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June 3, 1999

- Peer fights planners over art sale ban
- Aboriginal artist names origins of forgeries
(The scandal lies in our double standards)
- Russian court starts hearings on stolen art law
- It's curtains for estate vandals
- Holocaust widow set to win back UKP.3m painting; a breakthrough over Nazi loot (Discovering truth about the auctions of despair) (An everyday tale of theft and murder) (Claim sets a precedent)

Peer fights planners over art sale ban

By A J McIlroy
A PEER and his son have challenged a ruling by council planners that they cannot sell their paintings because they are "fixed parts" of their listed ancestral home. Lord Hazlerigg, 89, and his heir, Arthur, 46, have been served an enforcement order by Harborough district council, Leics, telling them that nine paintings they sold for UKP.270,000 must be put back. The paintings were among treasures auctioned for UKP.2.6 million at Sotheby's last September to save Noseley Hall, the Hazlerigg's Grade II* listed family seat for more than 600 years. The Historic Houses Association said yesterday that the council's action had "caused alarm" among its 1,500 members. Arthur Hazlerigg said last night: "It is a farce. They seem to have just assumed the pictures were fixed fittings and an integral part of the building, which they definitely were not." He and his father would contest the enforcement order at a public inquiry in Market Harborough next week. He said money from the paintings would pay for roof restoration costing UKP.350,000, rewiring at UKP.38,000, assist with the upkeep of the house and prepare it for opening to the public. Norman Hudson, adviser to the Historic Houses Association, said: "I would not consider the paintings at Noseley Hall to have been fixtures." A spokesman for Harborough council said: "We consider their removal to have been against the integrity of the original listing."

(Australian Broadcasting Company)

Aboriginal artist names origins of forgeries

One of Australia's most prominent Aboriginal artists has named people allegedly involved in faking his work. The allegations are made by the painter Clifford Possum Tjapaltjari on the ABC television's Four Corners program tonight. An exhibition of Clifford Possum's work earlier this year was found to include 17 fakes. In the program, a Sydney dealer says those paintings came from a former Alice Springs dealer, John O'Loughlin. Clifford Possum says he saw Mr O'Louglin copying his paintings in the early 1990s, ahead of an exhibition held in London. It is alleged by the artist, and by a London dealer who held the show, that cheques for 3,000 pounds were cashed by Mr O'Loughlin and not passed on to Clifford Possum. John O'Loughlin, who has since moved to Adelaide, denies all the allegations. Two other people are named as being involved in faking Clifford Possum's work. The artist himself admits to signing work that was not his own but claims he did so under duress.

(Sydney Morning Herald)

The scandal lies in our double standards

Date: 02/06/99
The market place opperates like a tightropoe across the cultural gulf between black and white people, argues Hetti Perkins, the curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the AGNSW. With the recent spate of stories, audiences of national broadsheets and broadcasters could be forgiven for thinking that Aboriginal art is in a state of crisis. It's a story that is of passing interest when non-Aboriginal artists are concerned, yet becomes front-page headlines when Aboriginal artists are involved. Two issues lie at the heart of the stories: collaboration by artists and the faking of paintings. As anyone working in the arts will tell you, artistic alliances and the forging of paintings are nothing new to the art world. What is new to the art world is Aboriginal art and, most tellingly, Aborigines - the artists themselves. Evidence of the tiny percentage Aborigines receive from the enormous economic and tourism revenue reaped from the Aboriginal art "industry" contradicts any perception that Aborigines are profiteering from their culture. So who's cashing in? Furthermore, the "scandals" which have "tarnished" Aboriginal art concern a small sector of the incredibly diverse landscape of contemporary Aboriginal art practice. Claims that Aboriginal culture itself is under threat or that certain dealers have created Aboriginal art are, frankly, ludicrous. On the contrary, the strong current of tradition that has sustained Aboriginal people since time immemorial continues into the present unabated.
Western Desert painting for an outside audience - the locus of the stories - began in the early 1970s in Papunya, a depressing and desolate government settlement established as a marshalling point for the peoples of the surrounding desert regions. In this Aboriginal community, as in many others, art-making began as a way of communicating to white fellas a connection to country, an affirmation of identity.
With the popularity of Western Desert painting, people forget that for at least 10 years Aboriginal artists working out of Papunya and surrounding out-stations laboured away, largely unrecognised. Ironically, it is only now that the early works of this period have entered the secondary market that they command record prices. Following the hard-won "overnight success" of Western Desert painting in the late 1980s, several galleries appeared in Alice Springs and State capitals. As a result, demand exceeded supply, the market overheated and now it's the artists who are getting burnt. Other casualties of the skirmishes between dealers that have blown out into a war over the paintings of particular artists in recent times are the gallerists who have worked hard to promote their artists rather than themselves. Those pre-boom gallerists, who work with arts centres towards the longevity of the artists' career, are curiously silent (or maybe not consulted or just plain edited), as are a number of the leading collectors and curators in the country. What these stories do portray accurately is a picture of the appalling pressure placed on Aborigines in Australia today. Yet they often fail to address the yawning cultural gulf between black and white people in this country. The marketplace operates like a tightrope between these poles, with the introduced social ills of alcohol and poverty ever-threatening obstacles to artists attempting to successfully navigate this impasse.
One significant complication is the language barrier, as demonstrated by the allegations surrounding the contradictory statutory declarations of Clifford Possum - embodying the true meaning of a media circus. Who can gauge the subtleties of translation and inference between the questions "Are you paid for painting?" or "Do you paint for money?" To some people these questions would be the same, but to others they may be subject to entirely divergent interpretations. As Dr Luke Taylor of the National Museum of Australia points out, the motivation for Aboriginal artists is not a question of "cultural maintenance" or "economic enterprise" - clearly it is both. Indeed, as an adviser at one of the many arts centres that act as a buffer for the artists once said to me: "The artists don't paint for the money, but wouldn't paint without it".
Double standards are continually brought to bear on Aboriginal artists and their personal affairs. Aborigines, as in the days of ethnographic documentation, are easy prey: to be pursued, pestered and probed; followed down the street and into their homes or camps; and asked the most personal and invasive questions. Rather than the provision of money to family members being seen as acts of customary obligation or even generosity, it is presented as somehow naive or, at worst, treated with contempt.
People who have lived with real deprivation keenly feel the suffering of others, and so it is with Possum - who, finding himself in a position to help others, does so, whether it be handing out money or maybe even signatures. One could speculate that he gives us too much credit - thinking that it's easy to tell the "rubbish" ones from the "proper" ones, and indeed it mostly is. Surely there is also an onus on buyers to use their judgment and avoid buying discount paintings from dealers or street hawkers. Many Aboriginal artists, like Possum, have lived hard lives. Hard in terms of the physical labour of working as a stockman and hard in terms of seeing, within their lifetimes, a whole way of life that their parents knew threatened, their country taken. Possum's family had to leave their country for a period following the infamous Coniston Massacre, a tragedy that claimed the mother of fellow artist, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri. In fact, Possum's mother then raised Stockman.
Possum has been successively ripped off and intimidated by a market and a group of people he has trusted. As a stockman, he would have been paid cash in hand with no superannuation, leave loading or accountants standing by to manage his affairs. Where he is at today is a place he couldn't have imagined as a child with ambitions of being a Father in the Lutheran faith. As Dr Vivien Johnson of Macquarie University has written: "Now, more than ever, the imagination of its creator lives in the landscape of his Dreamings, but more and more Clifford Possum himself resides in the troubling world to which he has consigned them in his paintings. To this world, he has increasingly little to say about matters close to his heart." And who can blame him when he, like a handful of other brilliant artists before him, have been dragged into a glaring public trial by media.

Russian court starts hearings on stolen art law

June 1, 1999
Web posted at: 8:15 AM EDT (1215 GMT)
MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia's Constitutional Court on Tuesday started long-delayed hearings, demanded by President Boris Yeltsin, into a controversial law blocking the return of wartime art trophies to Germany.
Dozens of people, including German officials, gathered in the court building in central Moscow for hearings expected to last at least two days. The court could consider its decision for several weeks before reaching a conclusion.
Yeltsin has been waging a long battle with the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, over the law, which halts the repatriation of art treasures seized by the Red Army during World War Two. The president initially vetoed the draft law but the two houses of parliament then overturned his veto. He again refused to sign it into law until last April, when the Constitutional Court ruled that he could not block laws twice.
But Yeltsin, keen to forge closer ties with major trading partner Germany, then appealed against the law. He alleged that parliamentary procedures were violated when the law was passed. The Kremlin also says the law contradicts some of Russia's international commitments and challenges the Duma's right to declare the art trophies federal property, regardless of the form of ownership.
"Laws and other bills cannot contradict the constitution, while many norms of this law effectively breach the constitution," Mikhail Mityukov, Yeltsin's representative to the Constitutional Court, told the judges.
"It contradicts the constitutional right for private property. The constitution bans laws that limit the basic rights," he said at proceedings which were open to the media. The Kremlin says television footage on the day of voting showed that not enough deputies were present in the 450-seat State Duma to overturn a presidential veto, which requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers.
Mityukov said other norms of voting had also been breached, making the approval of the law in the Federation Council, or upper house, invalid. "The Federation Council approved an unapproved law," he said. The Kremlin has given no sign that it will change its stance on the booty art although relations with the West have soured since NATO started bombing Yugoslavia over the Kosovo crisis. Parliament and most Russians regard the art works as compensation for losses suffered during a war in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens were killed.
The booty art includes a rare Gutenberg bible, gold artefacts from the ancient site of Troy, a drawing by Rembrandt and paintings by Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.
Russia is also seeking the return of art seized from Soviet territory during World War Two. Yeltsin has said the new law would complicate Moscow's efforts to have its own art returned.
Copyright 1999 Reuters.

(Times of London)

It's curtains for estate vandals

BY RUSSELL JENKINS, NORTH WEST CORRESPONDENT
NET curtains in front windows may be a better way to deter burglars than steel shutters. A Manchester pilot scheme has shown that dainty lace can give better protection than heavier security. Vandals and burglars make the most of opportunities provided by empty properties, particularly on run-down estates, and Manchester City Council's responsehas been to board up the homes. But steel shutters discourage potential tenants and make it obvious that a house is unoccupied. The council discovered that some streets with boarded up properties were sinking into a spiral of decline. But the Cheetham and Crumpsall scheme uses net curtains and intruder alarms to trick would-be intruders into thinking the houses are occupied. A few home comforts and an alarm system, backed by insurance cover, are cheaper than repairing vandalism. Steve Gill, the council's housing spokesman, said: "Steel security gives out a negative message that this is a high-risk, crime-ridden area. An estate's reputation can be ruined." Now steel shutters are usually fixed only on back windows.