Modigliani real or faux?

Paintings by Modigliani are some of the most copied and faked paintings today in the world.

Even good fakes like the one above flood the market. The first is an original.

Modigliani painted in ateliers in Paris, like this one, which he shared with Brancusi. At the time they shivered in this cold studio, exchanged paintings for food in the local restos.

Here's his last atelier where he lived until a few days before his end; suffering from advanced tuberculosis, broke, without food or heat and with Jeanne eight months pregnant with his second child. Vacant for years but today the remodelled studio is still owned by a family descendent of Modigliani's landlord.
And a block away is La Rotonde his favorite haunt.
But after his death the legacy grew. So too has the job of authenticating his paintings.
Some researchers claim they received death threats and two have abandoned work on monographs. Nothing is helped by a plethora of fakes on the market and bitter quarrels between the experts.
La fée vert, the green fairy, as they called Absinthe. Actually this is faux absinthe.
Even Lenin frequented the café, Trotsky and Modiglianio and Picasso snapped by Cocteau.
On his route back to the atelier, day or night, he passed the statue of Balzac.
to 8 rue de la Grande Chaumiére


Why is Modigliani targeted? The tuburcular artist--who died at the age of just 36 in 1920--led a classic Bohemian lifestyle, constantly moving from atelier to atelier and handing out drawings to pay his debts. After death he became a myth.
And this left a historical and documentary void, an open invitation to forgers, particularly as his drawings--often consisting of just a few lines--are easy to copy. In the '50s, '60s and '70s the notorious faker Elmyr de Hory was knocking out "Modiglianis" in the U.S., and they and forgeries from other sources continue to infest the market.

Marc Restallini, a Modigliani scholar who runs a private museum, reported seeing over 100, from pastiches to excellent forgeries of Modigliani drawings. He compared the amount of Modigliani fakes to Corot fakes which says a lot since Corot is the heavyweight champion of forgeries. Another Modigliani expert, Christian Parisot, a bitter foe of Restillini, but a friend of the artist's only surviving daughter Jeanne,(named after her mother) claims, "I have seen 50 or 60 people who brought me these things." He founded the Modigliani Committee claiming provenance from his daughter.
Also raising the stakes for forgers and experts are the huge prices commanded by Modigliani's works--over $11 million for a painting and over $500,000 for a drawing.Into this mix comes another problem, a range of monographs which could be likened to the gold bar of reference - citing historical provenance to authenticate the art. There are no less than five different reference works on the artist. The most respected is that by Ambrogio Ceroni, whose 1958, 1970 and 1972 tomes remain the only reliable works, according to leading dealers and auction houses.
Enter the Wildenstein Institute, which asked Restellini to prepare the definitive monograph, both for drawings and paintings. This opened a can of worms given Wildenstein's huge clout in the marketplace: Not being included in the catalogue raisonné was the kiss of death for a piece. Later Restellini abandoned his catalogue work on Modigliani drawings after death threats and attempts to bribe his parents. There is a rather different version of this story from Christian Parisot, who once worked with Mr. Restellini. In 2000, two owners of Modigliani drawings took Wildenstein to court in France because Mr. Restellini had rejected the works for his drawings catalogue. Wildenstein lost and was ordered to include them; Mr. Restellini then abandoned his work. This, claims Mr. Parisot, is the real reason for his withdrawal.
Dealers and auction houses fell back on the Ceroni catalogues, even though they are known to contain some omissions. A major Italian dealer has said that authenticating Modigliani is "worse than gambling in Las Vegas," with what appeared a sure bet a few years ago becoming obsolete today.
Modigliani lived mostly in Paris for ten years, sculpted and painted and had only one gallery show in his career which was almost shut down for an 'indecent' nude painting. Jeanne, eight months pregnant with his second child, committed suicide the day after his death. Hours after Modigliani died in the charity hospital the gallery owners started selling his work. The sad irony is that none of his work was owned by his family. No proceeds of the millions paid for Modigliani's paintings were ever given to Jeanne, his surviving daughter who died, like her father broke.
Cara - Tuesday

Whoops, I meant to thank Georgina Adam for a piece she wrote a few years back on the subject that inspired me to go forward with this piece.

Book tour hiatus: Smart politics

Apologies for not having a new blog.  Michael and I are on tour down the West Coast of the USA. Currently in Portland.  Excellent event last night at the amazing Powell's.  Tonight is at Murder by the Book.

The reprise below has special relevance because South Africa is defending its Rugby World Cup title at the moment.  We play Australia on Sunday (NZ time).  Go bokke!!
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Smart politics - an oxymoron?  Not always.

Very few people who knew South Africa in the 1980’s would have predicted that the country would have made such a peaceful and successful transition from the oppressive apartheid (pronounced apart –hate) regime to the current democratic one, which became reality in the mid-1990s.  Indeed huge numbers of white South Africans couldn’t face the uncertainty and left for other countries, notably, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Canada.

So it is reasonable to ask why this happened.  Why didn’t the South African Blacks follow the path of retribution and revenge?  After all, by legislation they were prevented from receiving a decent education; by legislation they could not vote; by legislation they were told where and where not they could live; by legislation they were not allowed to take skilled jobs; and by legislation they were treated as inferior human beings.

The reasons are both sociological and political.  In this blog I want to highlight some of the political decisions that had a big influence on making the transition happen without violence.

Of course a lot of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of my hero, Nelson Mandela.  After decades of imprisonment for trying to change the apartheid government. Mandela emerged as almost a god to the Blacks, and to a few Whites also.  Most Whites were extremely nervous as to what he would do, especially they had generally regarded him as a terrorist.

But he emerged from prison without apparent hate for Whites or for Afrikaners (who made up the majority of the pro-apartheid National party).  Indeed he immediately advocated that he wanted a South Africa for all, Black and White; and that South Africa would only prosper if all its citizens pulled together. 

Four political decisions had a decisive influence on how South Africa moved forward.

First, Black South Africa was not monolithic.  In fact there were multiple Black groups living within the country, with differing cultures and different languages.  The Whites, too, were splintered into the historically conservative Afrikaans speaking (generally pro-apartheid) and slightly less conservative English speaking, who typically opposed the government in elections but were very happy to benefit from the cheap labour and lack of job competition.  Rather than go down the path of divisiveness, Mandela and the leadership of the African National Congress preferred to be inclusive.  So they passed legislation that gave South Africa 11 official languages.  None of the Blacks were left out, and the Whites, particularly the Afrikaners, had their languages officially recognized as well.

The second decision that had a big impact was also in the area of inclusivity.  Historically, under the apartheid regime, the National anthem was Die Stem (The Voice), almost always sung in Afrikaans, even by English speakers.  The new national anthem starts with two verses of the beautiful Nkosi sikilele iAfrika (God save Africa).  Then there is a verse from Die Stem in Afrikaans, followed by the refrain of Die Stem sung in English.  So the national anthem has two totally different melodies, sung in three languages.

The third decision was the most momentous, in my opinion, and one that countries around the world would do well to follow.  It was the establishment at the urging of Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  The background to the TRC was that crimes were committed during the fight for democracy by both the apartheid government and its minions, as well as by the freedom fighters.  The basic premise of the TRC was that anyone who came before the TRC would be pardoned and be free of future prosecution if they fully confessed the crimes they had committed.  This is a mind-boggling position to take.  In the interest of building a new country, using the talents of all its peoples, they new majority was willing to forgive.  The new leadership in South Africa showed the world there was another option to take other than revenge – the option of forgiveness.  And it seems to have worked.  Of course not everyone buys into the philosophy of forgiveness, but overall the TRC was a remarkable success.  The transition to the new South Africa has been relatively free of the violence of retribution.

As an aside, Public Television in the United States has a two-hour documentary on the TRC.  I watch it every opportunity I can, and sit with tears streaming down my face for the duration.  I cannot recommend more strongly that you watch it too.

The final political decision that had a big impact on the country was in the field of sport – rugby to be precise.  To most White South Africans, rugby was the national sport.  Most Blacks disdained rugby and favoured football (soccer).  Rugby was dominated by Afrikaners, even though there were some outstanding English-speaking players.  For many years all South African sporting teams – named the Springboks – had been ostracized from world sport.  With democracy came the opportunity to be part of the world sporting stage again.  One of the first major events was the Rugby World Cup, which was held in South Africa in 1995.  South Africa won the final against the New Zealand team.  The political decision that had such an impact was that Nelson Mandela arrived to cheer on the Spingboks, wearing the No 6 shirt of the team's Afrikaans-speaking captain, Francois Pienaar.  With Mandela behind the team, the whole country, White, Black, Coloured, Asian, were behind the team too.  This amazingly simple act united the country like nothing else.  The enormity of the impact can’t be overstated.  A movie, Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, has just been released to critical acclaim.  It too offers an insight into the South African psyche.

I, for one, have an strong dislike and distrust of politicians in general.  It’s a pleasure to report on something they did that had a truly positive impact.

Stan – Thursday

Postscript:  Following my earlier blog on The Merry Wives of Zuma, it was reported in the South African press last week that Zuma has another, previously unreported child, this time by the wife of a friend of his.  This makes 20 the number of children he has fathered.

Hiatus - Friends of Iceland

My life is still a mess. My inbox contains 743 uread messages and I don't dare check my facebook page to see what has accumulated there. To add to my humiliation I must yet again repost an old post (as it is hard to repost a new post) and can only hope that you will bear with me until I get my life back. If I can remember what it was like in order to restructure it back to the same manner. But, in two days I will head off to Frankfurt and can hopefully jumble something fresh together from there.

Previously posted on April 7th 2010:

In this post I am going to tell you about Iceland‘s friends, provide a few examples of such persons and tell you what it takes to be a member of this select clan.

I am prompted to tell you about this because of Gerard Butler, a Scottish actor who recently gave an interview to British news-paper „News of the World“ where he mentioned that his two favourite places in the world are Scotland and Iceland. He went on to say that there was something harsh and primal about Iceland that had an inexplicable effect on him. He mentioned the glaciers, the volcanoes, the black sandy beaches, the hot springs and last but not least the people who he said were very spiritual and great. This interview made the headlines here and was recited in every paper – prominently. Much emphasis was placed on his positive attitude towards the country – less on a statement regarding him liking to wear women‘s clothes and makeup contained in the same interview.

Gerard Butler has now earned the public title „friend of Iceland“ which will now be tagged to his name in every Icelandic article he is mentioned, joining the ranks of numerous others who came before him. One that comes to mind is Kiefer Sutherland who at one point made the news here for buying an Icelandic sweater, the article even contained a picture of the actual sweater, see accompanying photo. Now Kiefer actually had to do more than sweater shopping to earn the title, he spent New Year‘s here some years ago and subsequently mentioned on David Letterman’s Late Show that he loved Iceland, saying that the country was amazing, he had never felt as welcome in a foreign country and that the firework pandemonium to celebrate the passing of time was something to behold. Kiefer had been very impressed by a six year old carrying a 15 kilo explosive, followed by a three year old in charge of the matches and was in really positive towards Iceland in his brief travel log recital. Obviously this became news in Iceland and Keifer Sutherland became known in the media and elsewhere as “a friend of Iceland”.

I’m sure by now you have figured it out. To become an official friend of Iceland you must: A) visit Iceland, B) appear in print or some form of media telling the world how great Iceland is (preferably while wearing Icelandic clothing) and C) be a celebrity. What might not be as clear is that it is also possible to lose this title, something that almost happened to Quentin Tarantino who held on to it at one point only by the skin of his teeth. Now this famous director has been a friend of Iceland for a very long time, visiting quite often and every now and again mentioning this to the foreign press along with comments about beautiful women, beautiful countryside and so on. Like Kiefer Sutherland he was also caught buying Icelandic clothing, albeit not woollen sweaters but a bit cooler 66°N outdoor stuff. The photo above is also taken from the Icelandic news, it appeared originally in the Telegraph (British) and if you go get a magnifying glass (or zoom in real close) you can see that his cap bears this company’s logo, which is precisely why the photo made the Icelandic news in the first place. The accompanying headline: “Quentin Tarantino wears 66°N cap in interview!”

Tarantino’s status as a friend of Iceland was thus almost sealed in gold until one night when he made an appearance on Conan O’Brian and did the ultimate no-no: made derogatory comments about the virtue of our young women. What Tarantino said was actually pretty funny if one is not acting overly sentimental. He began by stating that the whole population was nutty and then moved on to say that the women all looked like supermodels but unlike contemporary beauties these ran around downtown yelling “let’s get this party started!” He then made a comparison between American women that he had to work on getting drunk in order to get them to go home with him while in Iceland he had to try to curb their drinking so that they wouldn’t pass out in his bathroom once there. To cap it off he said that Iceland produced the foulest drink known to man – the Opal liqueur which he believed tasted like poison, although he did note that being alive he had never tasted poison. In his version of events Björk forced him to take three such shots in succession at a bar while our prime minister was standing upon a table in this same establishment, fist in the air singing: “The room, the room, the room is on fire.” Considering how thin skinned we are towards foreigners’ perception of our country, it is amazing that Tarantino managed to regain his “friend of Iceland” title (accomplished by wearing a lot of Icelandic clothing in interviews and never referring to drunken Icelandic women again, at least not while quoted) and this feat probably best proves that he really is: “a friend of Iceland”.

This is too long already but similar to the pecking order of aristocratic titles, there is also a pecking order in place for “friends of Iceland” as above the general title described above reigns “a true friend of Iceland”. Few receive this honour but lately those who have sided with us in the never ending Icesave fiasco have been moved up into this echelon.

The above may seem idiotic but it is not even exaggerated by an ounce. Celebrities, be they A-, B- or even C-listed grab the national headlines here if they so much as utter a sentence to a TV guide in Nebraska about visits to Iceland. I guess this extreme interest in how the world makes us out and how we overreact when it is totally negative (as has occurred in the cases of Jerry Seinfeld and Robbie Williams) says it all about our insecurity as a small, relatively recent nation. Even innocent tourists are bombarded by a question that has become a joke but is still asked at some point by every Icelander that they happen to come across, namely: “So how do you like Iceland?” The only acceptable answer is one on a positive note.

In anticipation of any possible trips up here, consider yourself warned.

Yrsa - Wednesday

Want To Ensure That The Money Earned In Town Stays In Town?

Nothing easier.

All you have to do is to establish a community bank.

And start printing a local currency.

In Cidade de Deus (the place where City of God was filmed, and a stop on Barack Obama’s South American tour this year) the banknotes are called CDDs.

In the little town of Silva Jardim, sixty miles north of Rio de Janeiro, they’re called Capivaris, after a pig-sized rodent commonly found in a local river.

And the ones in 62 other towns throughout Brazil are named after everything from the sun to varieties of cactus and even Brazil nuts.

Then you open a storefront that serves as a bank, where you freely exchange the local currency for the national currency at a rate of one-to-one. And, to make sure you don’t get into trouble with the federal government, you deposit the national currency in a bank, where it serves as a guarantee.

Next, you convince the local merchants to give discounts for purchases made in the new currency. The discounts apply to everything from haircuts to groceries, from clothing to electrical appliances. And they range from ten to twenty percent. With savings like those, all of the consumers fall into line and start exchanging and spending the local currency instead of the national currency. And the merchants quickly discover that the discounts they offer are more than being compensated for by increased sales.

The economy of the town benefits twofold: firstly by helping to ensure that money earned in the town is spent in the town, and secondly, by attracting people from outside the city limits who start flocking-in to exchange their money and start spending it. Most merchants experience an increase in revenue of some thirty percent.

Nobody has actually started counterfeiting the local currencies as yet, but as a safeguard, the banknotes all bear watermarks, serial numbers and holograms – just like the national currency.

The first ones were the brainchild of a social activist and former seminarian named Joaquim Melo.

He called them palmas (palms) and launched them in the mid-1990’s in a small town called Conjunto Palmeiras in the State of Ceára.

And they’ve been gaining currency (sorry, couldn’t resist) throughout Brazil ever since.

Leighton - Monday

The Straight Poop on Asian Coffee

One of the first Western brand names to push its way into Southeast Asia was Nescafe.  The Nestle company had, to its lasting discredit, invaded Asia in the late 1930s and early 1940s, persuading Asian mothers to feed their babies the easy and less nourishing way -- with Nestle baby formula.

Nescafe was their second major product in Asia.

Nescafe, of course, is also the easy way.  Spoon the glop into the cup, add hot water, stir. Voila! A cup of terrible coffee in less time than it takes to say, "A cup of terrible coffee."

When Nescafe barged into the market, it displaced a thriving tradition of freshly-roasted, locally grown coffee.  Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia all grew coffee, and Indonesia was globally famous for it.  In all those countries but Indonesia, local coffee production took a major bath.

But only at the low end.  On the very highest end, demand remained steady for a variant that Nestle, in their sober, soul-shriveling Swiss suits and ties, couldn't have imagined if they'd been given the rest of the century to brainstorm.

It's called "The Weasel."

This is a civet cat.  Civets live all over Southeast Asia - there are probably a dozen species.  (The one above is the Indonesian palm civet.)  Civets have been famous in some circles for years because the musk they secrete from their perineal gland (that's the gland right at the exit door, the same ones dogs sniff when they're saying hello) was an essential stabilizing base for perfumes.  In fact, demand was so high that some civets became endangered, so perfumers stopped killing civets to harvest the glands and instead they now hire people to, ummm, scrape the, uh, stuff from the back end of a living civet.  And you think you've got a bad job.

So remember, the fanciest perfume in the world contains butt-juice from a civet cat.  

But this is about coffee.

The coffee bean matures inside the coffee berry, which is, as the name suggests, a bit of fruit surrounding a large, hard seed.  In normal coffee harvesting, the berries are dried and the fruit stripped away to reveal the bean, which is then dried and, eventually, roasted and ground.

But lots of coffee berries fall off the trees before they're harvested, and a great many of them are eaten by civets.  Civets are the beatniks of the animal world; what they really want is some good espresso, a set of bongos, and a beret, and they can do without the bongos and the berets.  So they eat the berries and then stay up all night talking, and then eat some more the next day.  And, nature being what it is, sooner or later, the ground is littered with a distinctive, ummmm, spoor.

Yes, that's what it looks like.  Coffee growers in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand individually (a) noticed that the beans passed through the civet's, errr, digestive system more or less whole, and (b) wondered what the coffee might taste like.  Yes, they did, they really did.  Independently of each other.  So they cleaned it up and roasted it and tasted it.

And, you're probably asking, "What does it taste like?"  It tastes sensational.  And why?  Well, it says here, "Research [shows] that the civet's endogenous digestive secretions seep into the beans, carrying proteolytic enzymes which break down the beans' proteins, yielding shorter peptides and more free amino acids. Since the flavor of coffee owes much to its proteins, there is a hypothesis that this shift in the numbers and kinds of proteins in beans after being swallowed by civets brings forth their unique flavor. Moreover, while inside a civet the beans begin to germinate by malting which also lowers their bitterness."


The resulting brew is called "Chon" (weasel) in Vietnam, "Kopi Luwak" in much of Indonesia, and something I can't think of in Thailand.  It is the -- get ready -- most expensive coffee in the world.  A single cup can run you US $35 and up, leaving Blue Mountain in the shade.  No matter how many civets you've got, they can only pass so many coffee beans.  The total annual crop in Thailand is about three tons and they estimate they could sell 300 tons, so it does get a bit pricey.

And I've drunk it (but not at those prices), and it's terrific.

Tim -- Sundays

A Lens Master's View of Mykonos

Yes, that’s “Lens” not Zen. 

Then again, both terms can be said to accurately describe the talent behind this sublime collection of Mykonos images by Swiss photographer—and mystery novel fanatic—William Griffiths.   William’s roots run deep in Mykonos and in these photographs he captures the essence of a place many think of as just one big 24/7 party venue. 

Whenever I’m asked what makes Mykonos special I always say it’s the Mykonian people, for somehow, amid all the in-season bustle of their island, they manage to live their lives in keeping with traditional ways.  But Griffiths reminds us that there is also a soul to the place separate and distinct from its people. 

I’m grateful to my friend for allowing me to post his copyrighted photographs (all are now on notice) and to see much more of his work check out William Griffiths’ website, The Dream Lives On. 

By the way, I thought of adding descriptions to the photographs, but decided it was better not to disturb this purely visual effort at giving you "a sense of place."  My contribution this week was in selecting the photographs to post out of the hundreds I was given...and believe me it would have been simpler (and faster) to have written a novella than play photo editor.  It ain't my skill set, folks.

Jeff—Saturday