December 11, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Has Ireland lost a $50 million art collection?
- collectors frequently defrauded by dealers
Has Ireland lost a $50 million art collection?
Jennifer O'Connell
Dublin , Ireland, December 10 2000
A $50 million dollar art collection which was to be donated to the state could now go abroad because of a boardroom row at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), The Sunday Business Post has learned.
Americans Kent and Vicki Logan reconsidered a possible offer to IMMA of an art collection, which includes works by Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, after they learned last week of moves by the board effectively to oust director Declan McGonagle. The collection is now likely to go instead to the Tate Modern in London and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
McGonagle is to take legal proceedings tomorrow to prevent the IMMA from advertising the position he has occupied since 1991. Some members of the board said they were "stunned" by the decision to advertise the post.
http://www.sbpost.ie/sbpost/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-13294
collectors frequently defrauded by dealers ??
Art's authentic guide to fakes shocks buyers
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS
FRENCH art and antiques experts were in a state of shock as they gathered in Monaco at the weekend for a Fr22 million (£2 million) auction overshadowed by claims that collectors are frequently defrauded by dealers. As Karl Lagerfeld, the fashion designer, put his collection of 18th-century furniture on sale in one of the most important auctions in Europe this year, Parisian dealers were attempting to rebut allegations made in a vitriolic book.
Vanity Art recounts the methods used by experts to pass off worthless modern items as valuable antiques. Written by an Italian dealer under a pseudonym, Salatore Walker, it claims that the antiques and art worlds are dominated by sharks preying on gullible collectors. There is no suggestion that M Lagerfeld's sale in Monaco on Saturday contained fakes, but the mud that oozes from the pages of Vanity Art will cast suspicion over all the big sales in London, New York and Monaco. The book, published in France, has attracted attention because of the author's ability to explain how fake paintings and furniture are produced.
Experts say the methods are authentic. According to the publisher, Ramsay, he is an international dealer known on both sides of the Atlantic. One passage, for example, tells how to fake Renaissance drawings. "The inks can be produced by mixing iron sulphate with tannic acid," it says. "The paper is made by spreading a thick paste made of flour and water on to two sides of resistant paper. Fold this in two and place the paper between two sheets of linen. Iron them completely. Place this under a pile of books and leave it for several weeks. When the paper is dry, it can be removed from the linen."
A second passage recounts how Italian dealers have created "18th- century" chandeliers from bits and pieces picked up in churches and second-hand shops, selling them as genuine antiques. According to Libération, these chandeliers have been sold in auction houses across the world for hundreds of thousands of pounds. Sotheby's and its French counterpart, Drouot, are among those who have failed to spot them as fakes and put them under the hammer as authentic, Libération said.
In France this year a Dutch painter, Jans Geert Jansen, 57, was imprisoned for selling more than 1,000 "masterpieces" that he said were by such artists as Chagall and Magritte. He had painted them all. In London last year, a British forger, John Drewe, 50, was found guilty of fooling the likes of Sotheby's and Christie's into selling hundreds of his paintings as the work of Chagall, Giacometti and other contemporary artists. Neither Sotheby's nor Christie's would comment last night. Dominique Chevalier, of the National French Union of Antiques Dealers, said: "Ninety per cent of antiques dealers are honest."
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,49219,00.html