The Russian Avant-Garde Rag
Editors: Jack Jones, Sally Smart
Jean Chauvelin, organiser of the early 2009 exhibition of the work of Alexandra Exter at the Chateau de Tours in France, and other lenders to the exhibition were vindicated by the Court of Appeal in Orléans, France, which delivered a judgment on 20 November 2009 (Case No. 2009/00443 + 2009/00444), stating that:
"If, in the will of Alexandra EXTER, material property in the form of a number of her paintings was given to Simon LISSIM, it did not transfer the benefits of moral rights attached to the entirety of her artistic creation;
"Only Ihnno EZRATTY, in his position of universal and sole heir, was the holder of the moral rights of Alexandra EXTER;
"Simon LISSIM never having any rightful claim to the intellectual property of Alexandra EXTER therefore could not transfer moral rights to Andréi NAKOV;
"Even if Simon LISSIM had been the beneficiary of Alexandra EXTER, transfer of it to Andréi NAKOV as regards the work in question remains inexistent, and the simple receipt of archives, catalogue and palette in no case implies the possibility for Simon LiSSIM to transfer whatever moral right."
Yet Mr. Nakov continues to swan around the world claiming he has the moral rights to the work of Alexandra Exter. Is he not in flagrant contempt of court? In flagrant deceit of the public?
Just before the court's ruling, Mr. Nakov marched into the environs of the Madrid art fair, Feriarte, during deliberations of the Fair Committee in mid-November 2009 (but was not allowed entry) and, with the complicity of a certain William Cole, a member of the Committee and an antique book dealer, used what was soon to be his "(un)moral right" over Alexandra Exter to then proclaim that his authority should be extended to the whole of the Russian Avant-Garde. The result was that 7 of the 8 works submitted by the highly reputable Barcelona art gallery, Manuel Barbié, were declared to be "dubious", as were those presented by the German gallery, Michael Nolte, as reported in El Pais on both the 9th and the 11th of December 2009 (www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Vanguardia/rusa/verdades). By the time Feriarte opened, 21-29 November, Nakov could no longer claim that he had the moral rights to the work of Exter, but he is not known to have told the Fair Committee in order to correct the mistake.
Not only did Alexandra Exter suffer the humiliation, but so did Liubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Nina Kogan, and Vladimir Lebedev. All the works by these artists from the Manuel Barbié gallery have both scientific and art historical expertises by renowned experts, documents that were submitted to the Fair Committee in support of the works. These experts include H. Berninger, Vasili Rakitin, Jean-Claude Marcadé, G. Kovalenko, Svetlana Djafarova, and Maria Valyaeva, whose professional reputations have now also been slandered. Add to this the scientists whose expertise is also undisputed - Erhard Jägers (Bornheim near Cologne), Hermann Kühn (Munich), and those at the Politechnic University of Cataluña - which Nakov dismissed as "rarely definitive" - whatever that means. This statement distorts the function of scientific analysis of works of art and misleads the reader.
Some of the Barbié Gallery works have been shown in museum exhibitions and art fairs, and their authenticity has never been questioned - until the likes of a Nakov and a Cole. Mr. Nakov is reported not to have seen the works (only photos) when he pronounced his "opinion", which he communicated to Cole, who duly rejected the works in the name of the art fair, since he was named in the catalogue as also a "specialist of the Russian Avant-Garde".
Opinion? Supported by fact? fiction? or a backhander? It certainly can't be Cole's "opinion", although that's what he told El Pais, because his only known appearance in the the world of the Russian Avant-Garde is as a voice-over of Nakov in November 2009. El Pais reports that Cole "affirmed that he had consulted with Nakov", only to do as he was told, an infiltrator and a hired hand employed to do the dirty work of others.
Did Nakov know the expertises of the acknowledged specialists who had examined and studied the paintings? If he didn't then he has been deceived. If he did he is guilty of casting slurs on well-established reputations without cause or justification of any kind. But then, his own brief is to make himself the one and only "specialist" (read, "terrorist") of the Russian Avant-Garde.
How is Nakov doing this? and how is he making the world accept that he is, or he can be, a specialist having such power? Just by telling the world that he is (no peer reviews here), and then beating it into submission.
How can the public and the art world be protected from such wanton and unreliable, unscientific, unprofessional behaviour?
A few questions and a few answers for general information -
How did Mr. Nakov become a self-proclaimed expert on the specific works of each of these artists?
There is no evidence that he is an expert on these works.
Has he published books on these artists?
No, he has not.
Who has he published on?
Kazimir Malevich.
Any others?
He published a 60 page booklet in 1972, which is the catalogue of an exhibition of the paintings of Alexandra Exter held at the Galerie Jean Chauvelin in Paris.
Has he published anything else on Exter since then?
No.
What does he know about Exter?
Obviously not very much. The proof is that he claims that the 193 paintings seen in the January-March 2009 exhibition at the museum, Chateau de Tours, France, are fakes and he bases this on his ignorance of her artistic development. He is judging the unknown by the very little that was known until these works became public (unless the whole exercise was a paid job), and this is not responsible behaviour for an art historian.
Is he really an art historian? I thought he was an art dealer.
Oh, he's a dealer, all right. Even his Malevich book is flawed because he didn't include paintings that owners refused to sell him at below market price. Not a responsible art historian, I would say.
Sounds very suspicious to me.
As you say...
The Spanish newspaper, El Pais, has given the Galeria Manuel Barbié the right of reply and published (on 23 December) the gallery owner's decision to withdraw from the February 2010 Madrid art fair, ARCO, in light of recent events. It is also true that, once embarrassed, galleries are generally excluded from subsequent fairs. The Cole-Nakov calumny could result in a long-term blight on the Barcelona gallery's reputation - not to mention the effects on its collectors.
(We would like to ask - is a member of the Fair Committee, William Cole, not in breach of Fair rules by leaking this whole thing to the press? Or was that the plan in the first place - to play around in order to "beat the system", just for the fun of it,
and to allow Nakov to score a few terrorist points into the bargain?)
Focusing on the painting by Alexandra Exter, El Pais spoke to the scientists who had examined the painting and they are quoted as affirming its antiquity. Its attribution to Exter by the Moscow art historian and author of the first monograph on the painter in the 1970s, Georgi Kovalenko, is undisputed, and its provenance - having belonged to the wife of the theatre producer, Alexander Tairoff, for whom Exter worked - is also undisputed.
So what is Nakov's response? He told El Pais that he does have the moral rights to Exter after all, that the Orléans court ruling is "not definitive".
But nothing could be more definitive - it's the ruling of an Appeal Court and the law has been pronounced. Whether Mr. Nakov likes it or not. He probably
hopes no one has read the judge's opinion so that he can continue to threaten people with his unlawful claim to having the moral rights to Exter.
That is just what he did in El Pais, adding that, "I consider myself the expert of her [Exter's] work", There is certainly no proof of this, and Mr. Nakov doesn't seem to have alot of support from the art world.
Let him prove that he deserves the title of "expert", for unsubstantiated "opinions" are worthless art history.
Otherwise his claims are merely an autocratic appeal to authority. "It's not authentic because I say so" is like Marcel Duchamp's, "It's art because I say so" - just dada.
__________________________
Who is William Cole?
Editorial
5 January, 2010
As set out in the Berne Convention (¶ 6bis), Moral Right originates with the author of a work of art - painting, literary work, photograph, film, etc. - and protects the work from being tampered with by a third party, such as being misused in advertising. Transferred to an author's heirs, which must be specifically designated, such heirs are given the power to protect the integrity of the author's work and hence may pronounce on falsifications of it such as by fakes or forgeries.
It is here that Andréi Nakov appointed himself authorised to declare on works by Alexandra Exter. As the Court of Appeal in Orléans, France, found that Mr. Chauvelin and the other lenders to the Exter exhibition at the Chateau de Tours, France, were right when they said that Mr. Nakov has no claim to the moral right of the work of Alexandra Exter, it follows that any of his pronouncements on the works of Alexandra Exter have no legal authority whatsoever. They can, then. be challenged, objected to, ignored, etc., etc.
What is Moral Right?
Enter another Deceiver. Named in the catalogue of the Madrid art fair as the "specialist" not only of rare books and prints (he has a 2rd floor hideaway in a village near Barcelona, Spain), but of the "Russian Avant-Garde" as well, William Cole is not an art historian but has degrees in literature.
Cole was under police investigation
in the early 1990s while at Harvard University for attempting to steal antique books, then was prohibited from using the Harvard libraries and its famous Widener Library because he was cutting prints out of rare books - hundreds of them according to police in the article published in The Crimson in October 1994. Also reported in The Crimson
is that Cole was a master at cheating in contract bridge, and banned several times from playing in national championships.
Who is William Cole 15 years later? A reformed, ethical, honest dealer of rare books in Spain? or just the same old guy who has now beguiled the Commission of the Madrid Feriarte into believing that he is an "expert of the Russian Avant-Garde"? - when he is nothing of the sort.
So he must still have that tendency "to lie and cheat", still be that someone who "likes to beat the system just to show the system can be beat", as was said about him in The Crimson.
Maybe next time the art fair Commission will be more vigilant, discerning, and less gullible when checking the credentials of would-be
Committee members. For its duty is not only to assure a high standard of works but also to protect reputable art dealers, scholars, and artists from conflicts of interests and the dire consequences of malicious and unethical manipulators.
It's the obligation of the Spanish authorities and all those who have been deceived by William Cole to put right the dreadful situation that has been created in the art world. It's their obligation to restore damaged reputations including their own since they, too, have been compromised and professionally embarrassed.
El Pais Prints Sequel...
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WELL! HAVE WE GOT A SCOOP FOR YOU! After a long hot summer in New York where all we heard were complaints about how cold the art market is thanks to the false reporting in ARTnews about Russian Avant-Garde fakes, it now turns out that there's a bit of good news: in the Nakov vs. Exter affair the Appeal Court in Orléans, France, decided that Mr. Nakov DOES NOT HAVE MORAL RIGHTS OVER THE WORK OF ALEXANDRA EXTER. Thus Nakov, like the authors of the ARTnews article, are the real Fakers - the fakers of information. The works are free, at last! READ ON... And just before publishing, the latest from the Spanish press of 23 December about the Madrid art fair, Feriarte...
© ragrag 2010
NAKOV DOES NOT HAVE THE MORAL RIGHTS TO ALEXANDRA EXTER