5 Great Works of Art I’ve Held in My Very Own Hands

Lately I’ve been reading up on legal matters involving art objects such as title challenges, valuation, artworks as collateral, loan agreements and authenticity. My interest was drawn to new developments in the forensic use of DNA for authentication.

Nowadays DNA analysis is used to provide evidence of authenticity for artworks by artists who are willing and able to provide a sample (or when a verified sample of a deceased artist can be located). Today’s stratospheric prices mean that when acquiring fine art one must exercise the most thorough diligence possible to provide iron-clad documentation of authenticity.

As I was reading up on this relatively new method of authentication I thought back to art works I’ve handled in the past – objects that, I began to realize, may still have a trace of my own DNA on them and began reflecting on “touch,” the tactile quality of art. Here are some of the memories that were conjured up by my reflections on my physical contact with works of art.

1) Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1981, large painting

This painting was the first Basquiat to leave New York City, I believe. It sold for about $1,200 (if I remember correctly) at the artist’s first solo show in March 1981, and was promptly shipped off to Los Angeles, which is where I, given the task of opening up an eight by seven foot crate, became the first person in California to get a look at what was to become an iconic image, known all over the world.

I’d never seen anything to unaffectedly raw (as contrasted with the decidedly affected rawness of Dubuffet and Alechinsky, Appel, et al.) Although Basquiat was, at the time, presented as a product of New York street graffiti hip-hop scene, his style and vision did not really fit the mold. He was in reality more closely aligned with the “beat” and bebop aesthetics of the '50’s and the avant-garde drawing and painting of Twombly and Rauschenberg. Basquiat came up with a fresh and idiosyncratic visual bouillabaisse, intertwining anatomy illustrations, inscription, be-bop jazz references and abstract expressionism into an eccentric yet intuitively communicative personal pictographic/calligraphic visual language.

I was lucky to have the confusing experience of being confronted with this new visual language before it was digestible, before it was assimilated – through exposure to a larger body of the artist’s work. The painting was sold (for less than $50,000 I’m guessing) to one of the major collectors of contemporary art, Eli Broad, and is now in the public Broad Collection museum in downtown Los Angeles.

A couple of weeks ago, a similar painting of a large skull, dating from a year later than the Broad skull, only slightly smaller and, frankly, not as good a painting as this one, sold at Sotheby’s for over $110 million. Realizing that one’s own DNA may be preserved on the wooden crossbars of the stretcher of the great Broad Collection Basquiat “skull” is a bizarre thing.

2) Amish quilt, "Diamond in a Square" design, ca. 1890s

It is a cliché that vintage Amish quilts are admired by art lovers for their similarity to certain genres of modern painting, with Reinhardt and Rothko the most frequently noted among them. Art critic Robert Hughes (“Shock of the New,” 1980 TV series) was so taken with them he put out a lush coffee-table book, Amish: The Art of the Quilt in 1990. The Hughes book hooked me.

Following a temporary project organizing archival materials for the catalog raisonee of the paintings of Basquiat, stated two years following his death at the age of 27, I had the privilege of working for a folk art dealer who specialized in nineteenth century American quilts (and other folk art genres). The Amish Lancaster County wool quilts were stunning. The stitching was incredibly fine and the color compositions were refined and moodily and gorgeous. (I had to be constantly corrected when I referred to “stitching,” instead of the correct term “quilting”).

I learned how to handle antique fabrics when showing them off. When you fold an antique quilt it is important to avoid making a crease along the same lines repeatedly. Doing so would weaken and break the threads. When I was working with antique Amish quilts I was quite dutiful in following this rule. For I’m one of those “painting people” who loves classic Amish quilts as “paintings,” as pre-Reinhardt, pre-Rothko, color compositions of great subtlety and optical effect.

My favorite piece was a late nineteenth century wool blue, purple and brown Diamond in a Square, a design unique to the Amish of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was the sort of design and color composition that attracts lovers of abstract expressionist and color field paintings, like Robert Hughes and myself.

3) Rembrandt Van Rijn, “The Three Crosses,” 1653, drypoint

“There were a few times when Rembrandt felt the urge to make a print with the impact of a painting, and the Three Crosses of 1653 belongs unequivocally to this category.” (Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt expert)

A symphony of tones, dark, middle and light – and dancing lines, straight one and sinuous, of many weights, it’s the greatest etching ever created (at least in the view of many print aficionados). And the example of the “first state” printed on vellum is perhaps the greatest of all. The dazzling impression of “The Three Crosses,” was the jewel of the famous Warburg print collection, one of the greatest collections ever assembled. The collection was donated to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1941. It included three different versions of the print, the first, fourth and fifth states.

Drypoint is the most direct, and exquisite, of all forms of printmaking. The artist draws directly onto a copper plate with a sharp needle, a method that allows for fine delicacy or boldness. The heavier lines were achieved with a deeper-digging tool called a burin. Each print was unique, with the ink rubbed on in an uneven manner to further enhance the “drawn” atmosphere of light and darks.

The MET museum website tells us that “each time he printed the copperplate he created a unique work. He further varied impressions by printing them on different supports; this impression is printed on vellum, which infuses the composition with a warm light. Vellum, less absorbent than paper, holds ink on the surface, softening lines and enhancing the richness of entire effect.”

It was when I was studying at the MET that I had the privilege of handling the great Warburg first state “Three Crosses.” Although it was framed under glass in a heavy dark wooden frame, having the ability to hold and tilt the framed print afforded an intimacy and opportunity to linger and shift focus in its viewing.

4) Elmyr de Hory, forged Amedeo Modigliani self portrait drawing, 1947

In the late 1960s novelist/ investigative journalist Clifford Irving made Elmyr de Hory an international anti-hero with his book, Fake!, The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time. The book was a best-seller and created waves in the art market that are still choppy even today:

“A skyrocketing interest in Amedeo Modigliani’s work is producing Picasso-level price tags, with major museum shows stoking the flame. Buyers are wary, though: the mystery surrounding one of the world’s most-faked artists has led to death threats, lawsuits, and hoaxes.” (Milton Esterow, “The Art Market’s Modigliani Forgery Epidemic,” Vanity Fair, May 3, 2017).

Long after the de Hory book was published it was still much discussed. I picked up the book at the library both for the intriguing story of the fakery but also because my favorite painter at the time was Amedeo Modigliani, and the book cover was, well, wall-to-wall Modigliani. So I checked it out – and it was a very good read.

Years later, one day while I was working in the back room at a once prominent Los Angeles art gallery but at that time not very active, I was rummaging through cluttered high shelf crammed with odds and ends and empty frames above the workbench, and pulled out a frame that wasn’t empty. It contained a drawing, a spare line portrait in charcoal. Though it was unlabelled I knew, after a few seconds, exactly what it was I was holding before me. Though I had not remembered reading the name of the gallery in “Fake!” I did remember de Hory’s account of creating and selling his fake Modigliani self portrait drawing, and knew that there is no known genuine self portrait drawing (though there is a fine and famous painted self portrait).

Desperate for cash during his visit to Los Angeles in 1947, de Hory got a pittance for the purported Modigliani from an art dealer. Sometime afterwards de Hory learned the forgery had been sold to a major Chicago collector of Modigliani drawings, James W. Alsdorf. De Hory was able to discover that the collector had paid between twenty and thirty times what he had sold it for. I don’t know whether it was Clifford Irving’s embarrassing account that had lead the gallery to buy back the drawing; yet at some point the dealer did indeed reacquire it from Alsdorf and stuffed it away to be forgotten.

De Hory became the subject of the final major film of Orson Wells, a “film essay,” titled F is for Fake, released in 1974. The movie came to incorporate another (newly) famous forger, Clifford Irving, who, it had been discovered, had forged an autobiography of Howard Hughes. Irving and his wife confessed to the complicated on January 28, 1972. The fake Hughes autobiography was to have been Irving's next book following the real biography of a faker.

De Hory’s forgeries are now desirable commodities in their own right, with some examples priced at $20,000. Yet it is rumored that, due to these respectable prices, fake de Hory fakes have been passed as real de Hory fakes. (Yes indeed, we are in the era of fake fakes.)

5) Adolph Weinman (1870 – 1952), "Mercury" Dime, 1916-1945

Here’s a masterpiece that, with a mintage of two and a half million examples, everybody can afford to own, an example of, the “Mercury” dime. Coins are, in generic terminology a variation of bas relief sculpture. Few people realize that the most complete record of ancient Greek sculpture – as well as the highest quality examples – are coins. These tiny sculptures influenced classic painting and sculpture of the Renaissance far more than free standing surviving ancient sculpture.

One coin expert has said that this “may very well be the most beautiful coin ever produced by the United States Mint.” In the early 1900s the US made a big effort to improve upon the decent but uninspired coin designs of the day. The result was a series of masterful designs, two of which, the “Mercury” dime and the Walking Liberty half dollar, were created by sculptor Adolph Weinman.

With a total mintage of two and a half billion coins there’s never going to be a shortage of good condition Mercury dimes. The most expensive “Merc” (as some collectors call them) I’ve come across is an uncirculated (graded MS-67) 1916 D example has sold at auction for over $150,000. A sparkling proof example of a common date can be gotten for under $300. The 1918 Mercury dime pictured here is worth about $15.00, but you can get a more common date in the same condition for two or three dollars. Not bad for a famous masterpiece of world sculpture.

Everyday objects of poetical design are often thought to fail to meet the definition of “art.” I’m of the school that favors the broadest definition. We often forget that museums are a fairly recent historical phenomenon. Most of the objects in museums were part of either everyday life or sacred places and rituals. There’s no reason we need to put works of visual expression up on an unreachable pedestal. My philosophy is “the more the better” regarding the proliferation of art.

Put a small silver masterpiece – a bona fide Weinman – in your pocket for a while and you’ll see what I mean.

***

Illustrations:

1) Jean Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1981, acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 81 x 69 ? in., Broad Collection, Los Angeles, California (fair use)

2) Diamond in the Square Quilt, Rebecca Fisher Stoltzfus, Vicinity of Groffdale, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,1903, Wool with rayon binding (added later), Dimensions: 77 × 77,” Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William B. Wigton, 1984.25.1 (fair use)

3) Rembrandt Van Rijn, “The Three Crosses,” first state, 1653, drypoint print on vellum, 394 mm × 456 mm (15.5 in × 18.0 in), Warburg collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York. (fair use)

4) Exhibition: Elmyr de Hory, Artist and Faker, Feb. 15 – Apr. 18, 2010, The Hillstrom Museum of Art, St. Peter, Mn. (fair use)

5) Adolph Weinman (1870 – 1952), “Mercury” Dime, 1916-1945, U. S. general circulation coin, 90% silver. Quote: NGCC Coins

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