artetestiamo

picture tenet 1 - Copy

I did not like Tenet

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Is art only a matter for good family ladies or unscrupulous forgers? The portrait of the art world in many of the media is polarized around these two scenarios, which are also punctually to be found in Christopher Nolan‘s film.
   The movies still amazes with special effects, but bores with unnecessary shootings and even more useless stereotypes about the art world. And the film doesn’t pass the BECHDEL test. To pass the test there must be at least two women talking to each other and their conversation must concern something other than a man. Easy? It must be said that not many films pass the test.Try to think of more than three.

(AP)

Mai-con-i-quadri

Federico Zeri confesses himself!

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Federico Zeri, one of the most famous Italian art historians (also for having resigned from the Board of Directors of the Getty of Malibu ‘following the acquisition of a Kouros later proved false), a tireless researcher and distinguished populariser, who on his death in 1998 left a gigantic photo library at the University of Bologna, went more than once on the subject of forgery in the art market.
But it is perhaps in the detective story, set in Rome, and published just before his death “F. Zeri-Carmen Iarrera, Mai con i dipinti. Romanzo, Milano, Longanesi, 1997”) that he lets himself go to a confession without havoc on the tongue: rich but arrogant collectors, unscrupulous merchants and conniving professors, thanks to a market without rules and without control, where, however, transitions are millionaires. But he also covers scientific analyses that are able to uncover fakes and forgeries … when they are done by professionals.
Here are some more brazenly impudent excerpts, for those who already know and for those who still dream …


(…)
For this reason, trusting their own nose (and the antiquarian who managed to get into their graces), rarely asking for the opinion of an expert, they pay without blinking astronomical sums, with no questions asked, satisfied to have got their hands on any crust that they considered something unique, rare, precious.
They are even more satisfied if you give him the illusion that the painting, kept for centuries in a family of ancient lineage, was on sale for half of its value only because the family was pressured by unpleasant, contingent, ineluctable financial necessities.
Old practice, this of “supporting” a painting. It is actually enough to find a suitable canvas, to have it restored if needed, to find an expert who attributes it to a more or less illustrious painter and to have the complicity of some fallen nobleman who, well oiled, swore that this painting came from the ancient and famous collection of his grandfather or that it was found by chance, after decades of oblivion, in his old aristocratic country residence.

Making a fake from scratch today is very difficult. In paintings, I mean, because for example in sculptures it is easy. It is enough to melt ancient coins to make a beautiful Greek or Roman fragment with a bronze that, of course, will be ancient to all analyses. Or you take a marble bust of good workmanship, save the face and chisel the drapery well, copying, for example, the style of Donatello’s drapery and attributing it to him or his school. Only an extremely skilled eye, at that point, could establish that the sculpture was manipulated. For paintings no. For paintings it is different because quartz lamps or infrared rays do not forgive.
“So you can’t cheat?”
The lieutenant laughed. The one who wants to cheat, cheats anyway. He takes a ruined picture, sometimes even a crust and corrects it to make it appear by another author. Or he manipulates it.
(…)
“I’ll give you an example. There is a painting school in Seville. They are all still lives, painted on oblong horizontal paintings. Generally, they represent tables with three groups of objects. A basket of fruit, or say, of loaves, of quinces.
If we have a dishonest merchant he takes the picture, he cuts it in three pieces, takes the basket with peaches, and passes it off as an Italian still life, Lombard, for example of Fede Galizia or Panfilo Nuvoloni, and earns a lot of money.”
“But can’t you see it?”
“Of course you can see. It would be enough to go and look at the margins to discover that the canvas is cut. But who does it?”
“The experts”
“Well. Of course there are those honest and competent, but there are also the so-called experts who are neither this nor that”.

(..)
“Most of the so-called experts work in agreement with the antique dealers and promote real poor paintings by attributing them to this and that, producing expert reports full of gaps where, for example, they never specify, and never means never, the conservation status of the object”.

(…)
“And is there no control?”
No. Because there is no register of authorized experts. And whoever does an assessment practically does not bear responsibility for it. At worst, he says he was wrong. His or her prestige is at stake, but they do not end up in jail. It would be enough to make a law in which it is established that whoever signs an appraisal is responsible for half of the value attributed to the object and then, yes, we could be certain. Instead, as things are, anyone can write that a crust is a masterpiece. There are certain university professors who do not deny an expertise to no one, and most of the time they do not even pay taxes”.

Modigliani1

Art -Testiamo: Modigliani, a wasted opportunity

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Part of our job is to visit as many exhibits as possible. This is why we went to Livorno. The city that gave birth to Modigliani, exhibits his works not far from the place where the famous “heads” were found. Goliardic prank that, perhaps, marked the destiny of Modigliani‘s works, constantly questioned on autography.
Just before the exhibition entrance, we find the “comment book”, where the last one catches our eye. The note expresses great disappointment.

Past the cerulean tent, we found a conspicuous group of various artists, with who Modigliani shared not only a few years of artistic life, but also, patrons, like Zborowski, who paid him since 1915, and collectors like Netter. The importance of the Netter collection in the history of Modi’ is particularly evident in this exhibition and this gives a great insight on the market dynamics around Modigliani. 

Among all works, our attention is caught by “Hanka Zborowska” (pencil on paper, 42 x 26 cm), and on how the sheet of paper used could be part of a block on which Amedeo drew. In fact, looking at the page in raking light, we can see a tracing mark, due to the pressure of the pencil on the previous sheet, that probably drew a portrait.


The space reserved for Modi’ is the very intimate, perhaps too much, only a fifth of the exhibited works. Leaving this area, we find ourselves again among his contemporaries, belonging to two great collections mentioned in the subtitle of the exhibition, Netter and Alexander
We go out, leaving the cerulean tent behind, and we think back about the comment read about an hour before. In fact, we also experienced a sense of unfinished: the sentence “300 francs a month for the material needed, canvases, colors” mentioned in one of the explanatory panels comes to our mind.


We would have loved to know what canvases, what colors. Crucial information especially for this artist, from whom high and low quality copies are known, and for the moment market goes through. We would have loved if some scientific elements would have been shared, so to share understanding of his technique and therefore his poetry.
As a side note, we, always looking for repentances on the works on display, have discovered some interesting details. We share with you some images, but why not going and verifying directly?

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El Greco on tour

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Are you in Paris for these holidays and you have not yet booked the visit to the Leonardo exhibition?
Perhaps not everyone knows that in these very same days at the Galerie Sud-Est du Grand Palais there is a surprising exhibition on El Greco. European painter par excellence, also in his name: half in Spanish and half in Italian but which unmistakably identifies a … Greek, after some battling in various European courts, he ends up in the austere Toledo to exercise a knowingly extravagant art, with a unique technique. 

Art-Test was asked to investigate several artworks by him, the atelier and his followers and also the only El Greco painting in the Uffizi collection Saint Francis and San John the Evangelist, recently presented at the conference in Bettona. The artwork was there acclaimed as a certainly autograph work, and it is indeed of excellent quality.


Painter who has visibly inspired so many artists from Cocteau to Picasso, El Greco seems nowadays a little neglected. No one seems to really talk about this exhibition. But he still give some satisfaction in the art market, and for those in search of true art, there is not only the great Leonardo. El Greco is also worth a trip to Paris. Strikes permitting.

hals

ARTESTIAMO – seen, read, observed for you – A family … torn to pieces (and then reunited … or almost)

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During our last trip to Belgium, we visited the exhibition DUTCH SPRING: Frans Hals Portraits A Family Reunion  at Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium.
Until May 19, it will be possible to enjoy this small exhibition that focuses on on the innovative approach to the “family portraits”  of the Flemish painter.

Beyond the excellent quality of the paintings, including a beautiful portrait by Rembrandt, what intrigued us the most, was the philological reconstruction of a painting, probably dismembered between the end of the 18th and the beginning from the nineteenth century, for unknown reasons , and now in different collections.

The idea of the exhibition was born as a consequence of the purchase by the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio, USA), in 2011 of a painting by Frans Hals “Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape”, and of the recent restoration of the painting, attributed to the same artist and kept at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, “Tree Children of the Van”.

It was in fact made evident that these works were originally part of a single painting, to which a third, now in a private collection (not shown), also belongs.

Thanks to the restoration, but above all to the diagnostic campaign carried out during the restoration, it was possible to understand how the Belgian painting hid some figures, probably covered at the time when the painting was dismembered. And this prompted further research.
Using images and diagnostics performed during the restoration, this research was also aimed at highlighting the artist’s characteristics of innovation in his contemporary landscape.

The news is that this research has not been left visible only to specialists. The multimedia installation accompanying the exhibition is excellent and fully demonstrates the educational potential of diagnostics. Thanks to an brilliant realization, very intuitive and rich in information and details, it becomes clear what the vicissitudes of a large format painting could be, its possible transformation over the centuries, because taste or exhibition necessity.  It also allows a clear reading of the “balances” within a representation that is intended at describing also the hidden dialogues between the protagonists.
Nothing has been left to chance, even the graphics are elegant and appealing, and the results are visible.
During the period in which we stayed in the room where the installation was, many people stopped to look at the whole 7 min video. An investment worth doing.
Rubens anyone? Brafa report from Bruxelles

Rubens anyone? Brafa report from Bruxelles

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Museum pieces again this year at BRAFA in Brussels. Far from the haughtiness of TEFAF, the Belgians continue to attract more and more visitors (64 thousand against the 61 thousand of the 2017 edition) and to offer very interesting objects.
The star of the exhibition is definitely a RUBENS, recently rediscovered, after appearing at Christie’s auction in Paris in 2015, but with an attribution to “Paul de Vos and atelier Rubens”.
A careful eye, and probably a consultation of the “Corpus Rubenianum” where the painting was presented as van Thulden, led Klaas Muller to win the work for 145,000 euros.
The diagnostic analysis and restoration then did the rest. Numerous repentances, Rubens’ confident brush and the modus operandi of the atelier, where everyone takes part to the work according to his specialties: Rubens for the figures, Paul Vos for the animals and Jan Wildens for the landscape. It is believed that this artwork is the pendant of the painting, still missing, Caledonian Boar Hunt, made for Gian Francesco Guido di Bagno, papal nuncio in Holland.
Not only Rubens, at the fair, but also Jacob Jordaens, and many other Flemish, along with modern art, where several Legers stand out (we counted at least 6) as a tribute to the exhibition that will soon be open in Brussels, and lots of contemporary art. But also African art, jewelry to turn heads, archeology and design. 10000 objects of all prices from one thousand to one million. We are now waiting to see how successful it has been in terms of sales, but we already saw several dots on the tags.