Paintings of great value and daub. The main thing is not to spare paint

Efficiency of Public Relations: "Brilliant" muffs

If I take up a brush and paint some kind of landscape or portrait on the canvas, then any person, looking at my work, can safely say: what a daub! And it will be right, because I can not 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 pictures 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 is a continuous triumph of daub in art.

From the moment modern painting was born, 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 blackboard). Photography did not exist then, but many wanted to have their own portrait or an image of their relatives. The views of the surrounding forests and fields were also valued. We still like to hang reproductions of various paintings in our apartments, and to whom the material condition allows, then the originals themselves. In the Middle Ages, rich people also liked to decorate the walls of houses and castles with paintings, and some of the rich amassed huge collections. Someone 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 didn't need paintings that depicted real life - they needed biblical scenes that would look like real ones - like photographs of real events (although they had no idea about photographs then). People had to believe in Christ, Mary, the apostles and other religious figures, and for this the biblical characters had to look like living people.

What were the requests of customers - such were the pictures. Crazy ideas sketched on the canvas by an inept hand were of no use to anyone. No one would buy a portrait of himself that would not look like the original, and even more so one that, in principle, did not resemble the image of a person. In those days, to paint a portrait, an artist who mastered the craft of a painter was needed. Not being a professional, you couldn't sell paintings and make a living. Those who collected paintings already needed not just casts of 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 picture stood out among the bulk of high-quality handicraft products. It could be a unique technique like Leonardo da Vinci, an innovative use of light and shadow like Van Eyck, fantastic images like Bosch ...

15-17 centuries in Europe is the heyday of world painting. By this time, in the economically developed states of Europe (Venice, Florence, the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany), a sufficient number of customers for paintings 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 universally recognized great painters of the Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo Buonarroti, several dozen more equally outstanding artists worked at that time: the Dutch Robert Campin, Jan Van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Brueghel Sr., Peter Paul Rubens, Antonis Van Dyck, Jan Vermeer, the Italians Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, Caravaggio, the Germans Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein Jr., the Spaniard Diego Velazquez... All of them had an original manner of depicting reality, but at the same time they were united by the fact that they all wrote superbly exclusively realistic pictures. Realistic not according to the plot - the same biblical pictures have never been so. Realistic - by the similarity depicted with real life. No one painted any cubes or squares - supposedly this is how he sees the world, since "masterpieces" in a similar style would not find their buyer. The customers of the 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 abstractionist exhibition: “What kind of ass is this?”. I note that with regard to the paintings of Raphael or Correggio, no one has ever said anything like that, including Khrushchev - anyone who has eyesight understands what is depicted on them: Madonnas in the form of beautiful women, and not some terrible and incomprehensible creatures like in the paintings of Picasso . 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. The 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 roof, and all experiments were allowed only within this framework.

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 can be counted on the fingers. Against the background of the masters of the Renaissance, it is extremely difficult to stand out - 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. Especially when it comes to 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, the press began to play an increasingly important role in the life of the states of Western Europe, which had already entered the era of the industrial revolution, then “great artists of a new type” began to appear. In other words - muffins.

Who specifically redirected buyers of painting to 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” the post-impressionists, the Frenchman Guillaume Apollinaire promoted 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 conditions when truly outstanding works of art are in state museums or owned by churches that do not sell their masterpieces for any money, why collect collections? - From what is considered fashionable. What became fashionable was acquired by buyers.

And how was the fashion created for this or that "painter"? 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. It was a real challenge to society. People, seeing “such”, were indignant, all this was procrastinated in the press and bohemian places, the fame of the author and his paintings grew - and this is how the fashion for this or that character appeared. First, in narrow circles, and then, if you're lucky, then the general public learned about the emergence of a new "great painter." “If they talk about you, then 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 mediocre people in a bohemian environment realized that daub - this is also a hot commodity, so such paintings literally swept the market. Many great muffs in the future started with realistic paintings, but switched to daubing in time. And some did not need to change anything - they initially did not know how to draw.

In different periods, there was a fashion for one artistic direction, then for another - impressionism, post-impressionism, abstractionism, cubism, expressionism .... And fashion is the main engine of trade. As soon as the "artist" became a brand - since then everything that was 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 craft industry. The fashion for this or that muff, 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 money that began to be paid 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 obtained in the world financial markets, as well as during the looting of state property in Russia, simply did not know where to put them - as a result, any feces smeared on canvas became an extremely hot commodity.

With whom did the triumph of daubing in art begin?

The path 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 frank daubs, like the canvas “Sailing to Venice”. If Venice was the same as in his picture, then hardly anyone would have sailed to it at all ... 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 painting with a paint brush (which was used to paint fences at that time) and paints something ...

The Frenchman Edgar Degas picked up the baton next - he knew how to draw, and sometimes he made wonderful pictures, but for some reason Edgar was drawn to paint the ugliest naked women who were getting ready to wash, wash or just finished water procedures ... - For such drawings, they are expelled from 1 art school course 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 dramatically.

At this time, the "great impressionists" Claude Monet (who should not be confused with the famous artist Edouard Manet) and Auguste Renoir are creating. Renoir knew how to draw, but he, like Degas, was often brought into outright daubing. Monet at first also tried to become a real artist, but realized that he would not succeed - as a result, he can be called one of the most striking successors of Joseph Turner's work - Monet's landscapes are almost as terrible as those of his predecessor.

His main "masterpiece" is "Rouen Cathedral, west facade in sunlight" - a typical children's daub. Monet riveted a lot of works in this “style”, and all of them are still popular: “Water Lilies” (without a name you don’t immediately recognize that these are lilies on the water ...) went at auction for 36.7 million dollars (2007. ), Waterloo Bridge (pictured below) sold for $35.9 million (2007),

“Pond with water lilies…” (compared to “Waterloo Bridge” it can even be called a painting) - for 33 million dollars (1998). The Times newspaper in 2009 conducted a survey among readers, the results of which determined the most popular artists of the 20th century - Claude Monet took 4th place!

At the turn of the century, the 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 of our time? Cezanne 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. However, 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 dollars (!), 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 readers of The Times put Cezanne in 2nd place among the artists of the 20th century!

The mentally ill Van Gogh painted as 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 a biography of a "great artist". This is evidenced by the prices of his paintings - $ 40.3 million for a terrible 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 Cypress Wheat Field, $71 million for a self-portrait, and $82.5 million for 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 as a boy a little older than Van Gogh's boy. This is a clear minus for him as a "great artist". In addition, Gauguin was not as crazy as Van Gogh, although there is a wonderful episode in his biography when he came to visit Van Gogh and eventually cut off his ear - this is really a weighty claim to "greatness"! However, the demand for Gauguin's paintings is not as great as for Van Gogh - only a few of his paintings have been sold for more than 30 million dollars.

The almost dwarf Toulouse-Lautrec was crazy about the ugly French whores, whom he embodied in his no less ugly paintings. If you look at the picture below under the conditional name "whores on inspection", you will have an idea of ​​​​the creative manner of Toulouse-Lautrec.

He was rather a master of the sketch, but he never bothered to write a full-fledged picture. Compared with Gauguin and Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec is completely unpopular, and the Norwegian Munch is clearly not up to them, although his biography is very personal: he constantly suffered from terrible depression and was treated several times for mental disorders. Several of his paintings appear in the list of "100 most expensive paintings in history", but that's all.

But the Austrian Gustav Klimt is really the greatest post-impressionist. He is as popular as Van Gogh, and his most expensive painting was bought for $135 million! And what is most surprising for the great artist of the 20th century - the picture shows a woman with a human face! All the remaining space is occupied by a 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 the best artists of the 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 reign in the art of the 20th century - Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso." It is difficult to say why exactly these two, because there were hundreds of such muffs, but the ways of fashion are inscrutable. Pablo, by the way, and according to a poll of readers of The Times, took 1st place.

Spaniard Pablo Picasso knew how to draw, but did not want to. He was far from the level of Da Vinci (who does not believe - look at his early painting "Boy with a Pipe" - not bad, but not outstanding), but simply good paintings were already irrelevant in the 20th century. Daubing became more and more fashionable, and Pablo decided to sail at the behest of the waves. And he did great!

In 1907, he painted the painting "The Girls of Avignon" - it became the first work in the Cubist genre. At first, the artist was embarrassed to show this daub to strangers, which, in general, is understandable: five absolutely terrible creatures are looking at you from the picture and showing such nonsense to others is like saying publicly: I'm crazy! I am a complete psycho! However, Pablo ventured to expose his "masterpiece" and didn't guess. No one hid him in a hospital and Picasso continued to spoil the canvases. He put into practice the postulate of dialectical materialism: quantity develops into quality. In this case, reputation. Picasso painted for about 70 years and it is not surprising that he became the most popular muff of our time.

His Portrait of Dora Maar (purchased for $95.2 million at auction in 2006, pictured above), Woman Seated in a Garden ($49.5 million in 1999), Dream (48.4 million dollars in 1997), "Nude in a black chair" (45.1 million dollars in 1999) - entered the "golden fund" of the daub of the 20th century.

There were many glorious painters in the 20th century - much more than great artists in the Renaissance, which is not surprising: to break - not to build, to spoil canvases - not to paint. Our Vasya Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich were also noted in this field - although they are outstanding, they are not great muffs by world standards. Of course, the Russians have their own special spirituality, but in the daub, it did not manifest itself too much. By the middle of the 20th century, the American Pollack and the Dutchman de Kooning, "abstract expressionists", began to set the tone for 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 have called this highest degree of daubing “abstract expressionism”, and I would say that this is completely insanity daubing! 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 just the pinnacle of the daub of the 20th century!

An abstract expressionist is a person who, in principle, does not draw. Van Gogh painted at least at the level of a 5-year-old child, but Pollak 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 the plot. He danced in ecstasy on the canvases spread on the floor, completely immersed in creativity, splashing and pouring paints under complete control. “Painting,” he said, “has a life of its own. I try to let her." There is even nothing 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 so - after all, I just said that Pollak could not draw. Maybe! Pollack's paintings at least resembled chaotic wallpaper, Rothko's are just canvases painted with different colors - for example, the top is black and the bottom is gray. Or even more "outstanding work" - at the bottom is crimson, at the top - some kind of dark yellow, and in the middle - white.

The painting is called "White Center" and was bought at Sotheby's in 2007. for 72.8 million dollars. - almost 73 million for a damaged canvas! And this, by the way, is the 12th place in 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! The Western world is not only filled with crazy artists - there are a huge number of crazy millionaires. The common 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 in this poll became 9th. I would call him the funniest of all the muffs. Kooning's most expensive painting, Woman No. 3 (purchased in 2006 for $137.5 million!) will make any healthy person laugh out loud. Even funnier is Woman with a Bicycle.

I think Willem had some problems with women, so he subtly took revenge on them.

On the example 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 the full ass!

So, thanks to the magical power of Pu blic relations the daubs of some mentally deranged individuals were recognized as outstanding works of art and put on a par with the canvases of the great Renaissance artists. For the first time, the power of PR was so clearly manifested precisely in the promotion of muffs. Until the 19th century PR effectively acted only in politics (history and religion also served political goals and cannot be considered in isolation from politics). In the case of the announcement of mediocre muffs as brilliant artists, we encounter a phenomenon when PR distinguished himself in the field of fashion. And it was so effective and lasting that even now, more than a century after the daub of mediocre psychopaths came into vogue, we meet many people who sincerely believe that Van Gogh is a great artist. Even more millions know who Van Gogh is. Several hundred rich idlers who do not know what to do with their money are buying fashionable daubs at auctions. Everyone else hears about one multi-million dollar purchase of daub, then another. Well, they can’t pay $ 30 million for frank feces, can they? - so the layman argues. - They can, even as they can ... The main thing is that it be fashionable.

Looking at some of the paintings that are being sold at auction today, I want to cry. Cry, because these canvases look like a daub of a child, but stand like a villa in Miami. The time has come to present the most expensive absurd masterpieces that have left the auction for millions of dollars.

"Green and White" by Ellsworth Kelly - $1.6 million

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This is not just a jagged green circle on a white background. This is an example of painting, where the main object is the color itself. This creation was bought at Christie's auction in New York in 2008.

Actually, in the rest of the artist's paintings you will not find complex patterns and realistic landscapes - only the simplest figures on a white, black or bright background.

The Blue Fool, Christopher Wool - $5 million

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The painting left the auction at Christie's (New York) in 2010. The modern American artist Christopher Wool went further than his colleagues and, in addition to “daubing” and “scribble”, began to place inscriptions in large letters on canvases.

There is a considerable amount of irony in the fact that one of the most expensive works from this series was a canvas with the inscription "FOOL" (Fool).

“The concept of space. Waiting, Lucio Fontana — $12.8 million

source: forbes

The white slit canvas was sold at Sotheby's London in 2015. The artist Lucio Fontana is known for his “barbaric” attitude towards his canvases – he mercilessly cut and pierced them. But he did it in such a way that later he could show the “mutilated” picture to the viewer.

For the master, its slots personified infinity itself. “When I sit down in front of one of my slits and begin to contemplate it, suddenly I feel that my spirit is freed. I feel like a person who has escaped the shackles of matter, belonging to the infinite expanse of the present and the future, ”said Fontana.

Painting "Dove star of Joan Miró$36.9 million

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One of the most expensive lots of the Sotheby's auction, held in the British capital in 2012. This is the first painting on our list that seems to have been painted on. Just what?

The canvas was created by the Spanish surrealist artist Joan Miro. At one time, the painter was starving, which is why he often observed hallucinations on the walls. The creator transferred the images he saw to the paintings. Now his paintings are sold for millions of dollars.

Sleeping Girl by Roy Lichtenstein - $44.8 million

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Sleeping Girl went under the hammer in 2012 at Sotheby's in New York. For the work of Lichtenstein, who was once called "the worst artist in America" ​​today they give fabulous money.

Roy Lichtenstein is known for creating paintings based on comics: the artist simply took and redraws other people's work, adding something of his own. For this, he had to endure the attacks of critics, but this also made him famous. Paintings by Liechtenstein constantly appear in the lists of the most expensive paintings.

Untitled, Cy Twombly - $69.6 million

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The painting was sold at the New York auction of the auction house Christie's in 2014. When a child draws this, it's a scribble. But when a hyped artist does it, it's a masterpiece worth paying crazy money for. Other works of Twombly are all the same scribbles and are just as indecently expensive.

"Black Fire" by Barnett Newman - $84.2 million

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This masterpiece was sold at Christie's in New York in 2014. Signature Barnett Newman - vertical lines, which are nicknamed "lightning".

Other paintings of the master differ from the one presented above, except perhaps in color, but in the width of these very lightning bolts. Prices for the artist's paintings are rising from auction to auction.

"Orange, Red, Yellow" by Marco Rothko - $86.9 million

Scandal in the artistic circles of the USA! Dozens of paintings that were considered newly found masterpieces of abstract painting turned out to be fakes. What is it - a fatal mistake of experts or an incredible talent of scammers?

Or just an objective confirmation that in reality the originals of these "masterpieces" are just a publicized daub, which is simply easy to copy?

The closure of the Center for Visual Culture at the Mohyla Academy not only led to a sharp controversy in society. But it also made me think about what everything that is offered under the guise of works of art really is.

Scandal in the artistic circles of the USA! Dozens of paintings that were considered newly found masterpieces of abstract painting turned out to be fakes. What is it - a fatal mistake of experts or an incredible talent of scammers? Or just an objective confirmation that in reality the originals of these "masterpieces" are just a publicized daub, which is simply easy to copy?

Almost 17 years ago, a little-known art dealer from Long Island (New York) Glafira Rosales entered the luxurious premises of the Knoedler & Company's gallery, carrying a painting that, according to her, was painted by artist Mark Rothko (a leading representative of the art direction). .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 acquiring the job for herself.

Over the next ten years, Mrs. Rosales frequented the Knoedler Gallery mansion with its lavishly decorated ceiling, carrying works by well-known modernist artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

All of them first appeared on the market. 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 sold for $17 million.

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Today, a number of experts call these works falsification. One was officially stamped "fake" by a court order, while others are being investigated by the FBI. The Knoedler Gallery, after 165 years in the 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 that the paintings are real, also appears in this lawsuit.

There have been few events in recent years that have rocked the art market like this mysterious tale of how an obscure art dealer was able to discover a staggering amount of obscure painting treasures created by the titans of abstract expressionism. Each of the possible explanations carries 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 they were made?

If they are fake, then who are these supernaturally talented counterfeiters who were able to mislead the experts?

And if the paintings are real but stolen, why didn't their owners come forward after the story went public?

Unfortunately, the only person who could solve this mystery, Ms. Rosales, refuses to speak, at least in public. However, a few details were "leaked" from court documents and interviews with other participants in this case. And they are enough to describe what happened.

Dame Rosales, 55, a charismatic and educated woman of Mexican origin, and her husband, Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, originally from Spain, once ran a small gallery, King Fine Arts, located in Manhattan at West 19th Street. The couple, who had accounts at top auctions Sotheby's and Christie's, said in court testimony 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 "bite off a piece" in her own commissions. Part of the answer to this may lie in the distance between Rosales and Friedman's status in the art world.

Tall, very thin and very confident, Mrs. Friedman ran one of the most respected galleries in the United States. She met at breakfast with high-end collectors, buyers who, without batting an eyelid, laid out several million for a painting. She and her husband, real estate businessman Robert Friedman, were collectors themselves.

The two women were introduced by gallery employee Jaime Andrade, who crossed paths with Ms. Rosales at a cocktail party. According to Ann Friedman, at first Rosales only told her that she represented the interests of her friend, who owns real estate in Mexico City and Zurich, and whose name she undertook to keep secret. This surprised no one, Friedman explained, private collectors often prefer to remain anonymous. However, over time, more details about the owner appeared. Rosales told her that she had 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 fled, and, in the end, the paintings ended up in the basement of the collector, where they were kept until his death.

Ms. Rosales does have a portrait of Herbert by Ellsworth Kelly, which was recently part of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. What she doesn't have is any records of ownership of the more than two dozen modernist paintings she has put on the market.

Selling works by a well-known artist without proof of provenance is a rare situation. In dealing with undocumented paintings that, in theory, as one lawyer said, 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 check her own impressions of paintings by Rothko, Pollock, Barnett Newman, Clifford Stills, and others - canvases provided by dealer Rosales. Claude Cernuchi, who is the author of the book on Pollock, has authenticated 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.

Prior to 2000, Mrs. Friedman had herself purchased three of Rosales's proposals: Rothko from their first meeting, Untitled 1959 for $200,000, Pollock for $300,000, and Motherwell for $20,000. “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 on this occasion.

Clouds began to gather in 2003, when a senior executive at the investment bank Goldman Sachs wanted to authenticate a (supposedly) Pollock painting, Untitled 1949, which he purchased from the Knoedler Gallery. He gave Cortin to the International Foundation for 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 promptly gave him two million dollars and purchased the white, black and red stained canvas herself in partnership with the gallery and fellow Canadian theater impresario David Mirvish. Mr. Mirvish, himself a former art dealer, said he didn't care about anonymous ratings (he and Knoedler also invested in two other works by Pollock provided by Rosales).

But estimates were also obtained from other sources. Mirvis in 2006 brought to the gallery the artist Frank Stella, who was a contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists. After examining several canvases that came from Rosales, Stella said: "Each of them is too good to be real, but when you see them in a general context, as a group, you understand that they are real" - at least that's how it is about it. The conversation was testified in court by Ann Friedman.

Most impressively, the Rosales paintings have been confirmed in the market. Ms. Friedman certified that she sold 15 or 16 works in total through the Knoedler Gallery, totaling between $27 million and $37 million.

The most expensive painting was "Untitled 1950", allegedly by Pollock, which was purchased through an intermediary in 2007 by a London hedge fund director named Pierre Lagrange. The gallery, along with Mr. Mirvish, had bought a painting with a jumble of black, red, and white lines on a bright silver background for $2 million a few years earlier. Lagrange paid 17 million.

This is the real Pollock. And as soon as the experts did not immediately notice how much these lines smeared on the canvas are superior to the lines smeared on the falsified canvas?

A few days after the deal with Lagrange, Mrs. Friedman invited several employees of the non-profit Daedalus Foundation, which Robert Motherwell created to protect the artistic heritage of modernity, to the Knoedler Gallery. She wanted them to see her last Motherwell.

It was the seventh painting that the art dealer Rosales had sold to either Friedman or another New York dealer, Julian Weisman, within eight years. The painting, with large black strokes and blotches 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 genuine.

But a few weeks after the visit to the Knoedler Gallery, during a meeting of the foundation's committee, some of its members began to question the authenticity of the signatures and the style of the newly discovered "elegies." Foundation president Jack Flam said he soon learned that other works "from Rosales" attributed to Pollock and Richard Diebenkorn were received with skepticism.

Not everyone in the foundation decided they needed to raise the alarm. Joan Banach, Motherwell's personal assistant and a veteran foundation employee, said Flam made unqualified assertions about the paintings' authenticity and thereby violated the foundation's painting evaluation procedures. She subsequently sued the foundation, alleging that she was fired because of criticism of Mr. Flem (the foundation denies this).

“More likely than not,” is how Mrs. Banach assessed the authenticity of the Motherwell paintings, which the Knoedler Gallery acquired through Rosales, in the court documents.

But the chairman of the foundation, Jack Flam, was determined to prove that these paintings were forged. He hired a private detective to investigate the activities of 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 down in the wrong hall where two "elegies" hung, one of which belonged to Mrs. Friedman. The forensic specialist concluded that both contained pigments that were invented ten years after 1953 and 1955 - the dates indicated on the canvases.

Ann Friedman disagreed with these findings. Artists were often given new pigments to experiment with, even before they were patented and brought to market. But the Daedalus Foundation stood its ground: the art dealer Rosales was later confirmed in court documents to be "the key person who brought to market a series of seven bogus 'Spanish elegies'."

The dispute over Motherwell's paintings soon reached the FBI, which opened an investigation. Rosales' lawyer acknowledged that his client was under investigation and added that she "never knowingly sold paintings knowing they were fake."

Ann Friedman received a warrant from the FBI in September 2009, although her lawyer says the FBI does not consider her to be the subject of an investigation. She retired from 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 unwillingness to merge the Knoedler Gallery with another gallery.

However, it was much more difficult to move away from the problems with Rosales' paintings. Last year, one of the "elegies" became the basis for a lawsuit by an Irish gallery that bought this painting and, after a scandal, demanded the return of 650,000 dollars to it.

The Daedalus Foundation was embroiled in this lawsuit because, after forensic checks, it was he who declared all the "elegies" received through Rosales to be fake. Including those that he had previously informally recognized as authentic - and among them was the painting that was sold to the Irish.

The lawsuit was closed in October. Rosales agreed to pay most of the painting's cost and legal fees, and the painting itself, at the request of the Daedalus Foundation, was stamped on the back with a "Fake" ink stamp that could not 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 the dispute. Pierre Lagrange was divorcing his wife and they wanted to sell Untitled 1950. But auctions Sotheby's and Christie's refused to deal with this painting because of the doubtfulness of its origin and its absence in 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 canvas.

On November 29, the results of the analysis came in: the two yellow pigments used in the painting were not invented until after Pollock's death in 1956. The conclusion was sent to the Knoedler Gallery. The next day, she announced her closure.

In December, Rosales and Friedman met again - but this time the meeting took place in the federal district court of Manhattan, where they were summoned at the suit of Mr. Lagrange. He wanted his 17 million back.

This painting by Motherwell is now permanently stamped "forgery" on the back. At the same time, the same art fund that insisted on the appearance of this brand, before that, confirmed the authenticity of the painting. Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

The two women briefly said hello, after which Rosales turned to the fifth amendment to the US constitution, which gives a citizen the right not to incriminate himself. Since then, they have not communicated, according to their lawyers.

It is impossible to say now whether a court or a criminal investigation will be able to give a convincing answer about the mystery of these works.

Authenticity is difficult to verify. Pigment dating is generally considered a reliable method, but this is not necessarily the decisive argument. For example, Golden Artist Colors CEO Mark Golden, whose father Sam created experimental paints for artists like Pollock, has stated his belief that his father never made the yellows in the dubious painting. However, he noted that individual constituents 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. And if they are fake, the authorities must prove that Ms. Rosales was involved in fraud, and was not misled in the same way.

Meanwhile, the painting at the epicenter of the civil suit, "Untitled 1950," no longer takes pride of place on the wall in Mr. Lagrange's living room. The 15" by 28" board has become an orphan in the art world and is in a kind of art hell. And he is waiting for her to either be lifted to the skies as a masterpiece, or they will be defame as a fake.

Patricia Cohen, The New York Times

Translation from original into Ukrainian:TEXTS , original"Suitable for Suing" By PATRICIA COHEN Published: February 22, 2012

Nowadays, there are a lot of strange people who give tens of millions of dollars for what seems to an ordinary person like me to be outright scribble). In any case, I propose to get acquainted with the ten most expensive paintings in the world at the moment!

Someone will like them, someone will not understand such art, but the fact that there were people who were ready to give a lot of money for them is an indisputable fact.

So number 10 on the list most expensive paintings we have Gustav Klimt's Second Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, sold for $89.1 million. A bit of 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 that time who sponsored various types of art, including Gustav Klimt himself) Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model that 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 $ 90.1 million was paid at the auction. In general, the Dane Van Gogh liked 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 from 1886 to 1889.

In 8th place - the painting "Dora Maar with a kitten" by Pablo Picasso, the price for which was $ 97 million. The painting, painted in 1941, depicts 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 turned out best))

The 7th place is again occupied by a painting by Van Gogh, only this time not a self-portrait) The buyer had to pay $ 97.5 million for the painting “Irises”, but it at least more or less looks like a painting - I wouldn’t regret even 10 bucks for this! This is one of the first works of Van Gogh, written by him during his stay in the hospital of St. Paul de Mousol in the French province of Sanremo a year before his death in 1890

On the 6th line - Picasso again) It seems that they decided to "measure" with Van Gogh =) In any case, for the painting by Pablo Picasso "Boy with a pipe" from the personal collection of John Hay Whitney at Sotheby's auction held in New York 5 May 2004, gave $104.1 million at a starting price of $70 million. However, many art historians believe that such a sky-high price was more likely to be associated with the big name of the artist than with the actual historical value of his painting.

5th place, so to speak, the equator of the list most expensive paintings, is occupied by Pierre-August Renoir with the painting “Ball at Montmartre”. At the time of the 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. An interesting story is connected with him - the fact is that Saito bequeathed after his death (and it happened in 1991) to cremate these two paintings with him, which caused a wave of indignation around the world. However, his companions 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.

On the 4th place - Van Gogh again, with the previously mentioned “Portrait of Doctor Gachet”. In fact, there are two versions of this painting, both painted in 1890, in the last months of the artist's life - and in both the doctor is sitting at the table, resting his head on his 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, which is on the “bronze”, 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 sold at that time

In second place is a daub that is completely incomprehensible to me called “Woman 3” by the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, although if you look at the artist himself and at 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, in which the central theme is, surprisingly, a woman) The 170 by 121 cm canvas was painted in 1953, and in November 2006 was sold by David Geffen to billionaire Stephen Cohen for $ 137.5 million , making it the second most expensive painting in the world ever sold.

So first on the list “The most expensive paintings in the world” 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 fiberboard sheet by applying a small amount of brown and yellow splashes on top, which made the painting look like a huge nest. This Pollock masterpiece was sold for a record $142.7 million.

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