Word: au
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
Corinth's capacities as draughtsman are somewhat extended in his series of self-portraits. They are by no means inept but they are far from au juste. They simply lack authority, and this is not quite enough. His illustrations for Gulliver's Travels are more happily resolved through chiaroscuro; but at this point one tends to view alternative techniques with a distrustful eye. It is significant that Rembrandt, the master of chiaroscuro in paint, worked in his drawings for complete structural clarity...
...au fond d'un regard que Von decouvre une ame," insisted the soulful pitchman for a mascara pencil...