This er, seminal performance piece was not, however, what ‘super-collector’ Charles Saatchi was referring to in today’s Guardian when he blasted the denizens of today’s art world as “masturbatory”, although as Acconci’s performance piece makes clear, onanism has long been a feature of the art world.

Saatchi doesn’t often address the media, generally preferring to keep his opinions to himself. Something of an art vampire, he is rarely glimpsed, only venturing out to feed on the freshest young contemporary talent for his Chelsea gallery.

I was therefore surprised, on emerging from the White Cube stand at the Frieze fair a few weeks ago, to spot the curmudgeonly old collector strolling towards me (above left), his features cast in a rictus of disgust, presumably at the acres of expensive tat that surrounded him. But given his usual reticence, it was even more surprising to see that look of disgust translated into an article for The Guardian, in which he rails at the “Eurotrashy, Hedgefundy, Hamptonites,” and the “trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs…nestling together in their super yachts” at this year’s Venice biennale.

He is right, of course. Loud money is everywhere in the art world. The big media draw at this year’s Frieze fair was a super yacht and matching Riva power boat (right) by Italian company CRN, both of which had been blessed by German artist Christian Jankowski to become something more than mere maritime vessels…or so they would have you believe.
Luca Boldini, CRN’s marketing director, told me, with an alarming lack of irony, “This is very much in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and the idea of the Readymade. I am very confident that we will sell it. If we do, it will send a great wave around the world that will confirm the value of the project.” It didn’t sell. It sank like a rusty rowing boat in a force ten gale of mocking laughter. It’s amazing that the Frieze curators give tent-room to this stuff.

Such crass stunts surely endorse Saatchi’s central point, which is that the art world is overrun by witless opportunists with no taste and too much money. He suggests that “the success of the uber art dealers is based upon the mystical power that art now holds over the super-rich.” But ’twas ever thus.

You could probably track this trend back to the period of rising post-war affluence when Greek shipping magnates like Stavros Niarchos and Basil Goulandris — the oligarchs of their time, thanks largely to the Suez Crisis which made their shipping businesses so profitable — were paying top dollar for Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings to stick on the walls of their many mansions. At the Biddle sale in Paris in 1957, Basil Goulandris bought Gauguin’s Still Life with Apples for $297,142 (buying power equivalent to $2.3m today), at which point “…the entire audience rose and burst into applause,” reported the New York Times.

Art has always been about conspicuous consumption (Veblen coined the term as far back as 1897), but it was really the Cognacq, Lurcy, Weinberg and Goldschmidt sales of the 1950s that marked the moment when the newly wealthy really discovered what Saatchi dismisses as the “pleasure to be found in having their lovely friends measure the weight of their baubles.” (At least a Gauguin was a bauble worth measuring, unlike the dismal rubbish commanding top prices in the market today.)

Saatchi clearly has a problem with the oligarchs (one assumes he means Russianoligarchs) and on that point he’s right on the money. Anyone who has bothered to read the recent history of Russia’s power struggles and the turmoil in its economy will know that the Russian people were robbed blind by a few ruthless individuals in the early 1990s (Londongrad by Mark Holingsworth and Stewart Lansley is a good place to start.)

Recent BBC Radio 4 reports have focused attention on the corruption in Moscow’s civic government and one can only wonder how far its tentacles spread. How much dirty money is being channelled into art? One sensed a good deal of it washing around Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams this week as all three houses dispersed Russian art to rooms full of what looked like paddle-waving gangsters with their anorexic girlfriends in tow.

The ‘art world’ has never been a particularly pleasant place in which to do business, but whether it’s as bad as Saatchi maintains depends on your moral bias…or your taste (or lack of it).

Then again, Saatchi himself has hardly been an unequivocal force for good. Ask those artists whose paintings he bought back in the 1980s before unceremoniously dumping them a short while later. I’ve spoken to one or two who still can’t bury the hatchet. Back then his approach to art was widely perceived as just as crude and philistine as the crapulous oligarchs and other freeloaders he’s gunning for today.

Plus ça change…

Dr. Tom Flynn

(Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

London’s Somerset House could not have arranged a more contemporary public exhibition than the one on display since beginning of this week. Ai Weiwei’s work is being honoured as the first ever to go on display in the historic courtyard of the institution. It is also the first major outdoor public sculpture installation by the artist in London. The monumental installation comprises 12 bronze animal heads, re-creations of the traditional Chinese zodiac sculptures which once adorned the fountain of Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

Today, we see how the scrutinizing eye of the social network also extends deep into the cultural zone. Auction houses and private collectors now face unprecedented opposition when seeking to profit from treasures looted from subaltern nations during the colonial era. That opposition is invariably being marshalled through social networks.

I suggested back in March 2009 (here) that the quickening debate about the ownership of previously looted cultura l objectscould usher in a new era of “guerilla activism” at art auctions. That particular post was prompted by the 2009 hijacking of Christie’s Paris sale of the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé collection when Cai Mingchao, a director of the Xiamen Harmony Art International Auction Company, successfully bought, but subsequently refused to pay for, the Qing bronze rat and rabbit (right) that had been looted from the Summer Palace by the British in the 1860s.

Even more recently, Sotheby’s were forced into withdrawing from sale a Benin ivory mask looted by the British Punitive Expedition to Benin in 1897. Opposition to the planned sale was global and uncompromising and very largely driven by a chorus of voices on social networks.

Now it seems the vendor of the Qing Dynasty porcelain vase that sold for a mystifying £53 million at Bainbridges Auction Rooms in Ruislip a few weeks ago (above left) may be the latest victim of the ongoing cultural heritage war.

This week the The Daily Mail reports that the vendors of the vase are concerned that four months after the auction they have still not been paid. Speculation is growing that this could turn out to be another false bid by Chinese cultural heritage activist groups seeking to disrupt European sales of looted artefacts. Mr Bainbridge, the auctioneer – (seen applauding from the rostrum in the image above right) who is also set to retire on the proceeds – insists that all is well.

It may be too early to pronounce on the Bainbridge vase, but even if the Chinese buyers do pay up one can be sure that skirmishes over cultural objects will continue and doubtless intensify in the months and years to come. One question arises, however. It may be perfectly legitimate to oppose the trade in works of art looted from their countries of origin, but is hijacking an auction the right way to proceed?

Those emerging economies now seeking the return of their material culture argue that western businesses and cultural institutions have been allowed to operate unopposed for too long. Guerilla bids at art auctions are seen as the only recourse available to developing nations, particularly when western museums, auction houses and private collectors stubbornly refuse to enter into dialogue over the future of disputed cultural objects.

It will be fascinating to see whether the Chinese do pay up for the vase. If they don’t, it might explain why such a staggering price was achieved for something so gaudy (“classic Bling Dynasty,” as one wag described it). It would also explain why there were so many grinning Chinese faces in the room as the hammer fell (i.e. they were never intending to pay, but bidding it up so high guarantees media attention for the broader cause).

However, let’s not underestimate the genuine strength of feeling in China about this issue. When I blogged about Mr Cai’s hijacking of the Pierre Bergé sale, Li, a Chinese visitor to these pages, commented thus:

“Those looted cultural heritages [sic] always remind us of what we have been through during the war time. When people’s mind and body were fooled and weakened by drugs, homes, palaces and cities burnt, treasuries robbed away. And the Qing Government was very weak at that time.

After 1949, we established our new government. We’ve been through hard times and good times. Like many countries, we also have issues and problems to face when making our country a better home for its people. And indeed we are getting better and stronger, regaining the strength.

We collected those art pieces, here and there, in different ways. Law suits, and money. Why? There were a lot of things we should do to protect our family during the war time, but we failed to, and we felt shameful.

Today, when we collect the things back, the art pieces designed and made by our ancient artists, we feel that we are healing the scars, little by little, and feel that we are helping our family to regain its glory, piece by piece.

If you get to know a Chinese concept of “Wan Bi Gui Zhao”: (A man risked his life to protect his country’s treasure), you’d understand more about Mr.Cai’s action.”

Dr. Tom Flynn

(Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

The retention of the Benin treasures by European and North American museums and the subsequent refusal to even discuss their return adds insult to that injury. But now, seemingly oblivious to the controversy surrounding the Benin objects, the descendants of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Lionel Galway (1859-1949), one of the British officials directly involved with the Punitive Expedition, have chosen to consign to Sotheby’s some of the stolen objects that Galway retained for his own collection. The sale will take place in February.

Unsurprisingly, Nigerian groups are seething with anger at the family’s attempt to profit from their ancestor’s cultural aggression, condemning the decision to sell as “reprehensible and unconscionable”.

As everyone knows, the treasures seized from Benin in 1897 are of unparalleled beauty and matchless craftsmanship. Sadly, this also equates to a very high market value (the mask of Queen Idia is estimated at £3.5-4.5 million), which explains the family’s decision to sell. Will the sale go ahead?

The respected art market reporter Souren Melikian recently pointed out in an article in The New York Times that antiquities auctions are increasingly affected by the imperatives of the Unidroit convention. “Many [collectors] suspect that objects that cannot be proved to have been acquired before 1970 — the cutoff date set by the Unidroit convention — will become financially worthless or exceedingly difficult to negotiate.”

It is not only Unidroit that constrains the market, however, as the Benin objects may be about to demonstrate.

There is no doubt that the Benin objects were acquired before 1970, and yet they remain just as controversial — indeed arguably more so — than many other problematic objects on the open market, chiefly on account of the circumstances of their acquisition. One might wonder at the avarice of the Galway family in seeking to profit from the sale of these objects, but spare some of your disbelief for Sotheby’s who are clearly willing to brave the blizzard of negative media coverage that the February sale is already attracting.

Christie’s auction in Paris in February 2009 of the Qing Dynasty rat and rabbit heads from the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé collection illustrated a significant shift in the terms of engagement when previously looted cultural objects come up for sale on the open market.

On that occasion, Cai Mingchao, the general manager of China-based Xiamen Harmony Art International Auction Co., bought the contentious bronzes at Christie’s sale, but afterwards refused to pay for them. I pondered here whether the nationalist fervour driving cultural heritage disputes might be ushering in a new era of guerilla activism at public auctions.

Sotheby’s usually disperse ethnographic material and ‘tribal’ art such as the Benin masks through their Paris salerooms, but it seems that Galway’s descendants requested that Sotheby’s sell them in London instead. Did they fear a similar campaign to that which greeted the Chinese Zodiac bronzes?

One Nigerian cultural group has already written to Sotheby’s department head, Helen Collier, requesting that she withdraw the items from the February sale. My guess is that such requests will fall on deaf ears. The major auction houses have consistently shown themselves to be indifferent to the nuances of cultural heritage disputes, placing ‘shareholder value’ above such ethical considerations.

Part of me feels glad that the Galway family has elected to consign these objects for sale, but only because this has the potential to raise global awareness of the Benin cultural heritage cause and put more pressure on museums holding those objects. One thing must happen first, however. Just as the British Museum continues to resist pressure over the Parthenon Marbles by arguing that the Greeks have thus far failed to make an official high-level request for their return, so too they will claim that Benin has also failed to stake an official claim for its treasures.

Finally, let us not forget that not everyone in Benin pines for the return of these objects. Eighteen months ago, I interviewed (here) the internationally renowned contemporary artist Romuald Hazoumé (left), a citizen of the French-speaking Republic of Benin (as opposed to the Kingdom of Benin). Hazoumé, who continues to collaborate happily with the British Museum, believes that until high-level corruption has been banished from Benin there is nowhere safe in which to house these cultural treasures, even if they were returned:

“It is better that they are in the British Museum right now,” he said. “If they were sent back to Benin they would be immediately sold to the Japanese and copies would be put in the Benin museum in their place. In Benin they need the money, you see, to buy votes. There is still too much corruption.” I ask if this is a view shared by many of his compatriots. “Of course! Everyone believes this!”

That kind of utterance is music to the ears of Western markets, auction houses and museums. And doubtless to the ancestors of Lieutenant Galway too.

Sign the petition to stop the sale of the Benin mask from going ahead:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/benin_mask/signatures

The Open University has produced a helpful little film (below) narrating the story of how the Benin treasures were looted by the British in 1897.

Dr. Tom Flynn

(Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

The price was the highest for a “Rembrandt in Auction”, the spokesman said. It catched a record price of 18 Million pounds.

Another piece that has been sold is a drawing by Raphael: “Head of a Muse”, sold for 29,2 Million pounds, which should be the record for the highest priced work on paper.

Experts argue due to Christmas the affinity to buy expensive on auctions is higher, as well as the consistent scare during Recession is increasing the number of collectors and those buying from established artists, rather than newcomer.

Watch the Video on reuters blog:

Rembrandt