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Art Enthusiast:

S seaquamMember
quote:
Originally posted by Vino Me:
quote:
Originally posted by Seaquam:
Bman, Chagall's stained glass can be stunning. We have certainly not seen all of it, but 2 unforgettable examples are in the Cathedral in Reims, Champagne, and my favourite-- "The America Windows" in the Chicago Art Institute. I must have stood in front of the latter for almost half an hour; I was mesmerized by the content and the beautifully back-lit deep blue colour (my wife gave up on me and left, so I had to try to find her later in that massive museum; it was worth the little dispute we had afterwards Smile.) Next time you're in Chicago, I highly recommend seeing this.

Seaq, did you have a chance to walk past Chagall's public mosaic artwork in the Chase Bank Plaza in Chicago?
Chagall's The Four Seasons

VM


VM, I did not know about it until I read your post. We're thinking of a possible Detroit-Chicago-Boston trip next year. Perhaps you'd be able to show it to me. I'll buy lunch.
W wine+artMember
quote:
Originally posted by Italian Wino:
David R. collection is breathtaking. This auction will be one for the history books.

Here is a link.

https://www.google.com/aclk?sa...X9CBVQQ0QwIJA&adurl=


IW, much of his collection has never been seen by the public. He bought directly from artist early in his life and many works just were never seen.

With his mother founding MoMA and later him becoming their chairman, he had such a keen eye.

Known as The Ruler of the World ( which he hated) he and Peggy did decided that the proceeds of this auction will be divided among several charities which will be so beneficial for decades to come.

I would love to own/buy the catalog for this auction taking place next year.
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
Who said this? I am a big fan of this artists work.


According to (---------), an object could only legitimately be considered art if it was an unadulterated, outward manifestation of the artist’s psyche—of his or her authentic thoughts and feelings. Despite the theoretical underpinnings of his work, (---------) believed that theory came after, not before, true artistic creation.

He felt that the expression of one’s inner reality was crucial to achieve moral integrity. Anything less would not only undermine one’s artistic merit, but it would also be spiritually harmful to the artist. Furthermore, true artists should be prepared to be misunderstood throughout their lifetimes.

IW
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
I wish I could find this at a garage sale.....

An Arizona auction house announced the potential discovery of a Jackson Pollock painting, which was uncovered in a local homeowner’s garage.
(via the Arizona Republic)



The Sun City, Arizona, resident first called Josh Levine, owner and founder of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal LLC, about a collection of sports memorabilia signed by basketball star Kobe Bryant. But when Levine visited the home, he also found a chest of artworks—including one that seemed to be an iconic Pollock drip painting. (Others appeared to be the work of artists Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Cora Kelley Ward.) To determine if it was genuine, Levine said he spent more than $50,000 to trace the work’s provenance. Investigators determined that the homeowner’s sister, Jenifer Gordon, was a friend of both art critic Clement Greenberg and collector Peggy Guggenheim. A forensics report also proved that no paint had been added to the work after the artist’s death. “I'm brave enough to call it a Jackson Pollock and put my entire reputation on it,” Levine said, though no art historian has yet weighed in. The question remains if collectors will buy the backstory when the work goes up for auction on June 20th; Levine estimates it will sell for at least $10 million.
W wine+artMember
quote:
Originally posted by Italian Wino:
I wish I could find this at a garage sale.....

An Arizona auction house announced the potential discovery of a Jackson Pollock painting, which was uncovered in a local homeowner’s garage.
(via the Arizona Republic)



The Sun City, Arizona, resident first called Josh Levine, owner and founder of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal LLC, about a collection of sports memorabilia signed by basketball star Kobe Bryant. But when Levine visited the home, he also found a chest of artworks—including one that seemed to be an iconic Pollock drip painting. (Others appeared to be the work of artists Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Cora Kelley Ward.) To determine if it was genuine, Levine said he spent more than $50,000 to trace the work’s provenance. Investigators determined that the homeowner’s sister, Jenifer Gordon, was a friend of both art critic Clement Greenberg and collector Peggy Guggenheim. A forensics report also proved that no paint had been added to the work after the artist’s death. “I'm brave enough to call it a Jackson Pollock and put my entire reputation on it,” Levine said, though no art historian has yet weighed in. The question remains if collectors will buy the backstory when the work goes up for auction on June 20th; Levine estimates it will sell for at least $10 million.


Reminds me of all the Picasso works that surfaced decades after his death that families had owned.
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
New records for Kandinsky....

£33 Million Kandinsky Breaks Record at Sotheby’s


01 Solid Impressionist and Modern sales at Sotheby’s London saw the auction record for Wassily Kandinsky’s work broken twice in one night.
(via Sotheby’s)



Kandinsky’s Murnau – Landschaft mit grünem Haus (1909) sold for £21 million (with fees), setting a new record for the artist. It stood for all of six lots until Kandinsky’s Bild mit weissen Linien (1913) went for £33 million with fees. By the end of the night, the sale had brought in £127.9 million, falling squarely within its estimate of £110.6 million to £142.6 million. The sell-through rate of 73.9% was, however, less impressive, and a special sale of small works titled “Actual Size” didn’t meet its low estimate and notched only a 65% sell-through rate. The house’s day sale drew in £19.6 million on a sell-through rate of 73.8%, falling between the estimates of £17.6 million to £25.7 million. While last year’s sale boasted a slightly higher total of £20 million, it also featured a higher number of lots overall: 277 lots in 2016 to 210 lots this year. After announcing the cancellation of its June contemporary auctions in London earlier this year, Christie’s will hold its Modern and Impressionist sale next week.

IW
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
OUCH.....

$12 million in paintings, including works by Frank Stella and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, have been stolen from a Queens storage facility.
(via NY Daily News)



William Pordy, a 62-year-old retired doctor and entrepreneur living in Manhattan, discovered on June 1st that 22 works of art were stolen from his Queens storage unit. Thieves had cut the lock on Pordy’s locker and cleared out its contents, leaving behind the cardboard boxes that once held the works and replacing the broken lock on their way out to evade detection. Examination of the facility’s records by police revealed that the theft occurred on December 30, 2016—two months after Pordy last reported visiting the unit. Investigators have compiled a list of the stolen works and are currently monitoring for attempts by the thieves to resell them.

If I had artwork like this I would be keeping it in a more secure environment. An unattended locker is nuts.

IW
robsutherlandrobsutherlandMember
quote:
Originally posted by Italian Wino:
OUCH.....

$12 million in paintings, including works by Frank Stella and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, have been stolen from a Queens storage facility.
(via NY Daily News)



William Pordy, a 62-year-old retired doctor and entrepreneur living in Manhattan, discovered on June 1st that 22 works of art were stolen from his Queens storage unit. Thieves had cut the lock on Pordy’s locker and cleared out its contents, leaving behind the cardboard boxes that once held the works and replacing the broken lock on their way out to evade detection. Examination of the facility’s records by police revealed that the theft occurred on December 30, 2016—two months after Pordy last reported visiting the unit. Investigators have compiled a list of the stolen works and are currently monitoring for attempts by the thieves to resell them.

If I had artwork like this I would be keeping it in a more secure environment. An unattended locker is nuts.

IW


I"ve seen where Ken Thompson kept his excess art and while it is on a MUCH larger scale, it's also not a lot different, a full floor of an office building in base building condition (raw concrete, no ceiling etc.) with millions of dollars worth of paintings stacked against the walls...
W wine+artMember
I witnessed first hand the power of a live auction here in Santa Fe Friday night.

D and I toured the pre-auction works for the charity event twice before the day of the auction, picked a work we loved and agreed just how high we would go during the bidding and we even shook on it! Well, a little Champagne, male testosterone and a some guy from Chicago waving his number in the air like a wild man and the next thing you know, budget be damned! I want to win! We men are such an easy target. Frown

So, we now have a new painting scheduled for delivery in the coming weeks.

Oh, someone got an absolute steal of a Ed Ruscha work for under $35K. Cool
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
A very interesting article.

Cases That Explain Why Restituting Nazi Looted Art Is So Difficult

ARTSY EDITORIAL
BY ISAAC KAPLAN
JUL 5TH, 2017 8:30 PM
Few issues appear as ethically clear-cut and yet persistently intractable as the restitution of art looted during the Second World War. For many lay observers, the answer to the problem of what to do with work taken from Jews by the Nazis is straightforward: give it back. But as numerous cases have shown, the legalities are not so simple. Litigation brought by heirs seeking the return of works by artists like Picasso and Van Gogh from museums and even national governments has trudged on in court for decades—and has been met with varying levels of success.

Art lawyer Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a specialist in holocaust restitution litigation, has laid out an exhaustive history of these cases in his book, A Tragic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Battle over Nazi-Looted Art. The product of painstaking legal research, the book traces the history of this looted art litigation from the immediate post-war years to the present day, looking at how courts grapple with major ethical questions. It is a must-read for anyone interested understanding why the historic wrongs of the holocaust have not yet been put right under the law.

Ultimately, O’Donnell didn’t emerge from his research cynical about the prospect of righting the historical wrongs. “I look at it as a very pitched battle between very smart and sophisticated people without which the debate about what to do with this art would cease,” he said. Below are three of the many cases included in his book that exemplify why these restitution battles can last decades.

One of the earliest cases to bring the issue of Nazi looted art to the fore, the legal battle over Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally (1912) speaks to how lawsuits are not inherently inevitable but can be the result of one party (or sometimes both) refusing to work towards an equitable solution.

The Schiele painting belonged to Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray, who had her gallery Aryanized prior to escaping to London. She sold the painting to a Nazi, Friedrich Welz, who had expressed an interest in the work. After the war ended, the allied forces returned the piece to the Austrian authorities. This was standard practice: rather than return work to each heir, the allies decided give the paintings back to the rightful governments (which often were still anti-Semitic) for ultimate restitution. In this case, the Austrians returned the Schiele painting to the wrong owners.

In 1953, Bondi, who survived, asked a Schiele expert named Dr. Rudolf Leopold where her stolen work ended up. Leopold told her it was in the Galerie Belvedere but that it would be impossible to retrieve and that the Belvedere would never part with it. However, Leopold turned around and acquired Portrait of Wally from the gallery in exchange for other works.

The case heated up when Leopold loaned the Schiele, through his private museum, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for a 1997 exhibition of a portion of his collection. Shortly after the piece arrived in the United States, the District Attorney of Manhattan—not the Bondis—moved to have the painting seized as stolen property. Leopold charged that this wasn’t motivated by righting a decades long injustice but rather “greed” on the part of the Bondis. MoMA and museum groups filed briefs asserting that the successful seizure of the painting would have a chilling effect on the loaning of art. In 1999, Leopold and MoMA triumphed in court against the Manhattan DA, but shortly thereafter the U.S. Attorney filed for the seizure of the same painting.

After numerous motions and appeals, the case moved through discovery (a rarity in holocaust restitution cases). Ultimately, the question became: did Leopold know that the work was stolen when he sent it to the United States for exhibition? The stage for a trial to begin in July 2010 was set, and, as O’Donnell writes “there was little doubt that the trial could be avoided given the lengths to which the museum had gone to retain ownership and the persistence that the Bondi heirs had shown in pursuing their family’s property.”

But a few short weeks before the case was to begin, Leopold died. Shortly thereafter, the Bondi heirs and the Leopold Foundation commenced negotiations and a settlement was reached. The foundation paid the heirs $19 million and the painting remained in Austria. “Leopold knew the painting was stolen,” writes O’Donnell, “He had always known it. With his arrogance and pride out of the way, a real negotiation was possible.” The publicity afforded to the case reshaped the litigation landscape. From 1990 to 1997, only two holocaust restitution cases were filed. After Wally, it seemed possible to pursue looted art in American court.

In 1939, Lilly Cassirer was a grandmother looking to obtain a visa and flee Germany. Before being allowed to leave, an official from the Nazi government’s chamber of visual arts searched her home and inquired about purchasing the Pissaro. “I went along with it, although I knew this price didn’t even remotely reflect its true value,” Cassirer would later testify. This kind of forced sale—one made for diminished value under coercive circumstances—proved to be the more common way Nazis acquired paintings. Rarely did they kick down the front door and seize a painting off the wall, but rather the transactions were given an air of legitimacy through forced “legal” transactions.

The painting went missing, and after the war Cassirer settled with the German government, who paid her cash for the work with the stipulation that she would still have a right to it should it resurface. In 2001, decades after Cassirer’s death, the painting was found in Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and Lilly’s heir, Claude Cassirer, sued to have it returned. The case brought a crucial issue to the fore. Broadly, there was no question about the work’s history. Yet, as O'Donnell writes, Spanish authorities “look at the question from the perspective of a work of art on display for the public, which was not stolen by the government.”

Legally, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) American courts generally can’t exercise jurisdiction over foreign sovereign governments. One exception, is if the taking of property by a government is in violation of international law. Early on, Spain asserted that they did not actually take the painting (because the Germans did) so therefore could not be sued in the United States. But the courts eventually disagreed, and the case proceeded.

The court also faced an issue that crops up in cross-continental restitution cases: should American or foreign law apply to their judgment? In the Cassirer case, the court ultimately decided to apply Spanish law, which includes something called “adverse possession.” Basically, “the concept that if you have a piece of property for long enough it becomes yours,” explains O’Donnell. Under this concept, the Cassirer heirs should have found the painting since it was in the museum’s collection since 1993—though during this time the museum was doing nothing to find the work’s owner. As such, the court awarded the painting to Spain, though the Cassirer heirs have appealed this ruling

The history of holocaust restitution cases is often murky, and tracing a painting's provenance through the war years can rarely be done with absolute certainty. But as in the Cassirer case, this reconstruction through time and space has a legal dimension when the question is, should the work have been found by the heirs? And then additionally—who should be the one reconstructing the past—institutions or the heirs themselves?

“I think the better view is that the dispossessed shouldn't bear that burden,” said O’Donnell.

During his lifetime, the Jewish Baron Mór Lipót Herzog assembled an impressive collection of artworks from some of history’s most fabled artists, from El Greco to Lucas Cranach the Elder. Kept in the family home in Hungary, the collection was passed down after Herzog’s death in 1934. But later, as Nazi Germany exerted its influence, Hungary began passing laws dispossessing Jewish residents of their property.

The Herzog family attempted to safeguard their artwork, but it was eventually seized and some even sent to Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann’s headquarters. After the war, a portion of the works were returned to the family in the form of short term loans, before, under “relentless harassment,” they gave the pieces to the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

Shortly thereafter, as the Iron Curtain fell and a communist government came to power in Hungary, it became impossible to investigate or adjudicate issues around the Herzog collection. But in 2010, David de Csepel and two other heirs filed suit in the United States seeking the return of the collection from Hungary. They faced numerous hurdles, among them the protracted delay in filing suit, whether the litigation should be in Hungarian courts, and, as always, the question of if American courts could intervene under FSIA. To boil down years of motions and appeals into a single sentence: the court found that the rise of a communist government had stopped the clock on the statute of limitations for bringing a claim and the plaintiffs didn’t have to exhaust local remedies before filing in the U.S.

But the decision in the Herzog case on the FSIA point proved especially important. If another government takes property from its own citizens within a national border, American courts view that as the decision of a sovereign government which they cannot overrule. Hungary argued that this is essentially what had happened with the Herzog works. But the plaintiffs asserted that the taking of the Herzog collection was a violation of international law.

Significantly, the courts agreed and found that targeting someone economically in what was the prelude to genocide is part of that genocide, which is itself a crime against international law. Thus, American courts can intervene. The case was allowed to proceed—though Hungary is appealing. Like so many others, this suit is likely to drag on, especially with a right wing government in Hungary unlikely to look for an amicable settlement.

In 1998, the Washington Conference produced a set of principles—including a shared commitment to “fair and just solutions”—for the return of Nazi looted art. The principles were agreed to by the 44 attending nations, Hungary included. So with this in mind, “why is Hungary resisting in this fashion?” asks O’Donnell in his book, citing a slew of other cases in which there is no doubt that paintings were taken by Nazis, but where institutions and governments assert legal reasons to hold onto the works. In a sense, the moral questions are not addressed, while legal questions are.

“Such answers are always couched in why one can keep the artwork,” writes O’Donnell, “but not whether one should keep it.”

—Isaac Kaplan

IW
V vinobevoMember
While I enjoy art, I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic beyond the masters and pieces the world knows and loves. We spent some time in the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday and I came across an artist who really had me saying "WOW!". I did a forum search for his name and found nothing so I'm curious if any of you are familiar with William Adolphe Bouguereau? I stood in front of his work Rest for what seemed like forever just admiring.
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
Vino Bevo,

Here is some info about the artist. and a link to his painting Rest.

http://www.williamadolphebougu...Bouguereau-Rest.html



William-Adolphe Bouguereau; November 30, 1825 – August 19, 1905 was a French academic painter and traditionalist. In his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. Throughout the course of his life, Bouguereau executed 822 known finished paintings, although the whereabouts of many are still unknown.
VM Vino MeMember
quote:
Originally posted by Seaquam:
quote:
Originally posted by Vino Me:
quote:
Originally posted by Seaquam:
Bman, Chagall's stained glass can be stunning. We have certainly not seen all of it, but 2 unforgettable examples are in the Cathedral in Reims, Champagne, and my favourite-- "The America Windows" in the Chicago Art Institute. I must have stood in front of the latter for almost half an hour; I was mesmerized by the content and the beautifully back-lit deep blue colour (my wife gave up on me and left, so I had to try to find her later in that massive museum; it was worth the little dispute we had afterwards Smile.) Next time you're in Chicago, I highly recommend seeing this.

Seaq, did you have a chance to walk past Chagall's public mosaic artwork in the Chase Bank Plaza in Chicago?
Chagall's The Four Seasons

VM


VM, I did not know about it until I read your post. We're thinking of a possible Detroit-Chicago-Boston trip next year. Perhaps you'd be able to show it to me. I'll buy lunch.

Love to. It is one of the stops on an informal walking architectural tour of the Loop that I've taken out of town guests on (mostly relatives).

VM
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
The $570 million art collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti will go to Turin’s Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art.
(via artnet News)



The collection belonged to a bookbinder’s son who “made his fortune by growing his family’s business into Italy’s first automated bindery,” artnet reported. Cerruti passed away in 2015, leaving the collection to a foundation along with instructions to permanently lend it to the nearest museum, the Castello di Rivoli. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, René Magritte, and Andy Warhol, among others, but extends back to the Middle Ages and also includes “various furnishings and rare and ancient books.” While encyclopedic museums have been adding contemporary work to their historic collections, integrating the wide-ranging Cerruti collection into the holdings of the Turin contemporary art museum will be the first time a contemporary institution expands its collection into the past, according to the museum’s director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.

IW
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
I previously mentioned this case and here are the latest developments.

Appeals Court Revives 16-Year Lawsuit over $40 Million Nazi-Looted Pissarro

ARTSY EDITORIAL
BY ISAAC KAPLAN
JUL 10TH, 2017 11:06 PM
On Monday, a federal appeals court in San Francisco revived a 16-year-long Nazi restitution dispute centered on an Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro, the value of which could exceed $40 million.

Currently held by Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie (1897) was originally owned by German-Jew Lilly Cassirer, who sold the work to a Nazi functionary in 1939 for roughly $360. Asserting the transaction was a forced sale, Cassirer’s heirs filed a petition in 2001 in Spain seeking the work’s return after they learned where it was being held. When the petition was denied, Cassirer’s grandson and great-grandchildren sued the Spanish museum in 2005.

In June of 2015, a lower court dismissed the suit, ruling the museum held the rights to the painting under Spanish law.

But Monday’s ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that while Spanish law does apply, a trial is required to determine whether or not the museum knew the painting was stolen when it was acquired in 1993 from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza as part of a $338 million purchase of his collection.

“We're obviously very pleased,” Stephen Zack, a Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner representing the Cassirers, told Reuters in a phone interview. “This has been a scar they've had to deal with for generations.”

As is typical in Holocaust restitution cases, the work’s provenance stretches across multiple continents. The baron bought the Pissaro work in 1976 from New York’s Stephen Hahn Gallery and then took it to Switzerland where it remained until 1992.

Unlike U.S. law, under Swiss law, title to a stolen artwork can pass if a purchaser acted in good faith and did not know the work was stolen. But the appeals court noted a good faith transaction wouldn’t occur if the purchaser “failed to exercise the diligence required by the circumstances.”

The Cassirer heirs have long asserted that there was reason to suspect the work’s provenance. One example is that in purchasing the piece from Stephen Hahn Gallery, the Baron paid $275,000—what an expert for the heirs testified “was approximately half of what would have been expected in a dealer sale, and that there is no reasonable explanation for this price other than dubious provenance.”

“After reviewing the record developed before the district court, we conclude that there is a triable issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith,” the appellate decision reads, noting the museum “has not established, as a matter of law, that it did not have actual knowledge the [Pissarro] was stolen property.”

Thaddeus Stauber, a lawyer for the foundation which runs the museum, disputed the findings, telling Reuters that the purchase was made in good faith and that he was “confident that the foundation's ownership of the painting will once again be confirmed.”

Monday’s appellate decision is the most recent instance in which a higher court has revived a prominent Holocaust restitution case. Along with the Cassirers’s case, the 9th Circuit has prevented the dismissal of the long running dispute between the Norton Simon Museum and Marei Von Saher over two looted pieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder held by the institution. The future of that case will again rest with the 9th Circuit after a lower court dismissed the case for a third time last August.

The D.C. Court of Appeals also reversed a prominent dismissal by a lower court of a Holocaust restitution case, ruling in June that heirs of the original owners of the Nazi-looted Herzog collection can continue in their quest seeking the return of the works now held in Hungarian state museums.

Broadly, the Cassirer case exemplifies the complex and sometimes conflicting nature of the law and ethics when it comes to Holocaust restitution cases. Neither party disputes the piece passed into Nazi hands through “forced sale,” or one made for diminished value under coercive circumstances. But the museum notes that they had nothing to do with how the work was taken, and asserts that under Swiss and Spanish law they hold good title to the Pissaro.

“This isn’t a case where people disagree about whether the art was stolen,” said Nicholas O’Donnell, art lawyer and author of A Tragic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Battle over Nazi-Looted Art. “And yet here we are.”

—Isaac Kaplan

HERE IS A LINK TO THE PISSARO.

https://d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfro...idth=1100&quality=95
italianwinoitalianwinoMember
Thought this would be of interest to the art lovers here.

Why Are Artworks Pulled from Auction?

In May, just before Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern evening sale was getting underway in New York, the auctioneer announced the star lot had been withdrawn. The loss of Egon Schiele’s Danaë, which was slated to sell for between $30 million and $40 million, was a significant blow: It would have accounted for at least 15 percent of the auction’s estimated total. The auction house did not say why the work was pulled, but the answer presumably had to do with the absence of bidders for the consigned painting.

Withdrawing lots from auction is far from unheard of; that one just happened to be major enough to make the news. Zoom out and you find even more smaller pieces—from fine art to Hollywood memorabilia—being withdrawn from auction prior to sale.

“It comes up a lot, but you don’t always see it making the news unless it’s a higher-value, sexier object,” said Megan E. Noh, partner at the law firm Cahill Cossu Noh & Robinson, who previously served as vice president and senior counsel at Bonhams auction house (Bonhams did not comment for this story).

Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips declined to comment on how often withdrawal occurs.

The same week that the Schiele was withdrawn, Christie’s pulled a Willem de Kooning expected to sell for between $25 million and $35 million, and Phillips pulled Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1994), slated to go for $15 million to $20 million, from its evening sale in New York.

So why would a work be yanked sometimes just hours prior to an auction? Are there penalties for a consignor who chooses to pull a piece? And when, if ever, would an auction house run into legal trouble when deciding to take a piece off the block?

Better Pulled than Burned


There are numerous reasons why a work might be pulled prior to auction: some of them due to market conditions, others to personal circumstances, and sometimes due to questions of legality or provenance. In the former category, a consignor might simply decide they want to keep the work or, alternatively, they get cold feet because it doesn’t look like the piece will sell. Major works are consigned months before an auction, and changes in market dynamics or personal sentiment can result in withdrawing pieces.

When faced with a lack of demand, withdrawing a piece is often the savvy move, notes Abigail Asher, an art advisor at Guggenheim Asher Associates. A piece’s public failure to sell can be “damaging in the short term” to its value, she adds, describing the hit in a piece’s price that comes after it is “burned,” to use industry parlance.

Auction houses typically charge a fee to consignors who withdraw works, as compensation for its having invested time, money, and energy into promoting the piece with the expectation of a sale. The fee depends on the contract a consignor enters into with the auction house, which are not standard. Noh described a few common ways it can be calculated: as a percentage of the low estimate; a percentage of the median estimate; or the full amount of the buyer’s premium on the low estimate, had the piece sold.

That said, in a business based largely on relationships, an auction house could very well waive the fee for a prominent consignor to stay in her or his good graces, or the auction house and consignor could mutually agree to pull a piece to avoid an embarrassing flop of a star lot. Indeed, the successful sale of a work at the high end of the market is particularly subject to timing given the demand for such pieces is automatically thinner, since very few people can afford eight-figure works, said Asher.

Title Trip-Ups


There are two main legal reasons why works get pulled: if the consignor doesn’t hold good title to the piece, or if questions are raised over its authenticity.

While auction houses will vouch for a piece’s authenticity (auction houses recognize that consignors are not experts in art history or provenance), issues of title are the responsibility of the consignor, who is expected to ensure they have good and unencumbered title, meaning there aren’t other people or organizations with a financial interest in the piece.

For example, it is a consignor, not an auction house, who would know if there is a competing claim to a consigned piece, say, because of a disputed will or divorce. Auction houses also won’t know if consigned painting has been used as collateral for a loan, giving a lender a stake in the piece should the consignor default. Imagine a situation where a piece of art used as collateral is sold and then a consignor defaults—the bank would be looking to collect the artwork from the person who bought the work at auction.

In New York, state regulations prevent auction houses from offering works in which someone other than the consignor—be it a relative or a bank—has a financial stake. In other states, an auctioneer might issue a disclaimer noting that the purchaser is only buying however much right or interest the consignor has to sell.

When disputes over title do arise, the auction house will evaluate the evidence presented and determine if there is the potential for liability on their part should the sale proceed. A dispute doesn’t always mean a work will be pulled. Settlements and agreements between people with competing claims of title to a work can sometimes be reached prior to an auction that would allow it to proceed. But that is certainly not always the case. Just one example: In 2009, Christie’s pulled a Nazi-looted work by Camille Pissarro after two descendants of the original owner disputed who held title to the piece and how to split proceeds from the sale.

Not the Real Deal


Auction houses also pull works when there is doubt to their authenticity. The most obvious cases involve instances of forgery. One humorous example involved an auction house in New Zealand that withdrew two “Claude Monet” paintings actually by the forger Elmyr de Hory. A master forger, de Hory’s fakes are valuable in their own right. But after de Hory denied forging these two particular Monets, it emerged that the forged works were, in fact, forged by someone else. Go figure.

Complex authenticity issues can also emerge when an artist disavows their work. In 2011, artist Cady Noland declared that her work Cowboys Milking (1990), due to be sold at Sotheby’s in November of that year, was no longer an authentic piece attributable to her under the terms of the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). Cowboys Milking is a work on aluminum, and Noland asserted that damage to the corners meant that the piece was mutilated to the point where it was no long an authentic piece by her. The declaration infuriated the consignor, collector Marc Jancou, but Sotheby’s decided to pull the work nonetheless, given that doubts had now been raised regarding its authenticity.

Alleging breach of contract, Jancou sued Sotheby’s, which said it was protected by the language of the agreement, which gave it “the right to withdraw any property before the sale and…have no liability whatsoever for such withdrawal.” A judge agreed, and the case was dismissed. The Noland suit illustrates the relatively broad latitude auction houses have to pull a piece under the terms of consignor agreements.

“Judges have generally upheld an auction house’s discretion to withdraw or rescind a sale based on its judgment about potential liability for the consignor or the house, as long as the auction house isn’t operating in bad faith,” said Noh.

So what does bad faith look like? By way of example, an auction house can’t pull a piece arbitrarily. That would mean an auction house yanking, say, Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d'Alger (Version “O”), simply because a random person walked in off the street claiming to have title to ahead of its auction. If that sounds improbable, it’s because that sort of thing never really happens—auction houses don’t typically operate in bad faith.

The withdrawal of works prior to auction can appear to be opaque and mysterious. And while each withdrawal is different—the exact circumstances rarely reaching the public eye—there are common legal and market mechanisms at play in them all.

—Isaac Kaplan

IW
W wine+artMember
IW, it is truly complicated to say the least.

I had a conversation with the auction house that we recently bought from at their auction that I sent you the picture of. Apparently if a work does not hit the reserve it is the kiss of death for that work and often you will not see the work for sale again for five plus years.

As you and your dad knows, the art market is funny. Also, if the stock markets are strong, selling significant works is often more difficult.
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