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| Best Practices: Art |
Caveat Collector
Michelle Leder
03/01/2007
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Alex Acevedo is hardly a novice when it comes to the subject of early
American paintings. A dealer for the past 40 years, Acevedo owns the Alexander
Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But last fall, after successfully
bidding on a John Singleton Copley painting at an auction house in Hudson, N.Y.,
he learned that even his well-trained eye can be fooled.
Be careful when buying certain big-name artists or works produced by a particular artist during certain times. Among the red flags are just about anything from Monet, some Picassos, Dali prints after 1960 and
Calder
sculptures. |
The first clue that
something was amiss appeared during the auction, held at Stair Galleries. A
prominent British art dealer who specializes in early American paintings was in
attendance, but refused to bid aggressively for the piece, which carried an
estimate of roughly $500,000. “That led me to believe he knew something that I
didn’t know,” Acevedo says. Still, Acevedo was excited at the prospect of making
a substantial profit by reselling the painting, which dates from 1790, and he
continued bidding until he acquired the piece for a mere $85,000.
On his
two-hour drive back to Manhattan, Acevedo puzzled over the situation. When he
arrived home, he jumped online and pored over his books, hunting for more
information. Several hours later, he discovered why the painting sold for so
little: It had been reported stolen from Harvard in the early 1970s. The
painting had resurfaced at Stair Galleries after a man named Melvyn Kohn, who
coincidentally hung the piece in his home in Acevedo’s neighborhood, died
without a will. Even today it remains unclear exactly how Kohn acquired the
painting.
Colin Stair, who auctioned the Copley painting along with hundreds
of other pieces, says, “Over the past five years, I’ve sold about 30,000 items,
and this is only the second time something questionable has happened. Nobody
wants to have these types of problems.” In a typical year, Stair Galleries sells
approximately 3,000 paintings, and, with just 10 people on staff, Stair concedes
that he and his employees find it impossible to check the provenance and
authenticity of each item.
In today’s hyperactive art market, questions of
forgery and uncertain provenance are becoming ever more problematic for sellers,
buyers, curators, insurers, attorneys and law enforcement. Last December, the J.
Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to return two pieces—a spectacular
4th-century B.C. Macedonian gold funerary wreath and a 6th-century B.C. marble
statue of a woman—to Greece, ending an 11-year dispute. In spring 2005, 32
previously unknown paintings believed to be the work of Jackson Pollock turned
up in New York. At the start of 2007, scholars were still hotly debating their
authenticity.
Even experts with years of experience tracking these sorts of
cases cannot agree on the causes of this sudden spike in provenance problems.
“The forgery market has always been around. Michelangelo made a copy of an
antique statue of Cupid, which in today’s terms would be considered a forgery,”
says Vivian Ebersman, director of Fine Arts Expertise for AXA Art Insurance, a
division of the multinational insurer. “But the stakes are higher because the
prices are higher.”
Ebersman counsels buyers to be particularly careful when
purchasing works attributed to very popular artists, or works said to be
produced by a particular artist at a specific time. There are a number of
categories the company will examine with particular vigor before insuring. These
include nearly all works by Monet, some Picassos, Dali prints created after 1960
and Alexander Calder sculptures.
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