black Chair” ($45.1 million in 1999) - entered the “golden fund” of daubs of the 20th century.
There were many glorious daubers in the 20th century - much more than great artists in the Renaissance, which is not surprising: breaking is not building, damaging canvases is not painting. Our Vasya Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich also made their mark in this field - although they are outstanding, they are not great buffoons by world standards. Of course, Russians have their own special spirituality, but it is not very evident in the daub. By the middle of the 20th century, the American Pollack and the Dutchman de Kooning - “abstract expressionists” - began to set the tone in it.
Everything in our world is relative, and against the background of Pollack and his brothers, even Monet or Gauguin look like good artists. Art critics called this highest degree of daub “abstract expressionism,” and I would say that this is a completely senile daub! Its most prominent representatives were not only the aforementioned Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollack, but also Mark Rothko, an American of Russian origin. These three are simply the pinnacle of 20th century daub!
An abstract expressionist is a person who, in principle, does not paint. Van Gogh could draw at least at the level of a 5-year-old child, but Pollack could not even reach this level. To quote “The History of Painting” by Wendy Beckett: “Pollack was the first to abandon the brush, the palette, and all the conventions of subject matter. He danced in ecstasy across the canvases spread on the floor, completely immersed in creativity, splashing and pouring paint under complete control. “Painting,” he said, “lives own life. I try to let her do that." There’s not even anything to comment on here - the man was very, very sick. The photo of his painting confirms this.
Mark Rothko is an even worse artist than Pollack. You will say that this cannot be - after all, I just said that Pollack could not draw. Maybe! Pollack's paintings at least resembled chaotic wallpaper, while Rothko's are simply canvases painted with different colors - for example, the top is black and the bottom is gray. Or an even more “outstanding work” - the color is crimson at the bottom, some kind of dark yellow at the top, and white in the middle.
The painting is called "White Center" and was purchased at Sotheby's in 2007. for 72.8 million dollars. - almost 73 million for a canvas damaged by paints! And this, by the way, is 12th on the list of the most expensive paintings in the world! But the most expensive painting in the world today (2010) belongs to Jackson Pollack and is called “No. 5” - sold in 2006 at Sotheby’s for $140 million! Western world crowded not only with crazy artists - there huge amount crazy millionaires. Ordinary people, by the way, are also not very healthy in the West - in a poll by the Times newspaper, Pollack took 7th place among the most popular artists of the 20th century.
His, as they say, “eternal rival” Willem de Kooning came 9th in this poll. I would call him the funniest of all the muffins. Kooning’s most expensive painting, “Woman No. 3” (bought in 2006 for $137.5 million!) will cause a fit of laughter in any healthy person. Even funnier is "Woman with a Bicycle."
I think Willem had some problems with women, so he took revenge on them in a sophisticated way.
Using the examples of Pollack, Kooning and Rothko, we clearly see what the art market has come to today. If Khrushchev were alive, he would have said: to complete ass!
So, thanks to the magical power of Pu blic relations the scribbles of some mentally deranged individuals were recognized as outstanding works of painting and placed on the same level as the paintings of the great artists of the Renaissance. For the first time, the power of PR was so clearly demonstrated precisely in the promotion of duds. Until 19th century PR acted effectively only in politics (history and religion also served political purposes and cannot be considered in isolation from politics). In the case of the announcement of mediocre assholes brilliant artists we encounter a phenomenon when PR proved himself in the field of fashion. And it was so effective and lasting that even now, more than a century after the daubing of mediocre psychopaths became fashionable, we meet many people who sincerely believe that Van Gogh is great artist. Even more millions know who Van Gogh is. Several hundred rich loafers, not who know where spends money, buys fashionable daub at auctions. Everyone else hears about one multimillion-dollar purchase of daub, then about another. Well, they can’t pay 30 million dollars for explicit feces? - this is how the average person thinks. - They can, they can... The main thing is that it is fashionable.
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 well-publicized 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 for which there were no documents and which, in theory, as one lawyer put it, could have been painted "in Ms. Rosales' garage," Ann Friedman, she said, 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 denounced 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
