Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

We note two other small signs of consolation related to the PROFIT CENTER, both from AhtsJournal:

1. A six-month ARTnews investigation and interviews with scholars, dealers, and other sources in the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and Spain reveals that the number of Russian avant-garde fakes on the market is so high that they far outnumber the authentic works. “There are more fakes than genuine pictures,” said Alla Rosenfeld, curator of the Norton Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art at Rutgers University from 1992 to 2006 and former vice president of the Russian art department at Sotheby’s New York. It’s impossible to put a number on them, said Natalia Kournikova of Kournikova Gallery in Moscow, but “we can say that almost every artist whose prices have risen has become the victim of fake makers.”

2. The total volume of sales at London’s June auctions of Impressionist and contemporary works declined 70 percent on last year as auction houses cut jobs and guarantees to sellers to adjust to the financial slump....

London’s sales of Impressionist art generated a total of 95.9 million pounds, a contraction of 68 percent on last year. Totals for contemporary art were down 73 percent from 260.9 million pounds to 70 million pounds. It was a similar story in May in New York, where Sotheby’s and Christie’s contemporary auctions registered totals that were respectively 75 percent and 72 percent down on 2008 levels.

At first glance they would have nothing to do with the PROFIT CENTER, but they do: they show that too many people are ready to throw their sense and their money out the window for AHT; that a lot of the people who've overpaid for AHT did so largely to keep up with the Joneses; that AHT is subject to whims and trends of dubious provenance, and often based on no known reason whatsoever; that AHT collectors are so willing to believe they'll buy outright fakes with no due diligence; that AHT, like BIGMEDIA, is ruled by conformists. Moreover the AHT phreaks have at least a vague connection with BIGMEDIA, using them to tout their reps or their prices. That the AHT market is a house of cards does not surprise us; but then BIGMEDIA is too, and in time the spit and tape holding it up will weaken, and the whole rotten flimsy edifice of lies will collapse.

P. S.

A number of prominent art historians who began their careers as academic scholars are authenticating Russian avant-garde works. According to Shatskikh and others, the authenticators often claim to be compiling catalogues raisonnés and promise to include the works they certify in future publications, which gives additional weight to their certificates. These documents are often short—a page or two stating that the work in question can be attributed to a certain artist. They rarely contain specific information about a work’s genesis or detailed comparisons with other similar works by the artist.

NEWS HACKS in the AHT WORLD!