Money, Fraud, And Scandal: Art Highlights Of 2011

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Where there’s money, there’s usually crime.  Where there’s big money, there’s big crime. In the art market of 2011, there was both, and lots of it.  Here, a roundup of the major events:  (In a future post, I’ll talk about what it all means for collectors.)

Despite apparent economic uncertainties – measurable in the rollercoaster ride Sotheby’s shareholders endured as shares lurched from a 3-1/2 year high of $54.41 in April to $50.57 in May before closing out the year at a sorrowful 28.28 – 2011 proved yet another banner year for an art market that shows no signs of stopping.  “Bubble” warnings come and go; great art keeps on selling.

And while some have complained that 2011’s “top ten” sales total of $413.6 million rings up below that of 2010’s $698.6 million, it also represents a somewhat steadier market.  Notably, too, auction sales paled in comparison to private treaty sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, not to mention various private sales through galleries and private dealers; while no auction price crashed the $100 million mark last year, a group of four Matisse bronzes realized more than $120 million through private treaty at Sotheby’s, for instance.

In all of these, one trend stands out sharply: Modern and Contemporary art, which lost some ground to Impressionism in 2009, has climbed its say back up to lead the rest.

Following, 2011’s top ten – and one notable extra.

1. Clyfford Still, 1949-A-No.1 – sold for $61.7 million against an estimate of $25-35 million, November 9, Sotheby’s
2. Roy Lichtenstein, I Can See The Whole Room … And There’s Nobody In It!(1961) –   $43.2  million against an estimate of $35-45 million, November 8, Christie’s.
3. Francesco Guardi, Canal Grande for $42.7 million (estimate $26.6-44.3 million), July 6, Sotheby’s
4. Pablo Picasso, La Lecture (1932) for $40.5 million, (estimate $18,570,000 – $27,850,000) February 8, Sotheby’s. (This work was painted in the same year as the 2010 record-priced Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust which brought $106.5 million in May, 2010.)
5. Gustav Klimt, Litzlberg am Attersee (c.1914-1915), $40.4 million against an estimate of $25-35 million, Sotheby’s, November 2.
6. Egon Schiele, Houses With Laundry (1914), estimate $35.4-48.5 million, brought  $40 million at Sotheby’s. June 22.
7. Andy Warhol, Self Portrait (1963-1964) – pulled in $38.4 million (estimate $20-30 million), Christie’s, May 11.
8. Francis Bacon, Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud (1964), for $37 million (estimate $11.2-14.5 million), Sotheby’s, February 10. The painting sold within 7 minutes under intense bidding.
9. George Stubbs, Gimcrack On Newmarket Heath With A Trainer, A Stable-Lad, And A Jockey (c. 1765), for $36 million against an estimate of $32,160,000 – $48,240,000, Christie’s, July 5.
10. Mark Rothko, Untitled No. 17 (1961), estimated at $18-22 million sold for $33.7 million at Christie’s, May 11.

Special mention: Qi Baishi, Eagle Standing On Pine Tree (1946), a commission for Chaing-Kai Shek, made the highest price of all works sold at auction in 2011, realizing $65.5 million, about triple its estimate, at China Guardian, Beijing, May 22.

The biggest art stories for 2011, however, were not about art or artists, but about crime – from the brazen (the New York sommelier who walked into a San Francisco art gallery and walked out with a Picasso tucked under one arm) to the extraordinarily complex (the German couple whose 30-year history of forgeries involved invented family histories, false exhibition labels, the assistance of a major 20^th-century art scholar, and tens of millions of dollars).  Here, a sampling:

In May, Lothar Senke, the Count of Waldenstein, is tried and convicted in Stuttgart, Germany, along with three accomplices.  The group created over 1000 forgeries of Giacometti sculptures – 200 of which they sold, over a period of seven years, for a total of an estimated 8 million euros before police moved in. The kicker: Senke wasn’t really a Count, either – just a former railway employee.

In August, the Art Newspaper reports that art thefts are on the rise in the US and Canada, with international art crime totaling some $6 billion a year. The report follows the arrest of sommelier Mark Lugo in San Francisco on charges of art theft.

July: Lugo, who had worked as a waiter and sommelier at some of New York City’s trendiest watering spots, wanders into Rowland Weinstein’s San Francisco gallery and lumbers out with a Picasso drawing, which he brings back to his hotel room. Later, police raid Lugo’s  New Jersey apartment and discover 11 other works by artists such as Fernand Leger, all stolen. Mused one investigator on the case, “He just likes art.”

October: It is the story that make the “Thomas Crowne Affair” look like “Little Red Riding Hood.” The Beltracchi affair, in which a German hippie-turned-multi-millionaire, his wife, and her sister concoct a family history of collectors and art salons, extensive correspondence, exhibition histories at galleries that never were, and exquisitely rendered paintings – all forgeries – comes to an end.  Wolfgang Beltracchi is sentenced to six years in a plea deal; his wife, Helene, to four.

While Beltracchi executed the forgeries – investigators say there may have been 100 in all – it was Helene who invented the tales behind them: inheritance, she claimed, from a grandfather who had, in turn, acquired them from art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, a German Jew who died in 1937.  Stickers on the backs of some of the works identified them as coming from the Flechtheim collection.

Except: there was no such collection.  There was, in fact, no Alfred Flechtheim, though Beltracchi ingeniously painted his portrait.

Among those duped in the scheme estimated to have brought the Beltracchis about 14 million euros: Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and the esteemed British gallery, Dickinson. While the Beltracchis serve out their term, investigations are continuing.  Reportedly, meantime, Wolfgang has taken to painting portraits of his prison guards, to their apparent delight.

December: After a $17 million painting by Jackson Pollock is declared to be a forgery, the renowned New York City gallery that sold the work shuts down after 165 years.  Knoedler Galleries, whose former director, Ann Freedman, is said to have sold the painting to a London collector in 2007, is not directly implicated in the case; but Freedman is said to have represented this — and several paintings by Robert Motherwell (another Knoedler artist) which are also now declared false – during her tenure at Knoedler. The situation leads the New York Times to describe the situation as a “parade of paintings and drawings sold for years by some of New York’s most elite dealers as the work of Modernist Masters” that “actually consists of expert forgeries.”

Investigators have homed in on one Glafira Rosales, a Long Island dealer who sold the paintings through Freedman, claiming that hey came from an anonymous collector.  That Freedman did not demand documentation for any of the paintings suggests that the allure of a large commission may have clouded her professionalism – a crime of sloppiness, perhaps, but probably not collusion.  However, investigations continue, and we’ll be sure to learn further secrets and intrigues as 2012 unfolds.

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Via: Forbes