Art Test

About Art Test

Posts by Art Test:

Facebook Skin

To Selfie or not  to selfie

, 0

To Selfie or not  to selfie

Selfie” in 2013 was elected as “word of the year”, and still maintains its place in the vocabulary. Selfies are not just an ephemeral fashion and it doesn’t matter if the first assonance is with selfish. Being is sharing and if you don’t share, you are nobody.


Art often ends up being just a background. And more than enjoying the moment, it appears a spasmodic anxiety of showing that moment in which we are ourselves in front of that important monument. Works of art and more or less famous architectures are often perceived only as an impressive scenography, and the time of the visit is consumed in a few quick gestures: framing, shooting, posting.

It is, clearly, a transitory, ephemeral moment: the sharing of our selfie becomes the essential part, the place where it is done becomes secondary, however fascinating or famous is the location, it all boils down to a paradoxical and grotesque snapshot in which the viewer becomes an integral part of the work of art, as protagonist, of course.

What is needed is to attract attention, and the only requirement concerning the artwork is that it has to be photogenic, amazing, in short, “instagrammable”. 

But this has also a positive side. In fact, this ever more pervasive need to show the place where we are, feeds curiosity and more and more “influencers” are attracted by the desire to immortalise themselves right in front of a work of art or monument. This could be a powerful tool for cultural dissemination.

More and more museums, which previously prohibited taking photographs, now are the first to invite and photograph the artworks, invent hashtags to publicise and share news about the exhibitions or the planned events.


This is a different way of bringing more people closer to art. Certainly very direct and effective.
Whether it is artistic or not, therefore, today the “selfie” represents a creative medium to convey culture, together with thoughts, stated of mind, social conditions.

 

Federico Zeri confesses himself!

0

Mai con i quadri

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”.

Art -Testiamo: Modigliani, a wasted opportunity

0

Modigliani1

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?

El Greco on tour

0

El Greco on tour

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.

AAA Leonardo wanted

0

The year of Leonardo is about to end, the 500th anniversary of his death.

In Italy mostly ancillary exhibitions have been organized, the biggest event being the great exhibition at the Louvre.

In France, where he spent a couple of years, mostly very sick, and died, they have organized a big celebration. Many works of the Italian genius have arrived in Paris for a blockbuster exhibition whose visit needs to be booked in advance, although it does not seem  to offer anything really new.

However, bravely, as Carmen Bambach writes (The Art Newspaper Dec 2019), some of the reflectographies are also exhibited, both of the works on show and also of others, like the National Gallery’s Virgin of the Rocks that now has its own exhibition in London. In that case, thankfully, a number of diagnostic images are presented; however, in a setting that imitates a restoration lab, rather than a diagnostic lab.

The Art Newspaper (Dec 2019) also reports that this was the year with the largest number of publications on Leonardo (more than 250!).

But what have we learned? What do we know more now than a year ago?

Renato Barilli writes on Artribune (Nov-Dec 2019) “no one has accepted my admonition to remove from his safe works at least the Belle Ferronière, of which there is no news in his time, besides the fact of completely contradicting all of the stylistic features that are usually attributed to the genius of Vinci.

For example, to advance studies on this author, it would have been interesting to compare the Xrays images of the Gioconda, the Musico, Saint John the Baptist and the Belle Ferronière (similar in size and support). All the radiographs were published earlier and you can see the comparison now here.

Leonardo da Vinci – Gioconda 
Ph Louvre Museum eRx image 
Leonardo da Vinci – San Giovanni Battista 
Ph  Louvre Museum  Rx image 
Leonardo da Vinci – Musico 
Ph Biblioteca Pinacoteca Accademia Ambrosiana  Rx image
Leonardo da Vinci – La Belle Ferronière
Ph  Louvre Museum  Rx 

We now await the discoveries concerning the Vitruvian Man promised in two volumes published by Giunti – the first in January – and in a major exhibition that will take place in Cagliari in May 2020 organized by the State Museum of Sardinia, all with the title  “The deception of the Vitruvian Man. The algorithm of the divine proportion”. Here the trailer

In fact, there is still a lot to be investigated on Leonardo and, who knows, may 2020 will be the year in which a totally unknown Leonardo will be revealed. Stay tuned!

hals

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

, , 0

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.
lubec

LuBeC 2019: the possible future of Culture: musea as metropolitan hub to resist against barbarism?

, , , 0

Among fairs dedicated to cultural heritage, Lucca Cultural Heritage (LuBeC), now in its fifteenth edition, has found a specific place. Its original and original vocation is to participate in the debate between public administration and business and to generate concrete actions for a culture that produces not only economic but also social results.

The landscape of public cultural heritage management is inevitably changing and LuBeC focuses on this transformation in different areas.

The increasing digitization, with new tools and ways of management, is addressed in the “digitalization, archive and open data” area.

The reflections proposed in the other spaces, examine the need to adapt to this change and manage it in the best way, guaranteeing its economic, social and environmental sustainability and promoting public participation in cultural activities.

It becomes relevant to question how much the culture industry can be incisive on the economic and social balance of a city or how much making everything “usable” to tourists, especially in some places already saturated, won’t let citizen feel extraneous to their territory. This reflection inevitably binds the vision of a museum as a cultural hub and a center of social education and therefore a place in which to form the conscience of citizens. This, in particular, could be the mission of civic museums. The defense of the territory and its enhancement inexorably pass through the shared knowledge of its history. An objective that can be achieved using, for example, new tools such as gamification, which are appealing, especially for new generations.

All the themes proposed in this edition are also in line with the European Agenda for Culture. LuBec will thus contribute to the international debate on what are the synergies to be implemented to contribute to the smooth functioning of culture as a fundamental cog in gears of society.

The LuBec awaits us on 3 and 4 October. The program and info on inscriptions at this link: https://www.lubec.it/en/exhibiting-lubec-digital-technology.html

lubec
saloni

That’s fair!

, , , , , , 0

Even if the sector in general appears to be in a bit of a crisis, there are still quite a number of fairs organized on conservation, in Italy and in the world. In our country, this year there will be two within a few months.

In the International Restoration Fair in Ferrara, (18th to 20th September), the eye-catching theme is the project RESTAURO MADE IN ITALY
The goal is to maintain international visibility and reiterate Italy as one of the world’s reference points. The fair will also be associated with the first edition of the Restoration Week, which will see the launch of the APT (Association of Preservation Technologies) – European Chapter. A new European network for the restoration and enhancement of cultural heritage. We also signal the interesting conference “The meaning and marketing of restoration in Italy and target Countries: an overview”, on Thursday 19th, where the meaning of the term “restoration” in the various countries and cultures will be discussed.

The appointment with the Florence Art and Restoration Fair is from 13 to 15 May 2020, at Palazzo dei Congressi.
Also this year Heritech – the Future of Heritage Science and Technology – scientific conference, will be organized in the same period and place of the trade show and this is why Art-Test has chosen to participate in this event.

The 1st edition of FLORENCE HERI-TECH – The Future of Heritage Science and Technologies, two years ago, welcomed leading researchers and scholars from all over the world to present and discuss innovative techniques and technologies. The proposed contributions were 180, with the involvement of public institutions, universities, companies and museums. Art-Test Florence, which has always actively participated in research, had presented 4 papers, and was awarded “for the commitment and constant study in the search for new scientific approaches” with the Palazzo Spinelli Award “Research and Development of new technologies qualified for cultural heritage“.
We are still preparing the contribution for the 2020 edition, and knowing that Florence will become the international heart of restoration and cultural heritage, we will be proud to be part of it.

saloni
biaf

60 years of dreams

, , , , 0

Next 21st September, the BIAF, the Biennial International Antiques Fair of Florence, will open its doors in Palazzo Corsini. It will be sixty years after the first edition, noticeably in a very different context, compared with when one in whitch the Bellini brothers commenced the adventure.

For two weeks the city will attract, also relying on its charm, as the past,  art dealers and collectors from all over the world. Although the antiquarian sector, and Florence, are no longer those in which, for example, Bernard Berenson lived (and died, unfortunately, the same year of the BIAF first edition).

The seventy-seven galleries participating this year are for example specialized in various sectors, including contemporary art. Unthinkable in the days when “Italian Renaissance painters” of the Lithuanian connoisseur became an international bestseller.

The peculiarity of BIAF remains, however, the promotion of Italian art in the market. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, and all other artworks on display, are made by Italian Masters or by foreign artists who worked in Italy.

Sixty years ago connoisseurs like Berenson, who contributed to raise interest in the Italian old master, were unchallenged authorities in attributions. This too has changed today. In the most prestigious international fairs, artworks are admitted to the sale only after having passed a careful scrutiny, done also by scientific means. It is the so-called “vetting”. The BIAF also has a Vetting committee. Divided into 3 commissions: Painting and Drawings, Sculpture and Furniture and Decorative Arts. They are formed by art historians, and restorers, of international renown, with an undoubted knowledge and an authoritative preparation.
However, scientific diagnostics seems to be still absent from this procedure, which is essential to guarantee buyers.

Notwithstanding, diagnostics offers more than this. As Maurizio Salomon, an art historian and gallery owner, explains in one of the commercials (#amolarteperche) created to promote the fair. The desire to make a discovery is often the drive for the collector. Finding a “pentimento”, a preparatory drawing, or details that are not visible to the naked eye, makes you fall in love. Few occasions allow you to have this kind of feeling, hopes, dreams. And this is still the same as sixty years ago.

biaf
diagnosticanoncosta

The costs of not doing it!

, , , , , , 0

The costs for a diagnostic campaign to authenticate a painting may seem high, but they are always a good investment.
Without a painting having positively passed a series of tests to determine the compatibility of methods and materials with the period or the envisaged author, there is the risk of running into a fraud, which can be millionaire and deceive also auction houses of the calibre of Sotheby’s.

In this case, the possible scam that led to the arrest of both the painter and the antiquarian involved, covers a total of over 200 million euros and well-known and much-studied authors, from El Greco to Frans Hals.
Naturally it is neither the first nor it will  be the last scam we read about; the chronicles report more and more frequently of similar cases. The market is full of fakes for sale. Counterfeiting of artworks can however be uncovered and indeed, for example, produced other arrests recently in Bologna

How to avoid risking the unwary purchase? Invest in serious scientific analyses, and at a qualified laboratory, not involved in the market.

It is an investment, not a cost. The cost is not the diagnostics, it cost is not to do it!

diagnosticanoncosta

Load More