"The Getty will get its Turner"



Modern Rome -- Campo Vaccino, J.M.W. Turner (1839)

Last year, the Getty Museum bought the Turner "Modern Rome" at auction for £29.7m (setting a new record for the artist which was not surprising given the work had only come to market once in its 171 history and experts considered it to be Turner's finest landscape of an Italian city). The painting had resided on loan in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh since 1978 before being transferred to Sotheby's in London for the auction. However, following the sale, its export to LA was delayed in an attempt to find a UK buyer able to match the hefty price tag and prevent the national loss, a practise previously discussed on this blog (see here and here).

No buyer was found and the export license was finally granted earlier this month with the Getty now preparing to celebrate the arrival of its "new pride and joy," due to go on display March 8. But is it ok for the Getty to "celebrate"? Donn Zaretsky has posted on the hypocrisy of "celebrating" a foreign museum's loss while fiercely opposing deaccessioning by national institutions such as Fisk University or the University of Iowa (the former resulting in extensive and ongoing litigation over the fate of the Stieglitz Collection and the latter almost succeeding in the enactment of legislation to create an endowment fund for as many as 1,000 student scholarships to avoid having to sell the Pollock "Mural"). While I fully agree that the anti-deaccessioning police's stance is often ridden with double standards and contradictory arguments, in this case I don't think that their failure to denounce the ethics of the Getty's acquisition is hypocritical because the painting was only on loan at the National Galleries. In other words, no deaccessioning took place -- it was offered for sale by a private, not a public, seller: a descendant of the 5th Earl of Rosebery. So for once it seems we can all celebrate in unison without raising any eyebrows.

Hiatus

Art Meets Law will be back in two weeks due to conflicting work commitments. Stay tuned!

Russia retaliates

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON D.C. The Chabad organization (based in Brooklyn, New York) has for decades sought the restitution of the Schneerson Library, "a collection of 12,000 books and 50,000 religious documents assembled by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement over two centuries prior to World War II, and kept since in Russia." The New York Times reports that just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a court in Moscow ordered the return of the artifacts to the organization but the judgment was subsequently set-aside by Russian authorities. The District Court for the District of Columbia then ordered Russia to repatriate the collection in July 2010 but Russia took no part in the proceedings and contested the court's jurisdiction to adjudicate a claim based on "Russian" assets, located in Russia (I suspect the court's jurisdiction was grounded in the "expropriation exception" under the FSIA - cf the Pisarro claim on the jurisdictional question). Russia retaliated by putting pressure on state-run museums in the country (including the Hermitage and the Pushkin) to cancel scheduled loans to US museums alleging that the loaned works could be seized in the US to compel compliance with the Schneerson judgment. American diplomats insisted that was not the case and I believe that's a correct statement of the law - the loaned works would be immune from seizure under the FSIA and since title over these works is not contested, I don't think they could be attached. Nevertheless, the scheduled loans have been canceled as a result of the fallout which will now be noticeably felt in the US this year as several blockbuster shows miss out on promised loaned works.

"All bark, no bite"

SAN FRANCISCO. The New York Times has reported that Jeff Koons LLC and Park Life gallery have reached a settlement in the dispute regarding the alleged infringement of the artist's intellectual property rights by the gallery's sales of balloon dog bookends (see here for background). The artist agreed not to "pursue" the claim if the gallery didn't tie the bookends to Koons in any way, which they had not done nor had any intention of doing. As a result of the deal, the gallery will file to dismiss the declaratory judgment suit sought in federal court. The Canadian manufacturer of the bookends, Imm-Living, received a similar letter stating the artist was dropping any intellectual claims if the bookends didn't "try to tie Koons to the bookends." Done, said the bookend maker, provided they received a letter confirming that the settlement was final.

ART PICK OF THE MONTH (Jan. '11)

"Lives of the Artists"
By Calvin Tomkins (2008 ed.)
 

As the title suggests, this is a collection of ten biographical profiles (formerly published in The New Yorker over the last ten years) of some of the most significant (and interesting/controversial) contemporary artists including Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Jasper Johns and Maurizio Cattelan. Notwithstanding the uncontrollable, inexplicable feelings of like/ dislike one has when viewing an artwork, the intellectual process underlying the artwork is often lost on a "naked" viewing. Although some have argued that this loss is irrelevant and what matters is the viewer's own, personal experience of the art, I myself do value and in fact attempt to acquire a deeper understanding of an artist's intellectual and creative processes. Biography is one way to gain such an insight because the way artists live is an integral part of who they are and how they create art. Tompkins' intimate portraits of the chosen artists are not only memorable and intriguing but also poignant and meaningful in the sense that each incident or fact recounted masterfully adds to one's understanding of the artist and his work - nothing is superficial or superfluous. An incredibly rich resource for anyone interested in contemporary art.

LINKS

 
• NEW YORK. Titian may have been the star at the Sotheby's Old Masters sale but he wasn't alone: 16 auction records were set at the sale, which "totaled $90.6 million, just shy of its $91.8 million high estimate." Three key reasons accounting for the Titian beating the previous record for the artist ($13.6m versus the new record of $16.9m) are the exceedingly few Titians remaining in private hands, the  clear provenance of the painting ("A Sacra Conversazione" has only exchanged hands 6 times) and the fact that it's a "multi-figured" painting (generally, price increases with the number of figures depicted). 
  

  

  A Sacra Conversazione, Tiziano Vecelli (circa 1560)

• Donn Zaretsky points us in the direction of a fascinating article in the FT.com about the "prolific and amazingly persistent" forger Mark Landis. Unbelievably, his motivations were not financial - Landis donated the forged works as a tribute to his parents. Equally surprising is that no criminal liability arises from his actions, however "annoying and disruptive," as no loss was suffered by any of the victims (loss is a required element under the criminal fraud statute).