Word: art
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...memories, as I was one of the first to be taken into Belgium's ancient quarried hillside honeycomb in 1944. The townspeople of nearby Maastricht had used one small segment of these quarries as an air raid shelter capable of housing 70,000 people easily. The Queen Wilhelmina art collection, including Rembrandt's The Nightwatch, was stored away in them with full cooperation from the Germans, who never realized that running right alongside the air raid shelter and art sanctuary was a path to freedom for Allied airmen. On some of these walls, men whiled away their time...
...high panjandrums of the art world are the so-called "experts"-the men who authenticate paintings. Like baseball scouts and wine tasters, they are paid not just to guess, but to guess right.. The best of them admit that it is an uncertain art, often humbly change their judgments. But when an opinion can determine whether a painting is worth $10 or $100,000, some modern experts try to envelop their trade with the accouterments of more exact sciences, strive to test problematic works with a chemist's lofty calm. Some refuse to see the picture itself, arguing...
...years ago an art buyer named Etienne Cazals bought $30,000 worth of paintings from Brussels Dealer Jacques Trussart on the basis of authentication by, among others, Paris Art Historian Louis Réau and Art Expert Nino Cordovado. The pictures proved to be deliberate copies, and Trussart & Co. were charged with fraud...
...trial, Art Historian Réau admitted that he had authenticated a Fragonard on the basis of a photograph. This was current procedure, he pleaded. Snapped the public prosecutor: "When Réau and Cordovado betray their mission to protect the public, which is their moral duty, we have a twilight of the art critic gods...
Finding the art dealers guilty (with sentences as high as four years), the court turned on the experts, declared them guilty as accessories. Réau got a sentence of eight months, suspended, and 20,000 francs fine on the remarkable charge of "delivering numerous certificates without formulating doubts or nuances, based solely on black-and-white pictures." Cordovado, tried in absentia, was sentenced to one year. In effect, the art experts had been held legally responsible for carelessness. Said France-Soir: "Professor Réau's condemnation has caused a profound stupor in university and artistic milieus...